Your Biggest Wrong Or Right Beer Predictions From Past

This was probably a few years back, but I remember posting here about how bars (in our area) were getting rid of their beer engines because serving cask wasn't proving to be economically worth it for them. Another person made a post about how cask ale in his area of the US was drawing in crowds. Really? I pressed for more info and he was referring to cask Zombie Dust with extra added hops. Details matter.

 

Hahah - yeah four times out of five when cask comes up it reminds me of the Jon Stewart scene in Half Baked

Yeah man, but have you ever tried Zombie Dust, oooooonnnnn cask (with mango juice and more hops added)?

Yeah sorry mate we're not talking about the same thing

 

You've been confining yourself to the regional forum too much these days.

 

Wotta softball of a Q for me!

I predicted that craft beer in CANs were the coming wave of the future. I still CAN't believe how quickly the CANcept took 'hold, however! Now, we are seeing sours & tarts in CANs, something that was to be the final frontier. Victory BC beers are now in CANs as Bill Covaleski eats his words. I am elated by the craft CAN beer revolution, but now it is obvious that I will never CANplete The CANQuest (tm): my stated goal of drinking & reviewing EVERY CANned beer in existence.

 

That sentence just made me sad and angry at the same time. Like a driver that just hit my dog with his car and didn't stop to see if he was OK.

 

I want to say I've only made one prediction, but it might be a while before I can say it came true. My prediction is that there will be a shift in how breweries operate. Breweries can focus on quality, produce great beer with little or no distribution and still be successful financially.

 

Your prediction for 2018 sounds more like a prediction for 2010.

 

I haven't been in the game since 2010, but what I've seen since 2014 is a lot of craft working on expansion into new markets, which I personally think is not the way to go. There have been some breweries as of late that are not too concerned with expansion, and I think that trend will increase.

 

So, you are more so referencing larger production breweries as opposed to local breweries that center their sales around their taprooms?

 

But will this international get on my shelf at 1-7 days after canning?

 

Never said it had to be an IPA

 

Michael, there is some good news here. Yards a couple of months ago moved into a new, larger location. They will be capable of brewing more beer.

At a German Beer Festival in Philly last year I spoke to a couple of Yards guys (a brewer and a sales person). I asked them if once they move into their larger brewery would they be expanding distribution. The brewer just shrugged his shoulders and the sales person stated: we can't keep up with demand in our current distribution area.

I suppose we will have to wait and see here.

Cheers!

 

Hogshead in Denver (http://www.hogsheadbrewery.com/) makes a big deal out of their cask offerings and they DO have a pretty large dedicated audience as a result. However they're mostly the only place doing it, and they're doing it at an extremely high level. The Falling Rock has 2 engines where they serve only Hogshead gravity beers, but most other places only carry their CO2 stuff. Most other places only have firkins for weekly experiments. I think we only have one other place that takes it seriously (http://www.pintspub.com/pints-pub-brewed-artisan-beer.html) and their quality is up and down varying on the age of the cask. They don't move their stuff like Hogshead does. Hell, Hogshead has probably hurt their business a lot since the beers are better.
Either way, I'd say cask beer has a small but dedicated audience that is probably 95% sophisticated beer lovers. I don't see that kind of thing pulling crowds outside of a few niche spots.

 

I'd agree. Don't know a lot of British ex-pats that are what I'd call sophisticated, but I get your drift.

 

My wrong prediction from a few years ago that still hasn't seen a reality as of 2017: The craft beer bubble will burst and the survivors will be the top-shelf brewers (the HFs, Tree House's, TG's etc) and the brewers that create a somewhat tasty sessionable beer for only $1 a sixer above BMC products. Maybe that is In-Bev's eventual strategy. NG Spotted Cow is probably the closest to that, but I really am not aware of any brewers amongst the 5000+ brewers in the US going that route with one of their beers (close 2nd perhaps being the All Day IPA 15 packs and SNPAs but they are still several dollars more than BMC products).

 

So is it a reailty the Oregon craft beer bubble has burst? If so, this could be the official wakeup call for the rest of America, since Oregon is about 5-15 years ahead in craft beer scene/culture from most of the other states in the US (depending on the state) and could be a true foreshadowing of things to come in the near future.

 

I don't know about the craft beer bubble, per se - I think craft continues to command a large slice of packaged beer sales and tap lines - but the brewery bubble I mentioned does seem to be bursting. There have been years within the past decade when it seemed like the big cities - Portland and Bend - could accommodate an endless number of new brewery openings. This past year has seen more closures in Portland (and a few in other places) than I can remember in any other year, and not just piss-poor breweries and nanos either, but places that were well-liked and had good beer.

It's hard to say if this is a harbinger of bad beer news to come. Obviously they all closed for their own unique reasons and I feel like Portland, especially, was oversaturated in the first place and that this was inevitable.

 

You is talkin' over my head.

On my simplistic level, this is true but makes me sad.

Too subtle, too short of a half life.

 

agree on everything except the survival of sub-par beer and brewers, if you drink craft your palate develops quickly.....with US close to saturation point mediocre craft beer will FOLD

 

or $18-22 for a Growler....which I routinely do in order to secure FRESH beer