Homebrewing contribution to beer quality

Excellent question! I think the long and the short answer is that so many brewers who started so many of the great microbreweries here in the US have been very creative so that the wide variety of beers has produced unparalleled excitement in the beer choices that are available to us. Your country's turn is coming.

 

Some/most of the commercial beer worldwide is well made...however IMHO consumers palates have changed...and will no doubt change again.
Is craft beer more expensive in Argentina relative to other commodities? Just wondering ... cheers

 

I think the quality of macro beer is very good. crystal clear beer, with the same flavor in every batch. It's just the flavor or lack of that sucks.

 

Hey Cheers from here in the US.
So to answer your question, I remember when there weren't that many micro breweries in my area, and the beer isle at the super market was rather short. I've been spoiled here in Oregon because it's been good for a long time. The better beers here came from some local people starting businesses based on some good home brew they made and perfected. Back then getting small amounts of materials for brewing was still expensive so starting a medium size brewery and buying in bulk was the best option.

This let to two things. Other people wanted to start their own brewery, and started making smaller batches of beer to perfect their recipes. Most failed but some succeeded, leading to a much larger demand in smaller quantities of brewing supplies. Other businesses started opening up supplying this new customer. This made it much easier for the home brewer who just wanted to use brewing as a hobby.

Hobby brewing really only came into full swing about 8 years ago. I'm not saying it wasn't popular before that but now it's so well known that most anyone knows where to buy a beer kit.

What all this does is it causes larger breweries to feel like they need to make newer beer to keep themselves valid in the ever changing beer market. It also causes a bit of friendly competition, meaning that breweries can no longer rest on their old beers, they have to keep improving.

This doesn't mean that oldies aren't still goodies. I'll buy a Fat Tire or a Wid. Hef., But because of Home Brewing, these companies make new beer, seasonal beer, and new beer to keep up with all the trends that pop up. This leads to more beer that more people can drink for cheaper.

Cheers!!

 

There have been numerous discussions about "quality" in the Beer Talk forum. The issue is that there is no one unambiguous definition for what "quality" means that every BA will agree to with respect the beer/craft beer.

Some people associate the word "quality" with creating a consistent product.

Other people like to associate the concept of the beer having a 'good' flavor to mean "quality" but since that concept is subjective there is no way of having this result in a universally accepted definition.

There are other views beyond the two discussed above.

Cheers!

 

Esteban,

We are quickly getting out of the realm of homebrewing here.

You stated: “For me Jack, flavor is a very important ´part´of a beer but not the total, when I am referring to the word´quality.” For what it is worth I personally agree with you.

“Many of us could think ´how can people drink such a crappy beer?´, when I say ´crappy´ I am referring to a beer that has a dull taste,no mouthfeel, overcabonated, no aroma and you need to drink it absolutly ice-cooled to try to avoid perceiving its taste. Why?,” The majority of beer drinkers world-wide prefer to drink beers that are very light in color and very light in flavor. In the US we drink beers like Bud Light/Bud. In the UK they drink Carling Lager. In Belgium they drink Jupiler. And so on. I personally do not enjoy drinking these sorts of beers but that places me in a minority with respect to world-wide beer drinkers. Am I ‘right’ here and they are ‘wrong’? Or vice versa?

I personally homebrew beers that are flavorful beers. I personally purchase commercially brewed beers that are flavorful beer. I would prefer to not make explicit value judgments about the millions (close to a billion?) beer drinkers that prefer to drink beers that are light in flavor.

Cheers!

Jack

 

Esteban,

Firstly I am personally not offended; I have stated on multiple posts that I am personally not a fan of light colored, lightly flavored beers.

You have a very good point/observation concerning the 'association' of commercial craft brewing and homebrewing. Many (most) of the brewers that brew professionally for US craft breweries were (are) homebrewers.

Cheers!

Jack

 

The way I see it, it's a mixed bag. No question that some very good small commercial breweries had their start in a homebrewing setup in someone's basement, and that some of them made a very nice transition to the commercial jungle.

On the other hand, in recent years a LOT of small breweries have opened up that are selling what tastes like bad homebrew. Just because someone likes to brew doesn't mean they'll be particularly great (or even good) at it, especially in a larger scale setting and there's plenty proof of that on the store shelves nowadays (most of it ironically selling at inflated prices).
All I can say is, thank god for the shops in my area that are willing to break up sixpacks of new releases and sell single bottles. The scales now seem to have tipped to the point where 75% of the time, a lot of the new stuff coming out isn't worth a second look anyway.

Back to the original question though...homebrewing has influenced the products in the commercial marketplace. In some cases, expectations have been raised through quality and a revisiting of traditional styles. But in some cases, it can be argued that expectations have in some ways been lowered ...like the bartender in a brewpub who lectured me when I innocently (and non confrontationally) commented that the IPA in front of me was rather cloudy, and telling me that "IPA and other highly hopped beers are supposed to be cloudy" (which is utter nonsense only an excuse for bad brewing technique).

 

My comments, some of which reinforce what @LuskusDelph said.

Many of the top Craft breweries today were started by homebrewers. Sierra Nevada, Bells, New Belgium were all founded by homebrewers. Bells did have variation in the early days, I think almost all did back then. The path was to have brewed for some time, maybe open a LHBS (SN and Bells did first), then start a brewery.

I have talked to people who have said they are opening a brewery. When asked how much have you brewed, the answer is can be as low as 1 Batch! They have no idea of how to brew on a commercial scale. Several of my home brewing friends have gone pro, but they were decent homebrewers that had their recipes developed. One had a 1.5 barrel system in his basement for an intermediate step to going big. There are some poor breweries started by homebrewers these days, then there are some excellent ones.

One thing that Estiban has not experienced is the National Homebrewers Conference. There is a large contingent of pro Brewers at the conference. They exchange information and educate the homebrewers on quality processes. They pros also take time to sample the homebrewers and see what is happening on the cutting edge of home brewing, as we try many things that are not economically attractive for them. One time one said he had found enough ideas for the next year.

There is also the GABF ProAm, where a commercial batch of beer is brewed using a homebrewers recipe and the involvement of the homebrewer. Some of those are pretty unusual, a Poblano Wit won a couple of years ago.

 

To re-enforce something that Jeff made mention of concerning the National Homebrewers Conference (NHC), one thing I like about attending this conference is that drinking lots of various homebrews gives me ideas for my own homebrewing.

At the 2013 NHC I got the chance to drink a number of homebrewed Grodziskie beers. This experience solidified by idea to homebrew my own Grodziskie. At that conference I also had the opportunity to drink a number of beers that featured Mosaic hops. After that conference I homebrewed a Mosaic IPA.

At this years NHC I had the chance to drink a homebrewed Grapefruit Tripel that was OUTSTANDING. A 'lightbulb' went off when I drank that beer.

I am sure that commercial brewers obtain as much (and maybe even more) inspiration from these conferences than I do.

Cheers!