Will craft beer ever get back to it's roots?

I've got a bottle of Super-Dooper Gimmick Craft Beer I'd be willing to let go of for 4 bottles of your Gimmick Craft Beer. I'll throw in a couple bottles of Local Roots Craft Beer as extras. It was my gateway beer into craft beer, but I find it very tame and boring now.

 

Best be careful, that could be an irony allergy where the tongue swells, eyes bug out, and big guffaws follow like sneezes!

 

So they sourced an ingredient from each continent. While it is gimmicky, at least 4 of those ingredients would be best quality from where they got them. There seems to be a reason for the location they got these items.

More of a gimmick is rougue's voodoo series.

And I dont see why a gimmick that turns out to be good is a bad thing

 

Instead of the gimmick varieties they put out, I'd rather see them make just one or 2 beer beer great, for example MBC, make Lunch and Dinner more often instead of Mo or Peeper which just sits on the shelves.

 

Of course not. Saying that if everyone just tried to make traditional styles that the market wouldn't support it.

 

Samuel Smiths Old Brewery, Dogfish Head and Lagunitas simple flagship solid beer styles are my anchors whenever I feel myself being pulled out by the tide of experimentation. As I explore I will find other breweries that have mastered a basic style which I will use to return back to earth. They are out there and experimentation is good.

 

Devil Dancer at Duckworth's, Park Road Charlotte NC.

 

Trying to save you work. After all, if they used a gimmick or wacky ingredient just to attract the public (as opposed to experimentation) we'd expect to see that in the beers that keep selling rather than the one-offs.

 

Reasonable list.

Ok, so now lets look at each of them and assume they are "gimmicks" simply because they use unexpected ingredients.

First thing to note is that all but one of them are "occasional rarities." and so not part of the regular DFH portfolio but are special cases and may even be considered by this site to be retired beers even though DFH may not list them that way.

American Beauty is a "collaborative brew" driven in part by polling grateful dead fans about certain ingredients to brew a beer honoring that musical group with the final ingredients list decided upon by the DFH brew team.

Bitches Brew is a beer created in cooperation with a music recording company and intended to be the beer analog of the Miles Davis album and intitiated in part by the recording company to honor the release of that album.

Positive Contact is a collaborative brew based on someone else's preferred ingredients in consultation with the DFH brew team.

Piercing Pils contains an unexpected ingredient that has proven popular with consumers because of its flavors. True it is non-traditional with the addtion of the pear juice, but adding hops was once non-traditional as well. As someone pointed out above, if it starts as a gimmick and works it isn't a gimmick any more.

Rosabi is a collaborative brew centered around someone else's favorite ingredient.

Wrath of Pecant is a collaborative brew with the ingredients list developed for the Extreme Beer fest and involving the Ahlstron brothers in developing the recipe and ingredients list.

Now granting as I said, that all of these examples involve a gimmick (a special feature only for the sake of having a special feature) how do we connect that to the idea of "just throwing ingredients in the pot." Seems like most or all of them took a lot of thought, discussion and that several of them were done as test batches in the small brewhouse upstairs at Rehoboth.

 

Interesting reading you 2 going back and forth.

 

SDGCB sounds amazing! LRCB not so much. PM me and we can work on ratios. Is any of this starting to sound familiar?

 

But one could argue that the collaborative nature of these beers is a gimmick in and of itself. Polling Grateful Dead fans, beer analog of Miles Davis album...

I'm not making a quality judgement or looking down on them.

 

DFH Piercing Pils is a tasty Pilsner IMO. The pear is added in a judicious manner which is very much complimentary to this beer. Prior to tasting Piercing Pils I might have been inclined to use the word 'gimmicky' to describe this beer but after drinking this beer over multiple seasons it is not a gimmick beer for me.

Cheers!

 

Prior to drinking Piercing Pils I would likely be inclined to agree with you but Piercing Pils is a very good Pilsner. There is an old saying of: the proof is in the pudding.

I would be interested in knowing the back-story on how the folks at DFH came up with the idea to brew a Pilsner using pear.

Cheers!

 

Meh. Next to Randy Mosher: Sam Calagione wrote one of the essential books on brewing that explicitly sets out to bend the rules, and expectations of what beer is capable of. DFH have their beers which keep the lights in the brewery and cost of doing business afloat. That's also a large reason why beers like these exist within their portfolio because they are not cheap to produce, especially when produced at the scale DFH operates at. The core line up allows Sam and his brewers a chance to explore their hobbies, fascinations, and ideas of how to push at the expected and create something that is unexpected and different. There's also the culinary and wine background that Sam is familiar with, so beers such as those you listed are quite within those parameters and palate expectations. If all you are looking for is the expected of water, grain, hops and yeast. Stick with the brewers which operate within that and achieve that, and don't worry. With over 3000 breweries to choose from. This is practically a non-issue because the market for beer has a host of different ways to approach drinking it and enjoying it.

 

Barrel ageing and Randalls are complete gimmicks mostly used to hide badly flawed beers

 

Sierra Nevada has never put out a gimmick beer. They always have quality beer. So Ninkasi had one with yeast that was in space. That is still pretty cool. And the beer was good. Ninkasi has great beers. It doesn't matter if it has a gimmick if the beer is good.

 

Don't forget, every beer that has ever been "Randall-ized" also owes its inspiration to DFH.

 

Sometimes thats the only way to sort things out and get to mutual understanding....