"Does American craft brewing have a quality problem?"

While I do mostly agree with Gatza, I also feel that comments like his may go to hurt the industry by casting a seed of doubt in the minds of consumers. Not that it should be swept under the rug, just saying that it could have been handled differently. Going to the media about it will only hurt the industry itself.

 

I guess I just don't get the indignation. We are talking about business. Besides paying lip service to camaraderie, all these new breweries are in competition. If people want to open breweries that produce crappy beer, that's their right. Nobody that steadily cranks out gallons of liquid garbage will stay open for very long. If the long established breweries are worried this may somehow tarnish the industry, then maybe they should just concentrate on improving their own product so they can reap the reward of a shakeout. Last time I looked there were no beer police or Federal Dept. of Brewing Quality. Free enterprise is exactly that. There's no guarantee of success, but nobody should be able to say that you can't give it a go. I also believe the smart ones would heed the advice of people that know what they're talking about, but it's never been up to the competition to tell you how to run your business. If you somehow manage to make a mediocre product that the public keeps buying, good for you. It's worked for BMC for years...

 

abstraction (æbˈstrækʃən) n
1. absence of mind; preoccupation
2. the process of formulating generalized ideas or concepts by extracting common qualities from specific examples

 

High level homebrewers can open a brewery these days ans succeed.

There are too many that haven't successfully made homebrew that are jumping in. The guy I talked to that made 4 awesome Mr. Beer kits and was bell bent on opening is my example.

 

common qualities from this specific example would be 70-80% quality problems. but please keep thinking you're right. the world needs suckers

 

"...from specific examples." No one ever implied they experienced low(er) quality beer only once; and if, as seems to be the case, they were abstracting the idea or concept of an increase in the number of brewers producing beers with quality issues, the 70-80% would only need to be higher than the previous percentages they experienced.

But, please, keep calling me names.

 

Your post is full of general hypotheticals your ideas about business, while professionals like Grossman have actually experienced previous 'crashes' in the microbrew industry. They have both prior experience and a personal stake in the industry, legitimizing their concern or "indignation".

It shouldn't be surprising that the Brewer's Association would want to protect the perceived quality standards of their trade. Particularly with all the growth and new, relatively inexperienced consumers out there, who may or may not want to give each of the 3,000 brands a try before deciding to go back to their Miller Lite or whiskey sour, hard cider, etc. Not that I believe 2014 is necessarily the same situation, but if you don't believe that a flood of mediocre/inferior products could negatively impact the market, you weren't paying attention to the U.S. beer scene in the 90's.

Bizarre example considering that American craft beer has become highly successful marketing itself as the opposite of mass-produced, mediocre, generic beer (not to mention the many mediocre/declining BMC-type brands that have failed over the years).

 

Whatever, my goat head and gummy bear schwarzweizendoppelrauchbock is awesome!

 

My thought is that perhaps people are starting breweries with tons of passion and possibly not enough experience.

 

Saying that we have a quality problem is putting it mildly IMO. All one has to do is judge at any commercial beer competition. I have done the last 4 GABFs and sat at the judging table with both Paul and Mitch. It is shocking what brewers will send in. Simply shocking.
In my mind, the quality of our beer is not the root problem. The root of the problem is having brewers that simply don't know any better. If the people opening breweries are homebrewers with absolutely zero training in sensory analysis, there's going to be a lot of problems. It is what worries me more than anything else in our industry and I see it happening all the time.
When people entering the industry believe that they can make just as good of a beer in 55 gallon trash cans as we can in purpose built tanks, there's a problem.
When people entering the industry believe that they can make just as good of a beer with zero temperature control as we can in glycol jacketed tanks, there's a problem.
When people entering the industry believe that they can make just as good of a beer throwing an unspecified amount of dry yeast into a bucket as we can pitching a calculated number of cells in a liquid slurry through a sanitary fitting, there's a problem.
Lastly, and this kind of is overarching, when you have people entering the industry that believe that they can make just as good of a beer with zero experience in a craft brewery as those who have decades of experience, who have degrees in fermentation, who have years of sensory analysis, QA/QC lab work experience... there's a problem.

For every "great" homebrewer that quits their job to open a successful brewery, there are 10 more that fall flat on their faces.

What I sincerely hope, and I believe what Mitch and Paul would hope, is that these breweries do the least amount of damage as possible. It sounds mean, but the quicker these breweries can go out of business, the better for the entire business.

To that end, the more great brewers we have setting out on their own and taking a shot at running their own brewery, the better.

 

1.7402783203125E-17

If the "real number" was 5 bad in 10, there'd be 17% chance that 7 or more would be bad by random chance.

I don't doubt that some startup breweries have poor product, but I'm more alarmed that they're defensive about it. You just started. You don't have to be winning. Accept criticism and get better.


This is all however, a good argument for keeping my day job.

 

Are there a lot of openings for this?

And, since we are talking about something serious, how should someone prepare themselves to be able to accurately and properly participate? Training? Certifications? Etc.?

 

Depends on the surrounding region of the brewery. If there's a lot of tough competition, like in California or Oregon, you're right. But Lazy Magnolia has been making crap beer for over a decade simply because, in Mississippi and surrounding states, there are barely any local "craft" options so their beer gets bought by default. Also, don't forget the whole "Drink Local" movement that's so hot these days. Here in Asheville, people will continuously buy an average beer on reflex just because it was brewed locally. Don't mean to get all devil's advocate on you. Just sayin'

 

I don't believe they are talking about beers outside of style parameters. Taste is subjective and some people like hoppy beers, some people like sours. Its the off flavors in beers that need to be controlled which comes in to fine tuning the fermentation process and sanitation. Except for the barrel aged process where a few imperial russian stouts got infected, I don't get any off flavors in any of their released beers and do think of them releasing quality product consistently. That's not to say I was a fan of the lavender porter, but the lavender was an intended flavor, not an off flavor and the quality of the beer was fantastic.

 

Amen. I, too, am frequently shocked at what many U.S. "craft" brewers are trying to pass off on the beer-drinking public these days (especially as regards German styles, since those are what I know best, having lived in Germany for nearly a decade). If anything, though, I am perhaps even more shocked at how many people vigorously defend such beers and ignore how problematic doing so can be for the industry. All I can conclude is that, as you say, they simply don't know any better. Still, I genuinely feel like I'm living in an alternate beer universe than the large majority of beer geeks most of the time, so it's good to hear perspectives like yours.

 

It was Paul who said this during the opening of CBC in his remarks. Mitch said pretty much the same thing during his acceptance speech for his award,but his was more pointed towards telling start ups to hire people who know what they are doing and/or except the fact they might not know what they are doing. They are completely on point. It has taken 30 years to get to this point for craft brewers in America. It will take one glass of shitty beer to ruin it for the general public. So yeah startups. Don't fuck this up for us.

 

Except that with the craft beer industry now undergoing an unprecedented and too rapid of an expansion of customer base, the need for product to sell dictates that some brewers will have to "learn on the job". Our economy is one that requires quick action to take advantage of trends.

Unless someone can offer a realistic comparison between our industry's growth spurt and other industries that have undergone the same, and how those industries fared, I think we can fairly well discount all the armchair economists who are wringing hands, as well as those who are saying all is well.

I am not an economist, but to me this only seems a natural phase of growth and an unremarkable amount of lower quality products coming to market.

 

My own anecdotal thought would be 50% this and 50% marketer-types who see a ripe market and look to "maximize profits."

 

Except BMC isn't making an inferior product. They're making a world class product in a style you may not prefer. They most certainly DO NOT suffer from quality issues.