Remember when anything "craft" tasted good?

I've only been drinking craft for a little under a year. While some beers don't taste as good the second time over for me, it's still GOOD, so. It's not like I'm one of those people that only like OMFGZ SUPAH RARE BEEUHZ.

 

No, I like beer lots.

 

I think the craft beer community as a whole needs to recognize the simple fact that a lot of shitty craft beer is being made. "Craft" doesn't necessarily mean good, even though a lot of ratings and postings on this site indicate to the contrary.

 

I first started drinking craft beer on a semi regular basis in the 90's - most from a bottle tasted the same to me - musty/grassy/metallic - little did I know they were all oxidized to crap - and when I would complain that it didn't taste right, I was always told that is what hops taste like. And I could tell when they were infected. One of my favorite LagunitasT tweets said something to the effect "we had sour beers in the 90's too, just no one wanted to drink them."

 

But he also tweeted out that the best craft beer would lie at the union of bud light, tecate, and coors or some shit, so....

 

You're getting out of line.

 

I think it's ironic that in pursuit of a 'perfect' expression of a beer, it's possible to lose appreciation for many other beers. I hope that discovering beers that push the limits of a particular flavor, leads to an increased appreciation for the same flavor profile expressed in more subtle ways.

Big beers are still the majority of what I drink, but I am going back and reevaluating beers that I'd moved on from and discovering new things about them that I had overlooked.

In general, I have raised my standards, but not so much that I cannot find something good about most of the beers I try.

 

Hah. I remember that. I assumed that was a tongue-in-cheek way of saying they're developing a pilsner.

 

Yes. Then I found out that diacetyl, acetaldehyde, light struck, oxidation, DMS, etc. were flaws. Those were all flavors that were new and added something, compared to the pedestrian BMC products.

Most, but not all, craft breweries do not have these flaws today.

 

I think as the more beers you try, you can compare style to style, and what you thought was acceptable isn't. 90% isn't bad. My average is about 97%.

 

"Everybody tried to hop the gravy train"

ISO: Hopped Gravy Train

 

Hell, I remember when Olympia tasted good to me [as a Coors boycotting undergrad in Colorado, many moons ago], but it just means that I have moved on to bigger, better and tastier beers. However, there have always been and will always be "craft" beers that I didn't care for but that doesn't mean they didn't taste good to someone. Something tells me that if you ask a BMC drinker about how their beer tastes, they would say it tasted good. That is why many BMC drinkers think craft beer tastes funny - their palates have been dumbed down. Taste is subjective, drink what you like and what tastes good to you.

 

rose-colored glasses. There has always been plenty of bad beer in craft.

 

If anything when I got into craft I would try whatever... I had much more hit and misses then, Drinking things I absolutely hated, but finished as to not waste money.

Now I know more what I want even trying new stuff i'm rarely disappointed.

 

I remember when I thought blue moon was a craft beer.

 

Back in the 80s a lot of brew pubs brewer a lot of really poor beer made with malt extract and a sprinkling of hops.

 

Nope. The beers I was fascinated with years ago are still damn good to me.
1554, Hazelnut Nectar, Black Butte Porter, FW Pale 31, Stone IPA.

I have pretty much stopped buying any beers over $5 per bomber from unproven/new breweries, I have found those to be almost universally disappointing from a value perspective. There's is always a tried and true 6 pack on the shelf I wished I had picked up instead.

 

There were bad beers in the 80s/90s, and there are bad beers now. I'll go so far as to say there are many fewer flawed and poorly made beers now.

 

I'm still pretty new to the craft scene, but some of the more local commercial beers that have long since passed are making a surprising resurgeance as "craft beer" where I'm located (usually in name only).

A few on the list:

1. Hudepohl/Hudy Delight/Hudepohl 14K (the 14K is the only one worth the bother) This brewery (Hudepohl-Schoenling) was bought out in the early 90's by Sam Adams.

2. Weidemann (tastes as awful now as it did in the 80's)

 

I think we need to all acknowledge a very simple and basic truth - that BEER is GOOD! We know there are varying degrees of quality, but hey, let's be honest, if you were one of the prisoners in Shawshank Redemption and you got to have a beer on the roof for the first time in years, you wouldn't care if it was Bud, Coors, Sam Adams, Victory or Russian River! Remember there was once a prohibition in this country and it wasn't legal to brew or drink beer! So let's all chill out, have a beer together (who cares what kind it is) and appreciate beer for what it is: a drink that makes you feel good.