How “Far” Beer Has Come…

Hmmm, perhaps we need to use a bit more of a broad perspective when we view our hobby.

" The earliest chemically confirmed barley beer to date was discovered at Godin Tepe in the central Zagros Mountains of Iran, where fragments of a jug, from between 5,400 and 5,000 years ago was found to be coated with beerstone, a by-product of the brewing process.[8]" -wiki

I would wager that since then there isn't a single edible thing on this planet, nor technique available, that hasn't been done to beer. Beer historically is the poster child, the champion "beverage of many ingredients and techniques", from using whole chickens to make it, to spitting in it to ferment it, to distilling pitch pine to store it. Extreme? Too far? Ha, we are lightweights when it comes to experimentation and ingredients. Just my .02.

 

Forget about beer. Ice Cream Advocate is probably discussing if Blue Ice Cream is taking it too far.

 

Not long ago, I worked with a guy who enthusiastically told about 20 people throughout the day that he had a skittles sour the day before. It was pretty cringey to hear all day.

 

Ye God! I would handle that stuff like nitroglycerin.

 

My line would be drawn above coffee stouts!

 

This is a fresh perspective that I enthusiastically embrace, Dave. How can one bitch about a German chocolate cake stout when 5000 years ago we were spitting in it to ferment it?

 

Because science and technology, they weren't spitting to make anything taste like a processed sweet dessert, but because they didn't know anything about fermentation (I'm talking very generally here, as I'm not going into 2500 year histories of alcoholic beverages in Peru that had people spitting). Any odd style from an Oude Geuze to Gose, to Braggot or Gruit, Pumpkin Ale were made because of tradition and available resources. Not because they were trying to emulate Count Chocula, making it so sweet and over the top that only a 10 year old would enjoy it, if they could actually legally drink such things.

If you don't believe me look here, this brewery is an embarrassment IMO...

https://ingeniousbeer.square.site/

 

Wow. Just. Wow.

Small brewers are just begging for some kind of trouble from the feds lately. How is that not advertising targeting children?

 

It reminds me of an old Law & Order episode I saw with Sam Waterson, he was charging the head of a gun manufacture with some murder charge or whatever, as they made their guns easy for a kid to change to an auto weapon or something, and the CEO of the company said something along the lines of:

Would you charge breweries because underage kids drink?

Sam's character responded:

Only if they made cotton candy flavored beer...

 

For me, not interesting and definitely not fun.

 

In the "good old days" brewers used to painstakingly develop beers using a process to test brews, tastings, adjustments, and consumer tests to come to a final product, even the flavored beers shown in the jesskidden piece above. Not everybody would love the final product, and it likely would not succeed in the market. But the brew did at least meet some kind of minimum standard. Here we have the beers of the week. How can the brewers even predict how such a fast turnaround product will taste. Do they care?

 

While I appreciate what you're saying I think we need to realize that brewers brew to sell beer Brewers brew what they think the public wants to drink. The public answers by buying or not buying. Like always

You say back then they used what was available. Now we use what is available. I say back then they brewed what they think beer drinkers would buy. Now brewers make what they think beer drinkers would buy. If they had count chocula back then, and the means to make a count chocula beer, if the public wanted to buy that style, I guarantee there would have been brewers ready to make it.

 

fine by me.

 

the public wants to drink seltzer. brewers want to sell product. thus brewers brew seltzer. seltzer is not beer. this is one instance of how "far" beer has come (by following that approach).

 

And in a few weeks it'll be, "Hey remember when the public went through that seltzer thing?", and brewers will be looking around to see what the public wants now. Like always.

 

sure, but if you based your business on/invested your resources in, say, flavored beers, and then the public decided they didn't like a malt base as much as they like a seltzer base to deliver their fruity flavorings...well, your brewery might not be around to supply what the public wants next.

 

I guarantee that nether one of us can possibly know that. How can we know what popular current desserts and kids processed cereals would be popular to a culture over 2500 years ago?

Bottom line, breweries like Ingenious are making this stuff to emulate other popular desserts, thats it, and I'm not a fan of that. Is that fair?

 

My point was that if it was popular back then, and the public wanted to buy that style of beer, and brewers could make that style of beer back then, they would have made that style of beer. I know that because brewers make what the public will buy, now, back then, way back then, way, way back then, and in the future until commerce and capitalism change fundamentally.

 

After having about 3 sips of this: https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/132/72720/ a few years back, I've learned to appreciate pilsners, lagers, and west coast IPA's a LOT more. LOL.

 

But we are specifically talking about these types of overly sweet beers the are only available because of some nostalgia for a kids dessert, or the need for some, to have a beer that just tastes like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches or whatever (seriously this brewery has done that before). Not what some ancient culture would do that had the bare minimum of knowledge on how fermentation worked, and probably didn't have complete knowledge of the total effects of alcohol.

I'll guarantee you this, I know for a fact breweries like Ingenious just put in syrups and powders straight to whatever base beer is in a keg to make these concoctions. I don't care about the economics of if, or its popularity at the moment, just that the beers are bad, and its bad brewing...of coarse that is all my opinion, and you don't have to agree. Thats it