What is the next step for craft beer?

American wilds/sours may be the new next release

 

I think what we see is the more "generic" breweries following in the footsteps of the true innovators. When the market starts to lean towards these experimental brews, more breweries will start making them. This can sort of be seen happening now with BMC. Shocktop and Blue Moon are essentially replicas of beers that the executives at that company saw as marketable. When a larger subset of the beer drinking population starts drinking barrel aged, sour, experimental beers, the breweries will follow. If they don't, then the crazy beers will remain perpetually on the edge of the craft brewing scene.

And we are already seeing a blurring of styles. Belgian IPAs are a good example. I don't think we'll ever see an elimination of styles altogether, because there are certainly types of beer and groups of ingredients that work well together, and there are some ingredients which just don't meld together well. The trend will continue but and beers will be in more overlapping categories, but the notion of beer styles will remain intact.

 

Stagnant?
There is so much new stuff going on and new beers being brewed that I really can't keep track, let alone try them all.

Expansion of regional brewers into potential national brewers is something that I can see continuing. If you're asking what the new trend in brewing will be, Cider's seem to be picking up steam.

 

Can it sell at the corner tappy?

 

I'd like to see a level of consistency on par with what the "big boys" do. Yeah, a lot of brewers seem to be on that "bandwagon" but many are not. Provide a good product that tastes the same batch after batch and the craft brewing industry will not only maintain but move forward. That's my 2 cents worth.

 

Some good points raised above. I don't know what kinds of styles are coming over the horizon, but I do think that prices are bound to go up as more and more new breweries compete for raw materials, especially hops.

 

Growler drive-throughs. Growler, please. Please pull ahead to the next window.

 

Beer and brewing have always been dynamic. There's no reason why this should change in the future.

Styles are an artificial construct of the last 30 years.

 

I am floored by the people who view the craft beer segment as stagnant. I think the point of view is short sighted and ignores many undeniable facts. How many other industries out there can match the growth in sales and market share that craft beer has posted in the past several years? The number of new breweries opening far outweighs the number of those closing. If you were to keep track of new releases on sites like beerpulse it would be hard to say there is not a tremendous diversity among the styles and beer which are being released.

What is going to maintain the forward progress is what has been the catalyst for forward progress thus far, diversity, quantity, quality and progress. The market is obviously hungry for more and the craft breweries will continue to grow and sprout up in order to meet the need.

 

Historic brews, Lagers, Meads and Ciders (several breweries in Michigan have those licenses also, and are making them).

 

Hefeweizen, Lambic, Gueuze, Bock, Bohemian Pilsener, Saison... etc.

Aren't those all well defined beers whose histories, and style definitions, span many more than 30 years?

 

I see craft Meads being "the next big thing". While mead is closer to wine, the mead makers are often more closely related to the craft brewers in style, progression and business model. Mead is still a bit of a relative unknown for many beer geeks, once more catch wind there will be a big demand that will need to be supplied.

 

Yes. I'd like to add to this classic German lagers (Pilseners/Helles) and English milds as well as scotch ales

 

The "next big trend" I think we'll see is a thinning of the herd as the prices creep up higher and higher.

People then go for more of what they consider best and are more reluctant to try & buy lesser known and lesser quality products.

People are already focusing more on value and that will only get more acute as prices go up. You really will go for that Hop Stoopid or Sierra Nevada Torpedo more often when your other IPA's are starting to creep into the $ teens.

As pessimistic as I am, I think freshness awareness is increasing and a consequence of this will be stores trying to manage an efficient level of stock to avoid large quantities of stale product. The better stuff that sells more will be kept, and the slower moving stuff will not have a place on the shelves at all.

Just my prediction.

 

I tried a few Meads and didn't like them. You folks can have them all.

 

It happens all the time in my market. I'll latch on to a brew and being, seemingly, the only one buying them, they soon disappear, to my dismay. There's very little shelf space in the stores in Casper.

 

Have you tried Mead aged in 23 year PvW barrels?

 

Those styles have been around for more than 30 years. But precise style definitions? That's not the way brewing worked.

Can you quote a precise style definition of Bohemian Pilsener from before 1970?

 

I would say we need more bocks, doppelbocks, and eisbocks as well.