Have you priced chalk lately? And I don’t mean that cheap kids chalk. Quality brewers probably only want use Fulltouch chalk, manufactured by Hagoromo Stationery in Nagoya, Japan. The chalk of mathematicians.
If you've never had to wait more than 2 minutes to order a beer everywhere you've ever been, you're the luckiest barfly/brewery-hound I've ever heard of!
What about this one? Walking into a "craft" brewery and seeing macro domestics on tap (Bud, Bud Light, Kurrs, Kurrs light, etc.). It's one thing to offer 'guest taps' at your brewery and kudos for ensuring the guest taps are also independent micro/nano area/regional craft breweries but why in the **** would you take up valuable taps with anybody elses beers but your own?!?!? Again, one or a few 'guest taps' (so long as they're all micro/nano breweries) fine, but if I walk into a brewery that's serving anything but their own brews exclusively, I'm already suspicious. My point being, if you're any kind of a craft brewer and proud of the time & effort you put into your beers, why in the world would you even consider serving any other brews but your own in your establishment? (Unless you absolutely don't want to brew a sour or a gose and need that option for your customers but again, you could always just tell them sorry, we don't have any sours here?)
A small brewery might not have the capacity to brew a bunch of styles, so bring in guest taps to give their customers a wider selection.
Kurrs (sic)? I thought Coors put that brand (named because they only used the "Core" of the hop ) out of business.
This is why American Blonde/Wheat and Kolsch became so popular. As a backstop for friends that really didn't want to be there.
Depends on the clientele. Running a successful taproom in Portland is different from most places, including my ex-urban Long Island. The nearest brewery here doesn't have big-beer taps, but the clientele isn't the BA crowd (they and most of their customers don't post to BA). They don't brew most of the exotics. Every brewer needs a steady stream of customers. If half his taps are national brands, that would be OK, as long as the other half aren't juicy IPAs.
In the Pacific Coast forum there is a discussion about how one of the two breweries in So Cal that makes cask ale is now switching to kegs of other breweries IPAs and seltzers. This brewpub has had economic issues the last few years so the decision to not brew or brew very little is a likely an economic one. It’s got to be tough to brew a bunch of beer that people don’t order, kegs can a cheaper, safer bet. But I agree , it doesn’t make sense for a brewery to offer BMC beers to me. My nickname for Coors was Sewers which kind of went along with Butwiper.
And I can also just Google it, sure, but I would appreciate the brewery simply providing that info on the can so it saves me that extra step. Also the brewery can always ballpark the ABV based on final gravity, and they should be doing that anyway, so it's no extra hassle. And I highly doubt that the ATF (or the ALE - Alcohol Law Enforcement - as its known here) are going to test, even randomly, for alcohol content. Again, I may be way off base here, but the type of money it would require to even sporadically test new releases at craft breweries for exact ABV would be ridiculous.
The ATF has not been the primary regulatory Federal division for alcoholic beverages since 2003. It is now the Treasury Dept.'s TTB. (The ATF was moved to the DoJ). The listing of ABV for beer (Malt beverages in legal terms) is covered under Beverage Alcohol Samples I think they either no longer take random samples or they no longer publish the results (?), but here's the results from when they did. TTB Alcohol Beverage Sampling Program 2016 Results So, with thousands of breweries and, what, maybe over ten thousand individual brands, not a good chance one will get sampled. But the failure rate is pretty high. But there's always Consumer Complaints
Founders latest KBS variant is Iced Latte, labeled as an Imperial Golden Ale, and listed on BA as an American Strong Ale. Founders apparently forgot that KBS = Kentucky Breakfast Stout. It could still have been part of their barrel series, without mislabeling it as KBS. Maybe this is Founders way of admitting they've run out of KBS variant ideas. Do better, Founders.
It didn't totally suck. I scored it 3.91, and I might have rated slightly higher if it hadn't been marketed as a KBS variant. I knew going in that it wasn't a stout, so I can't complain too loudly. I'm just disappointed that they wasted a KBS label on it. It hurt the KBS reputation. Granted, BCBS has had barleywines and wheatwines.
Agreed. I remember those days as well. Again just my 2 cents, not like I wouldn't eat good food and find something adequate to drink.
How about breweries that don't include their physical location on labels, websites and/or social networking posts? There was a PNW brewery opening a new taproom two years ago and the posts were like "Join us downtown 4pm-9pm at our new spot!" .
Trivia night at the brewpub where someone has a microphone turned up to 11 out of 10*, making any conversation unsustainable. *shout out to Spinal Tap fans:
