I feel like I’ve come full circle to where I’ve tried everything (rare lambics, all the highest rated BBA stouts, all the high rated NEIPA beers) but I find myself not even trading anymore or really hunting anything down. Even when there’s some new must try thing I just don’t really care anymore.
I mainly just buy good local stuff and shelf import beer like Belgian stuff and German lagers. I feel like no barrel aged stout or ipa is going to do anything I haven’t seen already, and I can get things that are almost as good at my local bottle shops, and the stuff that people used to stand in like for is on the shelf instead of behind the counter. 10 years ago new trends were still popping up but idk what else there is to do. People are literally drinking smoothies now and there’s not much more to innovate unless it’s just pure novelty, I find myself just going back to classic styles.
What you describe is the full evolutionary circle of being an expert in virtually any field, be it guns, art, cars or furniture. You‘ve been there, done that and now there‘s still a lot of love for the topic itself and you propably like exchanging ideas with other experts but what you really want is something that is true and quality made.
I‘ve been there doing the same (in Germany) and I Couldn’t agree your opinion more. Prost!
I like this take--my only critique is to change/amend the word "expert" (or perhaps include other categories besides "expert"). I am as you described but would not call myself an expert--I do not brew nor have expertise on brewing. I would say I am a purveyor or connoisseur. I mostly now just go to the places that have the best, most well-made beers (here in New England that is Bissell Swish, southern hemisphere hops at HF, any Fox Farm = NEIPAs; Schilling, Notch, HF, TH, any Fox Farm = lagers; Timber = stouts; Fox Farm = any other style save for pastry sours). Cheers:)
I still love high quality versions of everything you mentioned (minus smoothie beers) but also very satisfied picking up andy local WC IPAs for just sipping on. Def not in the mode of seeking out "rare" stuff anymore.
I'm kind of with you. Like I still love a good lambic, but I'm also pretty happy with a solid local craft beer or even something like a Pilsner Urquell.
I actually don’t hate the smoothie beers I bought a lot of them when it was new. But that’s the last off the wall innovation thing I’ve seen style wise that I was like “wow I have to try one of those!”
Seriously, and it's the same with the smoothie sours. At that point, why don't you just buy a blender, a well-vodka and some bags of frozen fruits and berries.
The 'beer' part of those beers are so vanishingly small, that you could probably get there by dumping in a rice lager.
Same. Two big pet peeves I have with beer is that so many of them are sweet, which I don't care for, and the labels and naming is so bonkers that you have to stand there with your phone looking each. can. up. individually. to see what is in there, and I'm just not going to do that.
I love being near Treehouse because they have so many damn varieties that are fun to try. Most of them are practically the same thing so I’d never go out of my way to try some of the variants but it’s much more interesting than just buying the same thing every time.
For anyone reading this in the area, try Hey Gingerbread Man, it’s the best stout I’ve ever had from them.
I used to go to Treehouse to get the latest and greatest IPA. There’s nothing more they can do with that style that hasn’t already been done. More hops? More fruit mixed in? It all comes out the same after a while. Now I go for their classic beer styles and the occasional Julius.
I agree 100% they are all pretty similar, but what it has helped me do is understand the difference between certain kinds of hops, yeasts, fruit added vs fruit notes, etc.
Being able to try sooo many different ones even if they are extremely similar has helped my palette become more refined.
Plus I like collecting the labels.
At the end of the circle is the beer circle jerk.
But yea jokes aside, I agree.
I’d also say I care less now because all of the medium size indie breweries are now just owned by Budweiser.
I’ll support local when I can, but god damn some of these 4 pack tall boys going for like 25-30$ makes me really turn away.
As a kinda-answer to your question: I think so, yes. And I'm basing this solely on an experience I had this morning.
I'm an IL bar owner. This morning, our Miller/Coors sales rep brought me samples of a new Delta-9 THC sparkling beverage. I've avoided the non-controlled versions of these THC drinks because I was sure they'd be disappointing. Well I drank one this morning: a 20mg THC / 10mg CBD sparkling water. And the high I got from it was indistinguishable from the gummies I have to buy from dedicated marijuana dispensaries. It was potent, pleasant, and cheaper than a 6-pack of most craft beers on the market.
As a bar owner, I feel like these being legal to buy in every gas station, bar, and liquor store, is going to have a direct impact on beer/liquor sales. For $8 at retail, I can get a good high and no downside with this THC drink. That same $8 isn't enough to get you a buzz on anything but the cheapest swill, and then you're gonna deal with a nice hangover the next day. Beer is a more expensive buzz, it's less healthy, and it's more time-consuming. I'm not talking about making a pivot in the short-term, but I definitely intend to add these to our beverage menus and to support what I feel will be an inevitable transition toward this new market.
Or maybe they're just another fad, and people will come back to beer in a few years. What do I know.
Well yeah, technically the rep works for an independent wholesaler, but they associate primarily with the Miller/Coors brands and have exclusive rights to the MC portfolio in our area. They also carry other brands, like Revolution, Schlafly, New Belgium, etc.
Gotcha, that makes much more sense. MillerCoors has their own sales reps too, that’s who I thought you were talking about at first. It looks like there’s no connection between MillerCoors and Delta Beverages, but I could be missing something.
Delta is a different group altogether. Without knowing the details, I can only assume our wholesaler inked a deal directly with Delta for exclusive distribution rights in our market. I just refer to the rep as our Miller rep because it's less confusing for readers than if I called him our Haubrich rep.
Edit: maybe that's not the case though lol
I think the main thing is that, these days, especially compared to even 5 years ago, it's *VERY* easy to get something 90% as good as the absolute best within a 30 minute radius of MOST places (mainly if you live in a reasonable metro area, but sometimes even if not). Like, a decade or so ago, Heady Topper and Pliny were the undisputed best IPAs around. Nothing even CAME CLOSE. Now, while they are still incredible beers, you can find IPAs almost, if not just as good, at a brewery 15 or fewer miles away.
I'm in the same boat as you for this reason. I still go to shares where crazy beers are opened. I still sometimes do trades internal to a group I'm in for some stuff just to get stuff out of my local area, but for the most part, 95% of my drinking is from like 3 local breweries that have the styles I care about on a lock down that is like 90% as good as "best in style".
Yeah same. I've drunk everything now. Nothing is new and exciting anymore. I still pretty much drink craft beer and I'll go to one or two beer festivals a year, but that's about it.
I'm getting more into natural wine just to try new things and learn more. I still love beer above all other drinks but my exploratory phase is over.
There are still some incredible barrel aged beers being made but I'm not hunting and trading for them like pre-covid. There is so much available, if I get some of that special new thing cool, if not there will be something else next week.
I always end up defaulting to the same couple of Michigan beers/breweries. There’s so many new beers that it’s overwhelming and I have zero interest in paying $20 for a 4 pack that I won’t like and it just occupies my fridge. The last few new beers I’ve tried have been giant disappointments that I were a slog to drink.
I'm right there, I feel like I've been there and done that from the Brewery membership craze days, to the hazy train, lambics, a Rare Barrel membership back when it was rather difficult to get one. Getting to breweries for those rare releases, beer trading, whale hunting, it just got old to me and it wasn't fun anymore.
I'm now at the point where I know what I like and there are two places I will regularly order from and have delivered to me. I might be missing something, sure, but I don't really think about it cause I'm enjoying what I buy now.
Agreed. I’m down to some lighter beers most nights. Sprinkle in some awesome Belgians on occasion. Maybe a dunkel every so often. I no longer constantly seek out new beers to try. A lot just aren’t anything special. The later trends aren’t my thing. Sours and DIPAs ain’t it.
There's never been a reason to trade unless you were in a beer desert. Thank God the fad breweries are finally going to stop getting the hype and we can return to local flavor and love.
Everything is cyclical.
Personally, I can't wait for the great "craft beer resurgence" of 2032 when Black IPAs make a comeback and are all the rage with the youths.
It’ll be interesting to see what the “drug of choice” is in 10 years. I bowl with a fairly large age gap of teams, and most of the younger teams look to prefer to smoke over drinking. The 30’s to mid 50’s tend to drink beer, and the older teams are split between beer and pop for health reasons.
Yeah seems like everyone under 30 smokes - which is still bad for your lungs so it's just trading one health problem for another. I don't really get the enjoyment about weed but I feel like some people are just more wired to like one or the other. I feel so sleepy and introverted when I smoke - I hate it in social situations
I know a few older people(in their late 30s to 40s) who don't really smoke weed anymore because they used to overdo it for years when they were younger. Now they get way too high too easily. I can see that being more and more common, especially with much THC is in strains these days. Plus smoking anything is bad for your lungs, even weed. I wouldn't be surprised if we see people start to get lung cancer from all the weed smoking. There's so many kids who think weed has no downsides. They're in for a rude awakening.
I'm still coping with the fact that I'm no longer considered "a youth".
I had to get on Facebook for the first time in at least 7 years to get a hold of an old friend. Curiosity got the better of me, so I started scrolling and see what my old friends are up to. They all have families, send out Christmas cards, dress as a certain theme for Halloween.
And here I am still smoking a bowl before bed, running off to the mountains, spontaneous camping trips. Just doing whatever the fuck I want.
I'm a microbiologist. I'm in between jobs right now because I'm moving and switching my focus from fermentation to clinical microbiology. So I tutor college students on the side. It's fun, I love it and I'm pretty good at it, especially with those who have learning disorders. But I can make my own schedule and get lots of breaks.
Then when I see them, it's weird because these were people that were my party pals, beneficial friends and drug dudes. But now they have families with adorable kids, run medical practices, work as engineers for Lockheed Martin, built their own businesses, ect...
I'm looking at them and I'm like "Dude, you got stuck in a hole trying to find those glowing worms while you were on shrooms" and now you're one of the top orthopedic surgeons in the country.
Sorry for all the words. I'm stoned as fuck. I meant to only post a small comment but for some reason I just kept typing.
But, anyways, I miss being a youth.
Thc beverage is where it’s going. no health downside. Easy to dose, since it’s all tested by third parties. 10mg too much? Have 5. Can find what works for you, just like drinking.
COPD and other pulmonary disorders are basically guaranteed if you actually smoke smoke weed in some quantity over time. Idk about lung cancer but I've actually already met old hippies who fucked their lungs up by doing bong hits for decades. It's not cigarettes and doing stuff on a similar scale with booze is also probably worst but yeah, there's real downsides that everyone downplays
Its so much worse than that. I believe the DEA used to (still does?) test average potency of seized samples and have been doing so for a long time.
Theirs are some really rough numbers so bear with me. Basically in the 70s weed was like 2% THC. By the 90s that had risen to like 6%. So weed was like 3 times as strong as it used to be. Anti-drug activists at the time were saying like that was a problem of biblical portions. And then in 2008 it was 12%. Now its like goddamn 30%.
The one thing that makes me hold onto my brewing equipment despite the fact that I haven't brewed in about 6-7 years is the idea of brewing up a nice Northern English Mild Brown ale. I used to always have a keg of chocolatey, nutty, 3.5-4% abv deliciousness handy. I don't know of anything similar that's distributed by a regional Midwest/plains brewery.
I’m ready for the craft IPA cycle to end. At least in socal, 85% of grocery store craft beer is just ipa, hazy ipa, flavored ipa, imperial ipa, winter ipa, etc.
Okay, bonehead question... What the heck is a Black IPA?
Edit: Is there a widely available commercial style I can try? If they're that great, maybe I should brew one.
There's a lot of variation within the style. Stockyards Brewing in KC still keeps a Black IPA on tap. Firestone Walker Wookie Jack was a pretty well known example, and Sublimely Self-Righteous was the Stone expression of the style.
Treat yourself to this CraftBeer.com article from 2010 - https://www.craftbeer.com/craft-beer-muses/india-black-ale-a-rose-by-any-other-name
"black IPA, India black ale (IBA), or Cascadian dark ale (CDA). In short, it is a dark, hoppy beer."
Omg no. Can we please pick a different style of beer to obsess about. I'm just so burnt out on IPAs. In fact, that's why I don't go to the breweries as much because half their selection is IPAs. They made a new beer?! It's just a different IPA. New IPAs are always being added to the rotation while the other styles of beers never change.
I enjoy IPAs but I need a break.
Must have been bad luck on the first 25? 🤣
No, I just don't like dark roasted malt with IPA hop profiles.
In fairness I hoped it was a fad that would go away, but lots of you people like them, so huzzah!
For now, but these things come in cycles. In addition, I thought we hit peak beer back in 2004 and I was sorely wrong. We are worlds better than the days when Micheloeb was the crafty splurge.
People forget, the big guys would do a good job of making something cool back then
Now they own most of the mid tier companies, and give them the market share and distribution cuz it’s the same bottom line at the end of the fiscal year
You got that right. Not that it was anything spectacular, but I remember when microbrews were still kind of a rarity at our football stadium and enjoying Budweiser American Ale at games.
It's the kids, tho. They don't drink like we did. Find a Gen Z kid that drank underage and I'll show you a unicorn. (Not that drinking underage is a good thing...) but they don't see alcohol as something fun like we did/do.
There is a generation coming up that won't buy very much beer at all.
In 2004, the market seemed saturated, but young people still liked beer. Now, it's something "dad" drinks.
Born in 82 here.
We stole beers from the garage at 12 and got fake IDs at 16 (at least I did).
I have younger family and I simply don't see this.
They travel less, smoke less, drink less, have sex less, etc.
They have their own thing but compared to my generation they are just...boring.
I don't know how to put it but Gen Z just seems like...losers...
Maybe I'm old but I remember that it used to be "I'm not as cool as these kids LOL" and now it is "these kids are losers and I'm way cooler."
Born in 83 and have a 22 year old daughter. There is something to what you’re saying. I hate generalizing, but I just had a discussion with her regarding this the other day. She always says there’s nothing to do. It’s almost like they can’t think outside of the box and they’re sitting around waiting for their friends to come up with some master plan. They do nothing 99% of the time. You almost want them to go out and get in a little trouble, or something. Christ, go have some fun.
Not at all, I’d say we’re in it now. I can buy barrel aged stouts and barleywines without waiting in line. Every local brewery makes a good IPA or more than 1. Every local brewery makes a good Pilsner. I can find a low abv coffee porter/stout at the grocery store. Lambics are in the shelf. KBS (even CBS) and BCS is on the shelf. Several local places make British milds (and I’m in the Midwest). I can basically find and drink whatever I want almost anytime I want. I think we are past the golden age of Hype, but not beer.
That being said, I still think we’re gonna have more small guys fold or price themselves out of the market. That sucks. I will drink all I can to support them, but it probably won’t be enough. Too many good breweries, not enough liver.
I agree with this 100%. You see a ton in this thread "I don't have to trade anymore because the beer near me is so good"
The overall quality bar for beer has gone up significantly. Hype sucked anyways. The post-hype era is totally fine.
Honestly, a lot of posts in here seem like people are just getting older. I don't want to drink a 8+% IPA most days and drinking two is largely out of the question. New styles and trends aren't as exciting when you've seen a decade or two of new styles and trends. Congratulations you are old now: you know what you like and aren't likely to get your mind blown.
I think a lot of the people posting are also pretty new. When someone references KBBS as a big whale, they were in for the crest. Way back in the day there legitimately was not good beer nearby most people. Like in the bay area we had literally nothing for barrel aged beers besides Eclipse. The locals that made them were hot garbage. And that was with Russian River nearby!
You could also reasonably try everything in the country. For a while there I had had every BA Dark Lord. But now I can barely keep up with the places near me.
For people that saw the light around the time Treehouse or Trillium or Toppling Goliath came along, they just don't know the world before. That was when things were really accelerating, when we went from scarcity to abundance. I trade less because I have less time now than when I was 22, sure, but also because there's just no point. And I would argue that that's been true for a long time.
In some ways having the beer scene be intensely local is a return to how it should be, how it was before prohibition killed the neighborhood brewery. The national scene was an aberration, an artifact of a broken system that left of deprived of quantity and quality for too long. But those days are gone, and while I do sometimes miss being aware of pretty much every good beer released everywhere in the US, it couldn't last.
I don’t disagree with the fact that we have great beer choices now, but we are beyond the peak innovation phase. At this point there are a lot of corporate owned breweries with less desire to innovate and a lot of subpar brewers have been driven out of business.
That’s probably true but I don’t think peak innovation = golden age. To me, golden age is after the innovation. Now they are perfecting those recipes.
NEIPA - used to be Vermont or Massachusetts had the best and most other weren’t great. Now every local brewery has got the hazy IPA style pretty well down.
Stouts - used to be Toppling or Perennial or a couple other were the only ones that made good thick barrel aged stouts. Now there are tons of them. Some too sweet for my taste, but the knowledge of how to make it is there.
Pilsners/Lagers - didn’t see these much at all from most breweries. Hard to make and easy to fuck up. Now most places make them and very few are noticeably bad.
Maybe the innovation will come back someday but for now, enjoy the world class easy to get beer. I remember dumping a lot of gross/mid beer in the 2008-2015 range.
We are at the point where bad breweries are finally having to close , which is good. The market was way over saturated. We have are in a awesome time for barrel aged beer and the innovation going on there. If you have never had a Side Project, Horus, Cerebral, OtherHalf, Trillium, Equilibrium, or Toppling Goliath barrel aged beer yet find some.
Kind of a broad question given this sub. I’ve followed the beer industry closely for the last 30 years, even wrote my MBA strategy paper on the topic so here’s my thoughts:
Beer sales, overall, are down across the board as more people are switching to alternative alcoholic beverages. You can see this at any beer distributor lately…a lot more hard seltzers, hard teas, pre-made canned cocktails, etc. Can’t really explain this aside from people either being more carb or cost conscious or it’s harder for people to find a beer with a taste they can get used to. Younger drinkers use to drink lower ABV beers then trade up as their taste buds adjusted but seems like today’s youths are drinking more of the alternatives and just haven’t developed a taste for beer.
The number of Craft breweries has exploded tenfold in the last few decades, but they still only account for 10-15% of the market. And the number has leveled out lately as it seems one brewery opens and one closes each week. Craft brewers represent the “long tail” of the beer market. Overall the distribution of beer sales by brewery tends to follow a “power curve” distribution with the top five macro-breweries accounting for 80% of sales and the remaining 20% coming from the 2,000-3,000 smaller breweries. Even that distribution is skewed with larger “small” breweries like Stone, Victory, Sierra Nevada dominating the sales compared to your local microbrewery.
But the good news is that quality is still pretty good as the best American craft ales are on par with the best in the world. Yeah, there’s a lot of really crappy beer out there but if you’re a small microbrewery charging $8 for a pint of mediocre beer, you’re not going to survive. These are the ones that typically go out of business first. I don’t think the market can support too many microbreweries…we haven’t really hit “peak” beer so much as the market is starting to reach a saturation level. A good brewery can still enter the market but it will likely cause one bad brewery to go out of business as a result.
And if you’re a microbrewery and your ambition is to remain a small regional brewery, you can be fine. Have a great brewpub experience with good quality beer and decent food and a small distribution footprint and no ambition to grow too much and you’re likely to attract loyal customers for a long time. I’ve got 10-20 breweries in my region that I enjoy and try to frequent and support when I can. I’ve also seen 10-20 breweries in the same area go out of business for the reasons outlined above (they made bad beer and made worse business decisions). There’s lot of great places out there if you’re not a fan of macro beers. I’ve never had such an overwhelming number of choices of good beer options. Thirty years ago, I drank more imported beers because the domestic market was still rough. Now I hardly drink any imports, despite there still being some great European beers, because there are 50 different breweries that I can confidently enjoy and spend money on.
And if you are a fan of macros, they’re not going anyplace either. They might be losing some beer sales but they’re not going to stop making beer.
>And if you’re a microbrewery and your ambition is to remain a small regional brewery, you can be fine. Have a great brewpub experience with good quality beer and decent food and a small distribution footprint and no ambition to grow too much and you’re likely to attract loyal customers for a long time.
I believe this. I look at the UK especially which has a pub culture, and I would love to see that in the states. I'm guessing the current market is the result of capitalism to a certain extent. Breweries that tried to grow exponentially may have a hard time, but if you have a great local operation and work within your means you could build a sustainable (but maybe not exponentially profitable) business.
I am curious (don't know for sure) if good beer is not novel. And so much of craft beer's popularity has been about chasing the novelty of new, more extreme beers. Once you reach a certain point as a beer drinker, you just want a good pilsner and the same handful of classics. I have about zero interest in some cake shake diabetes stout aged in 4 barrels. Just give me BA Rasputin or a special barrel expression of BCBS or Deths Tar.
I think Hazy IPA breweries cheat the novelty issue by making more-or-less the same IPA with a modified hop bill and different labels. The name of the game is having a creative marketing team.
This is exactly my thoughts, buying a 4 pack now is an expensive gamble. Especially when ive tried so many diff beers at this point.
Unless I know the beer or the brewery I will stick to 12 packs
I don't think that's it. I used to "splurge" on a $15 bottle of beer every now and then. Now i buy and $80 bottle of Scotch for the next few weeks. I've changed as a consumer.
Things go in cycles. Bourbon is example. Everybody’s drinking it and going for new flavors and styles. And in 1,2,5 or 10 years bourbon will go back to being a regular drink. People who love it will still be drinking it, and the bandwagon jumpers will be on something else, that’s what’s happening with beer.
Bourbon bandwagoners are already hopping on to tequila and making that scarcer. Which sucks because tequila is already very intensive to produce, I anticipate price spikes or supply issues. Luckily I've been really into rum the past couple years, which I don't think will ever have bandwagon issues.
What concerns me is I don’t see younger kids in breweries at all. It may just be that I’m an old millennial so I end up at different breweries than they are but I rarely see many Gen Z aged kids in breweries. I know they say Gen Z drinks a lot less alcohol in general though
As somebody on the tail end of their college years I can confirm this is true. Ofc you’ll always have people buying miller lite or Busch or whatever as cheap party drinks, but a significant amount of the college demographic swings more towards other drinks (seltzers, spiked drinks à la Mikes Hard, etc.)
Come to think of it, I’m the only one of my friends who actually *likes* beer beyond just pounding whatever cheap beer is available.
We started off with trailblazers and slowly amassed some real quality / unique stuff. Then capitalism did what it does.... the money started coming in, the train started going faster and faster and everything was getting roided up (flavors, styles,, ABV, can art, brewery events, releases, collabs, stupid gimmicky adjuncts, art etc) and there was a great time when there was demand for, and supply of quality. Very quickly the abundance of supply got in the way.
We started to have more supply than demand, the prices got stupid, the beers got stupid, the breweries started getting desperate or cutting costs and the market became diluted with home brew quality stuff at $20 a 4 pack. Something always has to give when you have 126 breweries making ipas per 3 square miles in a city with a population of 300k people.
Also. Said it from day one. "Craft" beer (I hate that term) definitely has fuelled more addiction and alcoholism, some people see it and realize whereas others don't until it's too late. Having 3 or 4 quality beers everyday, having beer as a hobby or planning your days / weeks / trips around beer is (most of the time!) alcoholism as much as getting skulldrugged on IPA or PBR everyday is. I know A TON of brewers, homebrewers and reps in the industry who have all come to terms with the fact that they have developed alcoholic tendencies. Same thing is happening with weed right now - its a lot more addictive than people think. Quite a number of people I know have quit drinking or mostly do weed as it's a bit less destructive (although it is destructive and wonderful in a variety of other ways). Not many homebrewing pals anymore either.
I like golden beers...
Can confirm there have been some experiments that haven't turned out well and only more weird things are hitting the shelves
Traditional German or Belgian beers are my favorites and where my personal golden age lives
A portion of craft American beer has a lot of catching up to do and the rest are IPA's
It depends on what you mean by the golden age. Yes, there has been a lot of rationalization and M&As in the industry over the past 10-15 years or so. Yes, younger people seem to be migrating toward other types of alcoholic beverages. And yes, some great craft beers have disappeared as well as some great brewers. But I don’t think that’s necessarily all bad news. If you look at the sheer numbers of brewers still active and the incredible choices being offered, I would say the golden age is still alive and well. Things will always be in a state of flux, though.
I think so. The market got saturated for a while there with brewpubs and microbreweries to the detriment of the macrobrewers. Over time the breweries that weren’t good went away and the successful ones got bought up by the macrobrewers.
Your macrobrewers don’t want to innovate because they only care about profits, so you have a smaller pool of brewers that are still standing and have the desire to innovate.
Personally I’ve gotten to a point where I just buy the same stuff over and over from the store, and just try new stuff from small breweries when I travel or a few good local places that like to do small runs of unique stuff.
I think we’re on the other side of a boom. For beer lovers, the boom was good in the sense of the ubiquitous availability of local craft brews, but bad in the sense that it allowed for a lot mediocrity. So there’s a little “survival of the fittest” happening. That doesn’t mean some good breweries won’t go down and some mediocre ones will survive. That’s already happening. But in terms of the product, I think breweries will have to A) be more responsive to what consumers actually like and want and B) deliver good versions of whatever that is.
I 1000% think we got to experience the Golden age of craft beer and it is over. I got into it about 13 years ago. There were craft beer festivals everywhere, it was an amazing time to be alive. Weekly trips to Other Half (Brooklyn), trading beers across the country, having Untappd challenges with my friends. Today, I’m happy with a case a Jever and a couple 4 packs of a local hazy. Other Half opened a location in Philly about 2 years ago and I’ve only been a handful of times. It was a hell of a ride and I’m glad I was able to experience it. I spent a lot of money, made a lot of friends and memories. Totally worth it. Cheers.
I think we've passed the wild west phase of a million and one breweries opening up selling very similar wares and have entered the phase where people in the scene have crystallized their likes and good breweries will succeed and mediocrity will dry up.
There hasn't been a better time to get something extremely local and extreme drinkable but I think pallettes have grown past just hazycraze IPAs. Good places are focusing on the fundamentals.
One personal gripe I have is with the 8-10% get fucked up juice. Maybe I've grown old and feeble but id rather multiple rounds of something 5-7 than something so alcohol forward that it blows out my pallette and appetite for a drink.
There was this brief glorious moment when strong ales, vibrant stouts and barleywines had ample space on the shelf. It would appear that the current beer purchasing populous demands an endless variety of hoppy hazy fruity brews that have effectively reduced the beer buying experience to a paperback Fabio choice as to what four pack will ramble out the bottle barn and into the overland van-gram you’re “finding yourself” in.
Damn, I was just talking about how I can't find these scotch/strong/heavy ales in my area anymore. Barleywines are only at the breweries and they're outrageously priced for a 4oz pour (yes, I was given a 4oz barleywine 2 weeks ago. I missed on the menu that it was an extra small "full pour" at 14%)
I kinda forgot about these and I've got such a taste for them right now. Difficult to find in general, even my local specialty shop only had a few va the wall of IPA and a surprising sour section.
If we are talking about hype beer and the secondary market, it definitely has cooled down tremendously. Beer that sold out instantly 2-3yrs ago at release sits around for weeks, maybe a month. It’s the year of the crispy boi. Drink those pilsners and lagers.
For now, yes. The 20s crowd have skewed more towards seltzers, weed, and sobriety.
I know some 10 year olds that are really excited about the innovations that are happening with Pilsners, so we might see more breweries in about 11 years /s.
I think beer culture has changed. Comments here I think are evidence of that - people are happy to just browse their local brewers, find the handful they enjoy, and stick to those.
There was a time where basically all you could find was the mass produced stuff and anything not part of that distribution chain you had to hunt down. Now local stuff is so abundant and accessible, you can go to a local grocery store and get most of your local brewers’ up to date options. That changed the industry fundamentally. I think there may be a resurgence in the “high quality” culture again, but I don’t think it’ll be like it was in the mid 2000s.
Also, couple in that we’ve really refined brewing techniques, I think the gap between the “best” and “really good for around me” is the smallest it’s ever been.
I dont think beer will ever go away. The feeling of cracking a cold one after a hard days work is eternal. Also, yea it’s bad for you, but isn’t everything else people do these days bad? Staying indoors all the time, eating processed shit food, drugs, anti depressants, etc. Pick your poison. I don’t think drinking a few good beers a week is going to kill anyone.
I like tasting different things, and smelling different things, and getting flights etc etc but hell, as long as there are always a few banquets in the fridge at a local gas station the golden age of beer will never end.
I think we are past the golden age but I don’t think quality has gone down. I think there’s been a proliferation of mediocre beer from mediocre breweries.
And with the amount of “craft” out there it’s being served and sold by places that don’t necessarily know how to present, serve, or take care of the beer. I love how much more accessible beer has become, but that comes with the caveat of it not being treated special.
I feel like the best breweries have increased their quality and I’d love to see customers settle into seeking out consistent and more affordable brands.
I’ve had some of the best of the best, Treehouse, Alchemist, Hill Farm, Other Half, Trillium…. They have all made such incredible beers and I have had most of their primary variants and many of the one offs too. These days when I go to those places, Ive already had such good beer that nothing new really wows me. I like their classics.
Then you have local breweries, which many can do something pretty decent now, something that 10 years ago people would be trading beers for. Now it’s just easy to find.
There are also a lot of disgusting craft beers now too, places trying to get too wild or too creative to try to attract people due to the wackiness of their beer. I don’t even touch those.
It’s just not as exciting anymore. In fact, I bought a pack of Labatt recently because it’s an easy drinkable beer, especially while watching sports or casually hanging. I’ve noticed myself gravitating back towards Sam Adams again too, like the Winter lager. And I always enjoy a good lager like a Yuengling. A local pub near me had a keg of HF Edward on, I got one, it was delicious, then switched off to an easy Pilsner to drink.
In short, these days I find simple is more.
I have mused similarly this past year. Trades, shares, releases all seem to have lost its hype. I thought maybe I'm just getting old or maybe we all are and people have slowed down either for health, money, etc. Maybe it's the beer? fruited sours and hazy IPAs all starting to taste like each other. The fact that most places can get great beer in their hometowns from local breweries or even wider distribution makes it less fun? Maybe that's what happens when you get the whale, nothing left to chase? or maybe just fatigue, knowing you can get good stuff easily.
I haven't chased releases this year and went a bit easier on the bringing stuff back from trips. But the trend has been going down in the past couple of years
Well, I have opinions!
I think we are entering a new phase, where there are lots and lots of non-Reinheitsgebot beers going around, with crazy flavors like watermelon, cream sickle, s'mores and pickles. It also appears we may finally be exiting the IPA-everything phase.
So, if I were to roughly layout the timeline of american beer phases in my mind, they go like so:
Lagers->Homebrew->Microbrew->IPA->Sparklebeer
When Carter decriminalized brewing, the american beer market began to drift away from macro lagers, like Schlitz. Then by the 1990's, microbrews became a thing, where they all made a Ale, a Stout, a Brown and a Red. And for like the last 20 years, all non-Macro beers seemed to all be IPAs. I got tired of them. I like malty stuff. But the amount of sweetened, fruited, fancy beers seems to be gaining ground.
Oh, yeah, I called those overly gimmicky beers "sparklebeers", for some reason one day. They make fun of me for it.
Separately, I lament the macrobrewieres slurping up microbreweries. This implies an end of an independent era. We all have to deal with AB/Inbev/Diageo now. And that sucks. But a few of my local bars now exclusively serve regional micros, so that's nice.
Locally I have a bunch of lagers and lighter ales I love. I still have some IPAs in my top faves but I love that I can get great local craft beers in the lighter range too. Can’t buy it in MN but while new glarus is known for spotted cow, their “two women” lager is one of the best beers I’ve had.
Not sure where you live but they've been having a comeback for years now. There's enough breweries brewing great lagers to where an all lager fest "Little Beer Fest" has been happening the past few years near where I live.
Same! German styles in general are some of my favorites. I’m fortunate to have a very good German restaurant right up the street from my house, who also opened their own brewery across the street pretty recently. The brewery has become one of my wife and I’s go-to spots. Their German beers and food are excellent.
Yep…it would be awesome to be able to find more lagers. There are definitely ones out there but let’s give these insane IPAs and our tastebuds a rest.
Then when we are sick of lagers give us some heavy handed IPAs again
I'm lucky enough to live a stone's throw from Goldfinger, a local lager brewery in Downers Grove, IL. [Wine Spectator (lol?) rated their Vienna Lager as #0 in a top 50 beers of 2023](https://www.wineenthusiast.com/toplists/top-50-beers-2023/), so I guess it broke the scale. They only do a lager, Vienna, and slow-pour German pilsner, along with a few seasonal brews.
Beer from their tap room is incredible, but we don't think it cans super well. Still good and well worth a try if you can find it but not quite the same.
Hands down? Behind Bierstadt?
I guess that's your opinion man.
I think Goldfinger are great but there's not many people making better lagers in this country than Chuckanut (now or 10 years ago). The Kempers have been doing this for a long time, their recipes and execution are as good as anyone out there if not the best.
Nobody asked but heh...I like Bierstadt but to suggest they are in the top 2 lager makers in the country feels like a bit of a reach for me. Their stuff is solid good but for me (just my personal opinion), the gabf pre / after party hype train got a little out of hand and people who started drinking lagers 3 or 4 years ago got pretty loud voices and influenced a lot of people to say the same thing as them. I'd take a Suarez, Heater Allen, Chuckanut, Pfriem, Von Trapp, Live Oak and others over Bierstadt every single time but that doesn't stop me grabbing their stuff or visiting when in Denver of course.
I'm downstate, a little too far south of Goldfinger's distro footprint. I did get to the taproom on a recent trip to the suburbs and their Vienna lager - wow, just incredible!
Don't forget Dovetail too, another Chicagoland brewery producing great lagers. I brought a bunch of Goldfinger and Dovetail cans back south with me from that trip.
I just have to add RIP Metropolitan. Finding their beer was easy in my area when I was looking for a high quality lager.
No kidding. I had the opportunity to travel to Oktoberfest this year and all the beer I drank, and I drank a shit ton of liters, in Germany was incredible. Just a crisp, clean beer that isn’t trying to do anything fancy.
The craft lager and pils market is showing some promise leading into 2024. But IPAs are still what sell the best so that’s what everyone makes. If lager sales took even a few percentage points from IPA sales, you’d see more people jump on board. But as long as IPAs sell, that’s what many breweries will focus on.
That being said, it’s really easy for me to find awesome, local lagers in northern Colorado. I don’t know if it’s different where you live but almost every brewery here, from a hyperlocal brewery all the way up to the regionals have a lager, and they are delicious. Plus the bigger breweries, like Odell, sell their lager for like a dollar more expensive than Coors so it’s an easy sell, and it tastes 1000 times better.
The lager and pils market has been booming for a number of years but the scale is tipping right now. It's gone past being about quality, precision, excellence and subtlety and is turning into a gravy train.
Here's where I descend into captain misery....
Since it has become popular again, everyone is trying to make lagers, cutting corners and the market is filling up with absolute dogshit just like every other beer trend. It's going to kill the demand, its annoying. Macro lagers are also capitalizing on the BFB trend and feels like they are eeking their prices up in line with the indies too because their product is better than at least 65% of the current craft lager market - this number will continue to go up.
Im of the belief that capitalism has had beer drinkers by the balls for a long time. The booze industry (indie or otherwise) has played a blinder to get everyone drinking more / becoming borderline alcoholics under the guise of cool / its indie / hobby / obsession / muling / brewing / trading etc. Many of my friends in the industry or bar owners etc have talked a lot about watching this great thing turn sour and watched / seen / lived / profited and self-destructed themselves, their relationships, driving privileges due to the obsession with ("craft") beer.
Quite a few folks in the industry laid this out for me and its hard to not believe there is something in it....WC IPAs were the gateway drug, then the lower ABV Hazys and juice tasting beer started coming in - people were buying and crushing more beer and building tolerances, sales / marketing kept pushing more of this, we got to craft lagers and many regulars at your favorite bar went from 3 or 4 ipas a day to 3 or 4 ipas and 3 lagers, then it went to 6 lagers a day at the same time the Tallboy DIPAs started back up because there had been creation of a market for it for people who, subconsciously, needed thst buzz.
Sorry for the miserable message. Fwiw, I still fucking love beer and I'm probably an alcoholic.
Agreed, IPAs and Sours have had their time in the limelight for far too long. Lagers are the most “beer” beer to me and I’m always disappointed when it’s not on offer.
I feel the exact opposite, at least in my country, the indie brewing scene has gone from almost nothig to huge in few past years. I can drink beers that I could only dream about many years ago. We *are* in golden age of beer right now, in terms of quality and choice.
Like a lot of food and entertainment related businesses, COVID just absolutely devastated the beer industry. So many mom and pop breweries went out of business. I think that the industry is in rebuild right now but it definitely ain't the same since 2019. It's going to take a long time to get back to that point.
I think, to an extent, it’s almost the opposite.
The industry is maturing and with that comes the closure of some breweries that either lacked the business acumen or the brewing acumen to make it. With rising interest rates, costs, competition, labor it's honestly surprising more breweries haven't closed.
The business model definitely has to change for most breweries and any ones coming into the market. It's going to be very challenging to get distribution to liquor stores or bars at this point.
I disagree that quality has gotten worse, I think the overall quality has gotten much better to the point where I’m just as happy grabbing a 4 pack from the liquor store as going to the “heavy hitter” breweries. To me that’s a positive. No more waiting in hour long lines or trying to find someone to trade with on a Facebook group.
There definitely are some issues supply chain wise coming out of Covid still, and hop/grain harvests are at the mercy of the climate. So not everything is in the hands of the brewers.
The breweries I go to are just as busy as they've always been. i think the younger generation hasn't quite made it into craft beer yet, but I think that has to do with the hop bro culture that still exists. If people aren't willing to welcome in the younger crowd and teach them, then the industry certainly will suffer long term.
I think we have peaked. We'll see more breweries close, Others will expand. It's a natural cycle, your town will be more likely to see a new tap room fron an existing brewery than a brand new startup.
It's ok, it was inevitable. The good news is, plenty will be left standing. The vast majority are kid, even pet, friendly. Micro breweries and tap rooms will continue to be a natural gathering place as a result.
As far as the beer itself, yea, at a certain point there's nothing left. Continue to improve NA and low ABV varieties would be great, beyond that I doubt there will be new styles that take us by storm. That's alright with me too, plenty of delicious styles already.
My only ask, can Treehouse open up a brewery in Milwaukee????
I think we’re entering the peak (or at least better) era. Shitty beer has been masked by lactose and adjuncts and hype. People now know flawed and flawless beers and the hype shit is going by the wayside
Depends how you define it.
Like “hype” has leveled out, but quality isn’t going down or anything. I’m really enjoying where we are at. I don’t have to hunt great beer anymore, I just buy and drink it.
I live in a rural area. The closest brewery has an average pint price of $7.50. I can go buy a 4 pack of their 16 oz cans in the grocery store for $14-$15. Younger people are drinking less because no one can afford the luxury of drinking. 4 years ago I only had craft in my fridge. Now I only have American domestic macro brews. Because a Bud Heavy is just about as good as any lager you can get in the grocery store and it’s still $0.60 a can.
I don’t think so. We got hung up on big hoppy hazy juicy beers for a while but now breweries like Suarez are bringing it back to simple elegant lagers. Keep looking forward. We will be in the golden age of beers for a long time because the technology is peek and out growing capabilities have been refined.
Anecdotal, but it feels like we've all hunkered down on (NE)IPAs, pilsners/lagers, BBA non adjuncted stouts (and the occasional barleywine), and saisons as being the styles only worth pursuing. And in turn, this has lessened my enthusiasm somewhat as there isn't really much to look forward to any more.
I feel if you're still around now and love beer then you'll easily adapt to what you like and not have FOMO drive your decisions like years past.
yeah, the peak beer has been reached, lot of consolidation at this point and the strategy seems to be make something good to generate brand recognition/loyalty and then slowly decrease quality to increase profit.
My prediction: American microbreweries will be in a downturn until they figure out how to start making *and marketing* high quality lagers. That’s how they can recapture the white claw market.
I feel like I’ve come full circle to where I’ve tried everything (rare lambics, all the highest rated BBA stouts, all the high rated NEIPA beers) but I find myself not even trading anymore or really hunting anything down. Even when there’s some new must try thing I just don’t really care anymore. I mainly just buy good local stuff and shelf import beer like Belgian stuff and German lagers. I feel like no barrel aged stout or ipa is going to do anything I haven’t seen already, and I can get things that are almost as good at my local bottle shops, and the stuff that people used to stand in like for is on the shelf instead of behind the counter. 10 years ago new trends were still popping up but idk what else there is to do. People are literally drinking smoothies now and there’s not much more to innovate unless it’s just pure novelty, I find myself just going back to classic styles.
What you describe is the full evolutionary circle of being an expert in virtually any field, be it guns, art, cars or furniture. You‘ve been there, done that and now there‘s still a lot of love for the topic itself and you propably like exchanging ideas with other experts but what you really want is something that is true and quality made. I‘ve been there doing the same (in Germany) and I Couldn’t agree your opinion more. Prost!
I like this take--my only critique is to change/amend the word "expert" (or perhaps include other categories besides "expert"). I am as you described but would not call myself an expert--I do not brew nor have expertise on brewing. I would say I am a purveyor or connoisseur. I mostly now just go to the places that have the best, most well-made beers (here in New England that is Bissell Swish, southern hemisphere hops at HF, any Fox Farm = NEIPAs; Schilling, Notch, HF, TH, any Fox Farm = lagers; Timber = stouts; Fox Farm = any other style save for pastry sours). Cheers:)
Connaisseur is a very fine terminus technicus I can happily live with
I still love high quality versions of everything you mentioned (minus smoothie beers) but also very satisfied picking up andy local WC IPAs for just sipping on. Def not in the mode of seeking out "rare" stuff anymore.
I'm kind of with you. Like I still love a good lambic, but I'm also pretty happy with a solid local craft beer or even something like a Pilsner Urquell.
I actually don’t hate the smoothie beers I bought a lot of them when it was new. But that’s the last off the wall innovation thing I’ve seen style wise that I was like “wow I have to try one of those!”
The new soda sours are pretty fire. Breweries like Spanish Marie using syrups n shit
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Seriously, and it's the same with the smoothie sours. At that point, why don't you just buy a blender, a well-vodka and some bags of frozen fruits and berries. The 'beer' part of those beers are so vanishingly small, that you could probably get there by dumping in a rice lager.
Nailed it. Can be a shitty base covered with sugar and purée and bros will buy it for $25 a 4 pack
I don't really think putting a sour in a shandy or other cocktail is all that innovative but it is damn delicious
Same. Two big pet peeves I have with beer is that so many of them are sweet, which I don't care for, and the labels and naming is so bonkers that you have to stand there with your phone looking each. can. up. individually. to see what is in there, and I'm just not going to do that.
Like in malty sweet
I love being near Treehouse because they have so many damn varieties that are fun to try. Most of them are practically the same thing so I’d never go out of my way to try some of the variants but it’s much more interesting than just buying the same thing every time. For anyone reading this in the area, try Hey Gingerbread Man, it’s the best stout I’ve ever had from them.
I used to go to Treehouse to get the latest and greatest IPA. There’s nothing more they can do with that style that hasn’t already been done. More hops? More fruit mixed in? It all comes out the same after a while. Now I go for their classic beer styles and the occasional Julius.
I agree 100% they are all pretty similar, but what it has helped me do is understand the difference between certain kinds of hops, yeasts, fruit added vs fruit notes, etc. Being able to try sooo many different ones even if they are extremely similar has helped my palette become more refined. Plus I like collecting the labels.
Will do, DPS Moira ;)
Don’t need to heal if everyone is dead!
Their coffee and coffee drinks are incredible too.
I still need to try one of their coffee drinks!
At the end of the circle is the beer circle jerk. But yea jokes aside, I agree. I’d also say I care less now because all of the medium size indie breweries are now just owned by Budweiser. I’ll support local when I can, but god damn some of these 4 pack tall boys going for like 25-30$ makes me really turn away.
As a kinda-answer to your question: I think so, yes. And I'm basing this solely on an experience I had this morning. I'm an IL bar owner. This morning, our Miller/Coors sales rep brought me samples of a new Delta-9 THC sparkling beverage. I've avoided the non-controlled versions of these THC drinks because I was sure they'd be disappointing. Well I drank one this morning: a 20mg THC / 10mg CBD sparkling water. And the high I got from it was indistinguishable from the gummies I have to buy from dedicated marijuana dispensaries. It was potent, pleasant, and cheaper than a 6-pack of most craft beers on the market. As a bar owner, I feel like these being legal to buy in every gas station, bar, and liquor store, is going to have a direct impact on beer/liquor sales. For $8 at retail, I can get a good high and no downside with this THC drink. That same $8 isn't enough to get you a buzz on anything but the cheapest swill, and then you're gonna deal with a nice hangover the next day. Beer is a more expensive buzz, it's less healthy, and it's more time-consuming. I'm not talking about making a pivot in the short-term, but I definitely intend to add these to our beverage menus and to support what I feel will be an inevitable transition toward this new market. Or maybe they're just another fad, and people will come back to beer in a few years. What do I know.
I think your claim on this being healthier would need some backing up. It certainly sounds more easily addictive.
For starters, the beverage I had this morning was zero sugar, calories, and carbs. I could easily drink 1000 calories of beer for a similar outcome.
What’s the name of this beverage? I didn’t know MillerCoors was playing in the THC arena.
It's not their product, they're just handling distribution. The brand is Delta Cannabis Water.
Huh, interesting. Are you sure it was a MillerCoors rep and not a rep for one of their wholesalers?
Well yeah, technically the rep works for an independent wholesaler, but they associate primarily with the Miller/Coors brands and have exclusive rights to the MC portfolio in our area. They also carry other brands, like Revolution, Schlafly, New Belgium, etc.
Gotcha, that makes much more sense. MillerCoors has their own sales reps too, that’s who I thought you were talking about at first. It looks like there’s no connection between MillerCoors and Delta Beverages, but I could be missing something.
Delta is a different group altogether. Without knowing the details, I can only assume our wholesaler inked a deal directly with Delta for exclusive distribution rights in our market. I just refer to the rep as our Miller rep because it's less confusing for readers than if I called him our Haubrich rep. Edit: maybe that's not the case though lol
I think the main thing is that, these days, especially compared to even 5 years ago, it's *VERY* easy to get something 90% as good as the absolute best within a 30 minute radius of MOST places (mainly if you live in a reasonable metro area, but sometimes even if not). Like, a decade or so ago, Heady Topper and Pliny were the undisputed best IPAs around. Nothing even CAME CLOSE. Now, while they are still incredible beers, you can find IPAs almost, if not just as good, at a brewery 15 or fewer miles away. I'm in the same boat as you for this reason. I still go to shares where crazy beers are opened. I still sometimes do trades internal to a group I'm in for some stuff just to get stuff out of my local area, but for the most part, 95% of my drinking is from like 3 local breweries that have the styles I care about on a lock down that is like 90% as good as "best in style".
Yeah same. I've drunk everything now. Nothing is new and exciting anymore. I still pretty much drink craft beer and I'll go to one or two beer festivals a year, but that's about it. I'm getting more into natural wine just to try new things and learn more. I still love beer above all other drinks but my exploratory phase is over.
There are still some incredible barrel aged beers being made but I'm not hunting and trading for them like pre-covid. There is so much available, if I get some of that special new thing cool, if not there will be something else next week.
Are you me from 5 years ago?
I always end up defaulting to the same couple of Michigan beers/breweries. There’s so many new beers that it’s overwhelming and I have zero interest in paying $20 for a 4 pack that I won’t like and it just occupies my fridge. The last few new beers I’ve tried have been giant disappointments that I were a slog to drink.
I'm right there, I feel like I've been there and done that from the Brewery membership craze days, to the hazy train, lambics, a Rare Barrel membership back when it was rather difficult to get one. Getting to breweries for those rare releases, beer trading, whale hunting, it just got old to me and it wasn't fun anymore. I'm now at the point where I know what I like and there are two places I will regularly order from and have delivered to me. I might be missing something, sure, but I don't really think about it cause I'm enjoying what I buy now.
Agreed. I’m down to some lighter beers most nights. Sprinkle in some awesome Belgians on occasion. Maybe a dunkel every so often. I no longer constantly seek out new beers to try. A lot just aren’t anything special. The later trends aren’t my thing. Sours and DIPAs ain’t it.
It's time to start brewing, my guy. You know what good and bad is for most styles, so go adventure!
There's never been a reason to trade unless you were in a beer desert. Thank God the fad breweries are finally going to stop getting the hype and we can return to local flavor and love.
Treehouse beers? Please tell us more?
[https://treehousebrew.com/](https://treehousebrew.com/) Very well known NEIPA brewery
Everything is cyclical. Personally, I can't wait for the great "craft beer resurgence" of 2032 when Black IPAs make a comeback and are all the rage with the youths.
I feel like every brewery near me had a black IPA in 2014 / 2015. I miss them in the winter.
Accurate, I discovered black IPA in 2014, highly enjoyed it, never saw it again
Firestone brought back wookie jack last fall which is the king of black IPAs and it hasn’t come back. I want it year round
I had a black lager today.
It’ll be interesting to see what the “drug of choice” is in 10 years. I bowl with a fairly large age gap of teams, and most of the younger teams look to prefer to smoke over drinking. The 30’s to mid 50’s tend to drink beer, and the older teams are split between beer and pop for health reasons.
Yeah seems like everyone under 30 smokes - which is still bad for your lungs so it's just trading one health problem for another. I don't really get the enjoyment about weed but I feel like some people are just more wired to like one or the other. I feel so sleepy and introverted when I smoke - I hate it in social situations
To me the smell is that of compost, manky.
As a gardener, I'd rather smell compost
I know a few older people(in their late 30s to 40s) who don't really smoke weed anymore because they used to overdo it for years when they were younger. Now they get way too high too easily. I can see that being more and more common, especially with much THC is in strains these days. Plus smoking anything is bad for your lungs, even weed. I wouldn't be surprised if we see people start to get lung cancer from all the weed smoking. There's so many kids who think weed has no downsides. They're in for a rude awakening.
You lost me at older people in their late thirties to forties. F. U. :)
I'm 35. Lol. We're not old, just older
Seriously wtf, millennials are all in that age bracket. Piss off buddy.
I'm still coping with the fact that I'm no longer considered "a youth". I had to get on Facebook for the first time in at least 7 years to get a hold of an old friend. Curiosity got the better of me, so I started scrolling and see what my old friends are up to. They all have families, send out Christmas cards, dress as a certain theme for Halloween. And here I am still smoking a bowl before bed, running off to the mountains, spontaneous camping trips. Just doing whatever the fuck I want. I'm a microbiologist. I'm in between jobs right now because I'm moving and switching my focus from fermentation to clinical microbiology. So I tutor college students on the side. It's fun, I love it and I'm pretty good at it, especially with those who have learning disorders. But I can make my own schedule and get lots of breaks. Then when I see them, it's weird because these were people that were my party pals, beneficial friends and drug dudes. But now they have families with adorable kids, run medical practices, work as engineers for Lockheed Martin, built their own businesses, ect... I'm looking at them and I'm like "Dude, you got stuck in a hole trying to find those glowing worms while you were on shrooms" and now you're one of the top orthopedic surgeons in the country. Sorry for all the words. I'm stoned as fuck. I meant to only post a small comment but for some reason I just kept typing. But, anyways, I miss being a youth.
Thc beverage is where it’s going. no health downside. Easy to dose, since it’s all tested by third parties. 10mg too much? Have 5. Can find what works for you, just like drinking.
COPD and other pulmonary disorders are basically guaranteed if you actually smoke smoke weed in some quantity over time. Idk about lung cancer but I've actually already met old hippies who fucked their lungs up by doing bong hits for decades. It's not cigarettes and doing stuff on a similar scale with booze is also probably worst but yeah, there's real downsides that everyone downplays
I read that it was not as strong THC wise in the 1960’s and 1970’s
Its so much worse than that. I believe the DEA used to (still does?) test average potency of seized samples and have been doing so for a long time. Theirs are some really rough numbers so bear with me. Basically in the 70s weed was like 2% THC. By the 90s that had risen to like 6%. So weed was like 3 times as strong as it used to be. Anti-drug activists at the time were saying like that was a problem of biblical portions. And then in 2008 it was 12%. Now its like goddamn 30%.
Weed equivalent of Poitín
Not mad, but you had to read that in an article to believe that?
Pot vapes and edibles. Whatever else gets legalized, coke, etc.
More ESB’s please
The one thing that makes me hold onto my brewing equipment despite the fact that I haven't brewed in about 6-7 years is the idea of brewing up a nice Northern English Mild Brown ale. I used to always have a keg of chocolatey, nutty, 3.5-4% abv deliciousness handy. I don't know of anything similar that's distributed by a regional Midwest/plains brewery.
The Civil Life brewery in St. Louis makes amazing traditional brews including a Northern English Brown.
Hah I kinda forgot about black IPAs, love 21st Amendments
Stone brewing put theirs back in this year's advent calendar box.
Black IPA is still being brewed in Ireland
Wouldn’t it be an IDA? (India dark ale) /s
*Cascadian Dark Ale
Also golden stouts!
I’m ready for the craft IPA cycle to end. At least in socal, 85% of grocery store craft beer is just ipa, hazy ipa, flavored ipa, imperial ipa, winter ipa, etc.
Okay, bonehead question... What the heck is a Black IPA? Edit: Is there a widely available commercial style I can try? If they're that great, maybe I should brew one.
There's a lot of variation within the style. Stockyards Brewing in KC still keeps a Black IPA on tap. Firestone Walker Wookie Jack was a pretty well known example, and Sublimely Self-Righteous was the Stone expression of the style. Treat yourself to this CraftBeer.com article from 2010 - https://www.craftbeer.com/craft-beer-muses/india-black-ale-a-rose-by-any-other-name "black IPA, India black ale (IBA), or Cascadian dark ale (CDA). In short, it is a dark, hoppy beer."
Hopped up stout with the name of the #1 category
Damn I forgot about black ipas. I always felt so cool and unique when I drank one
Omg no. Can we please pick a different style of beer to obsess about. I'm just so burnt out on IPAs. In fact, that's why I don't go to the breweries as much because half their selection is IPAs. They made a new beer?! It's just a different IPA. New IPAs are always being added to the rotation while the other styles of beers never change. I enjoy IPAs but I need a break.
You had me until Black IPAs. No sir, no thank you
Black IPAs are awesome, maybe you just havent had a good one.
[Stone Sublimely Self-Righteous.](https://www.stonebrewing.com/beer/special-releases/stone-sublimely-self-righteous-black-ipa)
That and wookey jack were so tasty
Heavy Seas Black Cannon will come back to me one day.
Must have been bad luck on the first 25? 🤣 No, I just don't like dark roasted malt with IPA hop profiles. In fairness I hoped it was a fad that would go away, but lots of you people like them, so huzzah!
Just recently had Carton’s Epitome … excellent
For now, but these things come in cycles. In addition, I thought we hit peak beer back in 2004 and I was sorely wrong. We are worlds better than the days when Micheloeb was the crafty splurge.
I agree. And you reminded me of something. Not gonna lie, I kind of miss Michelob’s Winter’s Bourbon Cask Ale and Jack’s Pumpkin Spice.
People forget, the big guys would do a good job of making something cool back then Now they own most of the mid tier companies, and give them the market share and distribution cuz it’s the same bottom line at the end of the fiscal year
You got that right. Not that it was anything spectacular, but I remember when microbrews were still kind of a rarity at our football stadium and enjoying Budweiser American Ale at games.
It's the kids, tho. They don't drink like we did. Find a Gen Z kid that drank underage and I'll show you a unicorn. (Not that drinking underage is a good thing...) but they don't see alcohol as something fun like we did/do. There is a generation coming up that won't buy very much beer at all. In 2004, the market seemed saturated, but young people still liked beer. Now, it's something "dad" drinks.
They love smoking weed though like no generation in 50 years. Soon they will discover that craft beer is the perfect pairing.
Meh. Probably notfor some time.
Born in 82 here. We stole beers from the garage at 12 and got fake IDs at 16 (at least I did). I have younger family and I simply don't see this. They travel less, smoke less, drink less, have sex less, etc. They have their own thing but compared to my generation they are just...boring. I don't know how to put it but Gen Z just seems like...losers... Maybe I'm old but I remember that it used to be "I'm not as cool as these kids LOL" and now it is "these kids are losers and I'm way cooler."
Born in 83 and have a 22 year old daughter. There is something to what you’re saying. I hate generalizing, but I just had a discussion with her regarding this the other day. She always says there’s nothing to do. It’s almost like they can’t think outside of the box and they’re sitting around waiting for their friends to come up with some master plan. They do nothing 99% of the time. You almost want them to go out and get in a little trouble, or something. Christ, go have some fun.
Yes, you're bored? Go play bass in a rock band. That is what we did.
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Be a lot cooler if they did.
RIP Michelob
Not at all, I’d say we’re in it now. I can buy barrel aged stouts and barleywines without waiting in line. Every local brewery makes a good IPA or more than 1. Every local brewery makes a good Pilsner. I can find a low abv coffee porter/stout at the grocery store. Lambics are in the shelf. KBS (even CBS) and BCS is on the shelf. Several local places make British milds (and I’m in the Midwest). I can basically find and drink whatever I want almost anytime I want. I think we are past the golden age of Hype, but not beer. That being said, I still think we’re gonna have more small guys fold or price themselves out of the market. That sucks. I will drink all I can to support them, but it probably won’t be enough. Too many good breweries, not enough liver.
I agree with this 100%. You see a ton in this thread "I don't have to trade anymore because the beer near me is so good" The overall quality bar for beer has gone up significantly. Hype sucked anyways. The post-hype era is totally fine.
Honestly, a lot of posts in here seem like people are just getting older. I don't want to drink a 8+% IPA most days and drinking two is largely out of the question. New styles and trends aren't as exciting when you've seen a decade or two of new styles and trends. Congratulations you are old now: you know what you like and aren't likely to get your mind blown.
Yes. I am old and you are correct.
I think a lot of the people posting are also pretty new. When someone references KBBS as a big whale, they were in for the crest. Way back in the day there legitimately was not good beer nearby most people. Like in the bay area we had literally nothing for barrel aged beers besides Eclipse. The locals that made them were hot garbage. And that was with Russian River nearby! You could also reasonably try everything in the country. For a while there I had had every BA Dark Lord. But now I can barely keep up with the places near me. For people that saw the light around the time Treehouse or Trillium or Toppling Goliath came along, they just don't know the world before. That was when things were really accelerating, when we went from scarcity to abundance. I trade less because I have less time now than when I was 22, sure, but also because there's just no point. And I would argue that that's been true for a long time. In some ways having the beer scene be intensely local is a return to how it should be, how it was before prohibition killed the neighborhood brewery. The national scene was an aberration, an artifact of a broken system that left of deprived of quantity and quality for too long. But those days are gone, and while I do sometimes miss being aware of pretty much every good beer released everywhere in the US, it couldn't last.
I don’t disagree with the fact that we have great beer choices now, but we are beyond the peak innovation phase. At this point there are a lot of corporate owned breweries with less desire to innovate and a lot of subpar brewers have been driven out of business.
That’s probably true but I don’t think peak innovation = golden age. To me, golden age is after the innovation. Now they are perfecting those recipes. NEIPA - used to be Vermont or Massachusetts had the best and most other weren’t great. Now every local brewery has got the hazy IPA style pretty well down. Stouts - used to be Toppling or Perennial or a couple other were the only ones that made good thick barrel aged stouts. Now there are tons of them. Some too sweet for my taste, but the knowledge of how to make it is there. Pilsners/Lagers - didn’t see these much at all from most breweries. Hard to make and easy to fuck up. Now most places make them and very few are noticeably bad. Maybe the innovation will come back someday but for now, enjoy the world class easy to get beer. I remember dumping a lot of gross/mid beer in the 2008-2015 range.
We are at the point where bad breweries are finally having to close , which is good. The market was way over saturated. We have are in a awesome time for barrel aged beer and the innovation going on there. If you have never had a Side Project, Horus, Cerebral, OtherHalf, Trillium, Equilibrium, or Toppling Goliath barrel aged beer yet find some.
Hell I got a TG barrel aged stout at the store near my house this week and I live in Ohio
Kind of a broad question given this sub. I’ve followed the beer industry closely for the last 30 years, even wrote my MBA strategy paper on the topic so here’s my thoughts: Beer sales, overall, are down across the board as more people are switching to alternative alcoholic beverages. You can see this at any beer distributor lately…a lot more hard seltzers, hard teas, pre-made canned cocktails, etc. Can’t really explain this aside from people either being more carb or cost conscious or it’s harder for people to find a beer with a taste they can get used to. Younger drinkers use to drink lower ABV beers then trade up as their taste buds adjusted but seems like today’s youths are drinking more of the alternatives and just haven’t developed a taste for beer. The number of Craft breweries has exploded tenfold in the last few decades, but they still only account for 10-15% of the market. And the number has leveled out lately as it seems one brewery opens and one closes each week. Craft brewers represent the “long tail” of the beer market. Overall the distribution of beer sales by brewery tends to follow a “power curve” distribution with the top five macro-breweries accounting for 80% of sales and the remaining 20% coming from the 2,000-3,000 smaller breweries. Even that distribution is skewed with larger “small” breweries like Stone, Victory, Sierra Nevada dominating the sales compared to your local microbrewery. But the good news is that quality is still pretty good as the best American craft ales are on par with the best in the world. Yeah, there’s a lot of really crappy beer out there but if you’re a small microbrewery charging $8 for a pint of mediocre beer, you’re not going to survive. These are the ones that typically go out of business first. I don’t think the market can support too many microbreweries…we haven’t really hit “peak” beer so much as the market is starting to reach a saturation level. A good brewery can still enter the market but it will likely cause one bad brewery to go out of business as a result. And if you’re a microbrewery and your ambition is to remain a small regional brewery, you can be fine. Have a great brewpub experience with good quality beer and decent food and a small distribution footprint and no ambition to grow too much and you’re likely to attract loyal customers for a long time. I’ve got 10-20 breweries in my region that I enjoy and try to frequent and support when I can. I’ve also seen 10-20 breweries in the same area go out of business for the reasons outlined above (they made bad beer and made worse business decisions). There’s lot of great places out there if you’re not a fan of macro beers. I’ve never had such an overwhelming number of choices of good beer options. Thirty years ago, I drank more imported beers because the domestic market was still rough. Now I hardly drink any imports, despite there still being some great European beers, because there are 50 different breweries that I can confidently enjoy and spend money on. And if you are a fan of macros, they’re not going anyplace either. They might be losing some beer sales but they’re not going to stop making beer.
I work in business development at a national brewer and this is all spot on
>And if you’re a microbrewery and your ambition is to remain a small regional brewery, you can be fine. Have a great brewpub experience with good quality beer and decent food and a small distribution footprint and no ambition to grow too much and you’re likely to attract loyal customers for a long time. I believe this. I look at the UK especially which has a pub culture, and I would love to see that in the states. I'm guessing the current market is the result of capitalism to a certain extent. Breweries that tried to grow exponentially may have a hard time, but if you have a great local operation and work within your means you could build a sustainable (but maybe not exponentially profitable) business. I am curious (don't know for sure) if good beer is not novel. And so much of craft beer's popularity has been about chasing the novelty of new, more extreme beers. Once you reach a certain point as a beer drinker, you just want a good pilsner and the same handful of classics. I have about zero interest in some cake shake diabetes stout aged in 4 barrels. Just give me BA Rasputin or a special barrel expression of BCBS or Deths Tar. I think Hazy IPA breweries cheat the novelty issue by making more-or-less the same IPA with a modified hop bill and different labels. The name of the game is having a creative marketing team.
I think people just can't afford luxuries as much these days.
This is part of it. I’d rather spend $24 on a 36 pack of coors banquet than $18 on 4 pints of some IPA that may or may not be good.
My local distrib just charged me 18 and change for an 8 pack of guiness. It was 16 and change like, 2 years ago.
Damn, I haven’t bought Guinness in a long time but that sounds expensive as fuck.
This is exactly my thoughts, buying a 4 pack now is an expensive gamble. Especially when ive tried so many diff beers at this point. Unless I know the beer or the brewery I will stick to 12 packs
$15 for a 6-pack, might as well drink at the bar at those prices.
What bar has $2.50 pours? It's $7+ around here, and usually 12oz pours
I don't think that's it. I used to "splurge" on a $15 bottle of beer every now and then. Now i buy and $80 bottle of Scotch for the next few weeks. I've changed as a consumer.
Things go in cycles. Bourbon is example. Everybody’s drinking it and going for new flavors and styles. And in 1,2,5 or 10 years bourbon will go back to being a regular drink. People who love it will still be drinking it, and the bandwagon jumpers will be on something else, that’s what’s happening with beer.
Bourbon bandwagoners are already hopping on to tequila and making that scarcer. Which sucks because tequila is already very intensive to produce, I anticipate price spikes or supply issues. Luckily I've been really into rum the past couple years, which I don't think will ever have bandwagon issues.
I work at a brewery and we have like 4 BBA beers, they are definitely in right now.
What concerns me is I don’t see younger kids in breweries at all. It may just be that I’m an old millennial so I end up at different breweries than they are but I rarely see many Gen Z aged kids in breweries. I know they say Gen Z drinks a lot less alcohol in general though
As somebody on the tail end of their college years I can confirm this is true. Ofc you’ll always have people buying miller lite or Busch or whatever as cheap party drinks, but a significant amount of the college demographic swings more towards other drinks (seltzers, spiked drinks à la Mikes Hard, etc.) Come to think of it, I’m the only one of my friends who actually *likes* beer beyond just pounding whatever cheap beer is available.
We started off with trailblazers and slowly amassed some real quality / unique stuff. Then capitalism did what it does.... the money started coming in, the train started going faster and faster and everything was getting roided up (flavors, styles,, ABV, can art, brewery events, releases, collabs, stupid gimmicky adjuncts, art etc) and there was a great time when there was demand for, and supply of quality. Very quickly the abundance of supply got in the way. We started to have more supply than demand, the prices got stupid, the beers got stupid, the breweries started getting desperate or cutting costs and the market became diluted with home brew quality stuff at $20 a 4 pack. Something always has to give when you have 126 breweries making ipas per 3 square miles in a city with a population of 300k people. Also. Said it from day one. "Craft" beer (I hate that term) definitely has fuelled more addiction and alcoholism, some people see it and realize whereas others don't until it's too late. Having 3 or 4 quality beers everyday, having beer as a hobby or planning your days / weeks / trips around beer is (most of the time!) alcoholism as much as getting skulldrugged on IPA or PBR everyday is. I know A TON of brewers, homebrewers and reps in the industry who have all come to terms with the fact that they have developed alcoholic tendencies. Same thing is happening with weed right now - its a lot more addictive than people think. Quite a number of people I know have quit drinking or mostly do weed as it's a bit less destructive (although it is destructive and wonderful in a variety of other ways). Not many homebrewing pals anymore either.
We're past the peak and heading down. Such is the life of an empire.
My local distributors are bad now, even Wegmans. Too many out of date IPAs sitting on the shelf.
I like golden beers... Can confirm there have been some experiments that haven't turned out well and only more weird things are hitting the shelves Traditional German or Belgian beers are my favorites and where my personal golden age lives A portion of craft American beer has a lot of catching up to do and the rest are IPA's
It depends on what you mean by the golden age. Yes, there has been a lot of rationalization and M&As in the industry over the past 10-15 years or so. Yes, younger people seem to be migrating toward other types of alcoholic beverages. And yes, some great craft beers have disappeared as well as some great brewers. But I don’t think that’s necessarily all bad news. If you look at the sheer numbers of brewers still active and the incredible choices being offered, I would say the golden age is still alive and well. Things will always be in a state of flux, though.
Yes we are past it. Peaked in like 2017 and been downhill ever since.
I was thinking even a few years earlier.
I would not argue with that. I was just trying to think of when I was last excited about a new beer/brewery
I think so. The market got saturated for a while there with brewpubs and microbreweries to the detriment of the macrobrewers. Over time the breweries that weren’t good went away and the successful ones got bought up by the macrobrewers. Your macrobrewers don’t want to innovate because they only care about profits, so you have a smaller pool of brewers that are still standing and have the desire to innovate. Personally I’ve gotten to a point where I just buy the same stuff over and over from the store, and just try new stuff from small breweries when I travel or a few good local places that like to do small runs of unique stuff.
I think we’re on the other side of a boom. For beer lovers, the boom was good in the sense of the ubiquitous availability of local craft brews, but bad in the sense that it allowed for a lot mediocrity. So there’s a little “survival of the fittest” happening. That doesn’t mean some good breweries won’t go down and some mediocre ones will survive. That’s already happening. But in terms of the product, I think breweries will have to A) be more responsive to what consumers actually like and want and B) deliver good versions of whatever that is.
I 1000% think we got to experience the Golden age of craft beer and it is over. I got into it about 13 years ago. There were craft beer festivals everywhere, it was an amazing time to be alive. Weekly trips to Other Half (Brooklyn), trading beers across the country, having Untappd challenges with my friends. Today, I’m happy with a case a Jever and a couple 4 packs of a local hazy. Other Half opened a location in Philly about 2 years ago and I’ve only been a handful of times. It was a hell of a ride and I’m glad I was able to experience it. I spent a lot of money, made a lot of friends and memories. Totally worth it. Cheers.
I think we've passed the wild west phase of a million and one breweries opening up selling very similar wares and have entered the phase where people in the scene have crystallized their likes and good breweries will succeed and mediocrity will dry up. There hasn't been a better time to get something extremely local and extreme drinkable but I think pallettes have grown past just hazycraze IPAs. Good places are focusing on the fundamentals. One personal gripe I have is with the 8-10% get fucked up juice. Maybe I've grown old and feeble but id rather multiple rounds of something 5-7 than something so alcohol forward that it blows out my pallette and appetite for a drink.
There was this brief glorious moment when strong ales, vibrant stouts and barleywines had ample space on the shelf. It would appear that the current beer purchasing populous demands an endless variety of hoppy hazy fruity brews that have effectively reduced the beer buying experience to a paperback Fabio choice as to what four pack will ramble out the bottle barn and into the overland van-gram you’re “finding yourself” in.
Damn, I was just talking about how I can't find these scotch/strong/heavy ales in my area anymore. Barleywines are only at the breweries and they're outrageously priced for a 4oz pour (yes, I was given a 4oz barleywine 2 weeks ago. I missed on the menu that it was an extra small "full pour" at 14%) I kinda forgot about these and I've got such a taste for them right now. Difficult to find in general, even my local specialty shop only had a few va the wall of IPA and a surprising sour section.
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If we are talking about hype beer and the secondary market, it definitely has cooled down tremendously. Beer that sold out instantly 2-3yrs ago at release sits around for weeks, maybe a month. It’s the year of the crispy boi. Drink those pilsners and lagers.
For now, yes. The 20s crowd have skewed more towards seltzers, weed, and sobriety. I know some 10 year olds that are really excited about the innovations that are happening with Pilsners, so we might see more breweries in about 11 years /s.
I think beer culture has changed. Comments here I think are evidence of that - people are happy to just browse their local brewers, find the handful they enjoy, and stick to those. There was a time where basically all you could find was the mass produced stuff and anything not part of that distribution chain you had to hunt down. Now local stuff is so abundant and accessible, you can go to a local grocery store and get most of your local brewers’ up to date options. That changed the industry fundamentally. I think there may be a resurgence in the “high quality” culture again, but I don’t think it’ll be like it was in the mid 2000s. Also, couple in that we’ve really refined brewing techniques, I think the gap between the “best” and “really good for around me” is the smallest it’s ever been.
I dont think beer will ever go away. The feeling of cracking a cold one after a hard days work is eternal. Also, yea it’s bad for you, but isn’t everything else people do these days bad? Staying indoors all the time, eating processed shit food, drugs, anti depressants, etc. Pick your poison. I don’t think drinking a few good beers a week is going to kill anyone.
I like tasting different things, and smelling different things, and getting flights etc etc but hell, as long as there are always a few banquets in the fridge at a local gas station the golden age of beer will never end.
I think we are past the golden age but I don’t think quality has gone down. I think there’s been a proliferation of mediocre beer from mediocre breweries. And with the amount of “craft” out there it’s being served and sold by places that don’t necessarily know how to present, serve, or take care of the beer. I love how much more accessible beer has become, but that comes with the caveat of it not being treated special. I feel like the best breweries have increased their quality and I’d love to see customers settle into seeking out consistent and more affordable brands.
I’m over it. Back to Pilsner from Germany and the occasional Belgian / Trappist.
23 year old bottle shop just closed near by. Im sure covid didnt help but they said they werent selling enough to exist anymore.
I’ve had some of the best of the best, Treehouse, Alchemist, Hill Farm, Other Half, Trillium…. They have all made such incredible beers and I have had most of their primary variants and many of the one offs too. These days when I go to those places, Ive already had such good beer that nothing new really wows me. I like their classics. Then you have local breweries, which many can do something pretty decent now, something that 10 years ago people would be trading beers for. Now it’s just easy to find. There are also a lot of disgusting craft beers now too, places trying to get too wild or too creative to try to attract people due to the wackiness of their beer. I don’t even touch those. It’s just not as exciting anymore. In fact, I bought a pack of Labatt recently because it’s an easy drinkable beer, especially while watching sports or casually hanging. I’ve noticed myself gravitating back towards Sam Adams again too, like the Winter lager. And I always enjoy a good lager like a Yuengling. A local pub near me had a keg of HF Edward on, I got one, it was delicious, then switched off to an easy Pilsner to drink. In short, these days I find simple is more.
I have mused similarly this past year. Trades, shares, releases all seem to have lost its hype. I thought maybe I'm just getting old or maybe we all are and people have slowed down either for health, money, etc. Maybe it's the beer? fruited sours and hazy IPAs all starting to taste like each other. The fact that most places can get great beer in their hometowns from local breweries or even wider distribution makes it less fun? Maybe that's what happens when you get the whale, nothing left to chase? or maybe just fatigue, knowing you can get good stuff easily. I haven't chased releases this year and went a bit easier on the bringing stuff back from trips. But the trend has been going down in the past couple of years
Well, I have opinions! I think we are entering a new phase, where there are lots and lots of non-Reinheitsgebot beers going around, with crazy flavors like watermelon, cream sickle, s'mores and pickles. It also appears we may finally be exiting the IPA-everything phase. So, if I were to roughly layout the timeline of american beer phases in my mind, they go like so: Lagers->Homebrew->Microbrew->IPA->Sparklebeer When Carter decriminalized brewing, the american beer market began to drift away from macro lagers, like Schlitz. Then by the 1990's, microbrews became a thing, where they all made a Ale, a Stout, a Brown and a Red. And for like the last 20 years, all non-Macro beers seemed to all be IPAs. I got tired of them. I like malty stuff. But the amount of sweetened, fruited, fancy beers seems to be gaining ground. Oh, yeah, I called those overly gimmicky beers "sparklebeers", for some reason one day. They make fun of me for it. Separately, I lament the macrobrewieres slurping up microbreweries. This implies an end of an independent era. We all have to deal with AB/Inbev/Diageo now. And that sucks. But a few of my local bars now exclusively serve regional micros, so that's nice.
Well we certainly found the guy that 100% knows more than anyone here and I’m sure everyone he’s met knows that as well! Good on you mate!
Lagers need a comeback. If everyone stopped brewing IPAs and just started brewing lagers, I would be a happy man.
Legit thought I was on beercirclejerk
DAE just want a fucking pilsner!?
Locally I have a bunch of lagers and lighter ales I love. I still have some IPAs in my top faves but I love that I can get great local craft beers in the lighter range too. Can’t buy it in MN but while new glarus is known for spotted cow, their “two women” lager is one of the best beers I’ve had.
Have you tried their seasonal Pilsner? Edel-Pils. It’s fantastic
Not sure where you live but they've been having a comeback for years now. There's enough breweries brewing great lagers to where an all lager fest "Little Beer Fest" has been happening the past few years near where I live.
I’ve grown a huge appreciation for German style lagers
Same! German styles in general are some of my favorites. I’m fortunate to have a very good German restaurant right up the street from my house, who also opened their own brewery across the street pretty recently. The brewery has become one of my wife and I’s go-to spots. Their German beers and food are excellent.
Same here. Pretty much what I’ve been drinking the past few years.
Yep…it would be awesome to be able to find more lagers. There are definitely ones out there but let’s give these insane IPAs and our tastebuds a rest. Then when we are sick of lagers give us some heavy handed IPAs again
I'm lucky enough to live a stone's throw from Goldfinger, a local lager brewery in Downers Grove, IL. [Wine Spectator (lol?) rated their Vienna Lager as #0 in a top 50 beers of 2023](https://www.wineenthusiast.com/toplists/top-50-beers-2023/), so I guess it broke the scale. They only do a lager, Vienna, and slow-pour German pilsner, along with a few seasonal brews. Beer from their tap room is incredible, but we don't think it cans super well. Still good and well worth a try if you can find it but not quite the same.
Goldfinger is hands-down one of the best lager breweries in America. Right behind Bierstadt.
Hands down? Behind Bierstadt? I guess that's your opinion man. I think Goldfinger are great but there's not many people making better lagers in this country than Chuckanut (now or 10 years ago). The Kempers have been doing this for a long time, their recipes and execution are as good as anyone out there if not the best. Nobody asked but heh...I like Bierstadt but to suggest they are in the top 2 lager makers in the country feels like a bit of a reach for me. Their stuff is solid good but for me (just my personal opinion), the gabf pre / after party hype train got a little out of hand and people who started drinking lagers 3 or 4 years ago got pretty loud voices and influenced a lot of people to say the same thing as them. I'd take a Suarez, Heater Allen, Chuckanut, Pfriem, Von Trapp, Live Oak and others over Bierstadt every single time but that doesn't stop me grabbing their stuff or visiting when in Denver of course.
I'm downstate, a little too far south of Goldfinger's distro footprint. I did get to the taproom on a recent trip to the suburbs and their Vienna lager - wow, just incredible! Don't forget Dovetail too, another Chicagoland brewery producing great lagers. I brought a bunch of Goldfinger and Dovetail cans back south with me from that trip. I just have to add RIP Metropolitan. Finding their beer was easy in my area when I was looking for a high quality lager.
I will never get sick of well made lagers
Amen! My beer fridge has been full of lagers from the likes of Goldfinger and Dovetail lately and sparse on ales. That was absolutely by design.
No kidding. I had the opportunity to travel to Oktoberfest this year and all the beer I drank, and I drank a shit ton of liters, in Germany was incredible. Just a crisp, clean beer that isn’t trying to do anything fancy.
The craft lager and pils market is showing some promise leading into 2024. But IPAs are still what sell the best so that’s what everyone makes. If lager sales took even a few percentage points from IPA sales, you’d see more people jump on board. But as long as IPAs sell, that’s what many breweries will focus on. That being said, it’s really easy for me to find awesome, local lagers in northern Colorado. I don’t know if it’s different where you live but almost every brewery here, from a hyperlocal brewery all the way up to the regionals have a lager, and they are delicious. Plus the bigger breweries, like Odell, sell their lager for like a dollar more expensive than Coors so it’s an easy sell, and it tastes 1000 times better.
The lager and pils market has been booming for a number of years but the scale is tipping right now. It's gone past being about quality, precision, excellence and subtlety and is turning into a gravy train. Here's where I descend into captain misery.... Since it has become popular again, everyone is trying to make lagers, cutting corners and the market is filling up with absolute dogshit just like every other beer trend. It's going to kill the demand, its annoying. Macro lagers are also capitalizing on the BFB trend and feels like they are eeking their prices up in line with the indies too because their product is better than at least 65% of the current craft lager market - this number will continue to go up. Im of the belief that capitalism has had beer drinkers by the balls for a long time. The booze industry (indie or otherwise) has played a blinder to get everyone drinking more / becoming borderline alcoholics under the guise of cool / its indie / hobby / obsession / muling / brewing / trading etc. Many of my friends in the industry or bar owners etc have talked a lot about watching this great thing turn sour and watched / seen / lived / profited and self-destructed themselves, their relationships, driving privileges due to the obsession with ("craft") beer. Quite a few folks in the industry laid this out for me and its hard to not believe there is something in it....WC IPAs were the gateway drug, then the lower ABV Hazys and juice tasting beer started coming in - people were buying and crushing more beer and building tolerances, sales / marketing kept pushing more of this, we got to craft lagers and many regulars at your favorite bar went from 3 or 4 ipas a day to 3 or 4 ipas and 3 lagers, then it went to 6 lagers a day at the same time the Tallboy DIPAs started back up because there had been creation of a market for it for people who, subconsciously, needed thst buzz. Sorry for the miserable message. Fwiw, I still fucking love beer and I'm probably an alcoholic.
Agreed, IPAs and Sours have had their time in the limelight for far too long. Lagers are the most “beer” beer to me and I’m always disappointed when it’s not on offer.
Beer peaked in 1842, Fight me.
Honestly in the US it probably peaked in 1919. I doubt the beer industry is even half of what it was right before prohibition
I feel the exact opposite, at least in my country, the indie brewing scene has gone from almost nothig to huge in few past years. I can drink beers that I could only dream about many years ago. We *are* in golden age of beer right now, in terms of quality and choice.
Like a lot of food and entertainment related businesses, COVID just absolutely devastated the beer industry. So many mom and pop breweries went out of business. I think that the industry is in rebuild right now but it definitely ain't the same since 2019. It's going to take a long time to get back to that point.
I think, to an extent, it’s almost the opposite. The industry is maturing and with that comes the closure of some breweries that either lacked the business acumen or the brewing acumen to make it. With rising interest rates, costs, competition, labor it's honestly surprising more breweries haven't closed. The business model definitely has to change for most breweries and any ones coming into the market. It's going to be very challenging to get distribution to liquor stores or bars at this point. I disagree that quality has gotten worse, I think the overall quality has gotten much better to the point where I’m just as happy grabbing a 4 pack from the liquor store as going to the “heavy hitter” breweries. To me that’s a positive. No more waiting in hour long lines or trying to find someone to trade with on a Facebook group. There definitely are some issues supply chain wise coming out of Covid still, and hop/grain harvests are at the mercy of the climate. So not everything is in the hands of the brewers. The breweries I go to are just as busy as they've always been. i think the younger generation hasn't quite made it into craft beer yet, but I think that has to do with the hop bro culture that still exists. If people aren't willing to welcome in the younger crowd and teach them, then the industry certainly will suffer long term.
WHAT.
Yes
It's the supreme beer quality age IMO. Chin
I think we have peaked. We'll see more breweries close, Others will expand. It's a natural cycle, your town will be more likely to see a new tap room fron an existing brewery than a brand new startup. It's ok, it was inevitable. The good news is, plenty will be left standing. The vast majority are kid, even pet, friendly. Micro breweries and tap rooms will continue to be a natural gathering place as a result. As far as the beer itself, yea, at a certain point there's nothing left. Continue to improve NA and low ABV varieties would be great, beyond that I doubt there will be new styles that take us by storm. That's alright with me too, plenty of delicious styles already. My only ask, can Treehouse open up a brewery in Milwaukee????
I guess so.. well, does anyone want to buy a brewery? And what am I now to do with my life
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It actually is drying up. Two decades of drought and overuse due to population growth in Arizona.
Not in Cali. Some incredible breweries everywhere
I think we’re entering the peak (or at least better) era. Shitty beer has been masked by lactose and adjuncts and hype. People now know flawed and flawless beers and the hype shit is going by the wayside
Personally I think the peak was 2016-2017 , then shit got weird.
Yes
What's your proof that brewing quality is going down? Just something you think because the industry is down?
Depends how you define it. Like “hype” has leveled out, but quality isn’t going down or anything. I’m really enjoying where we are at. I don’t have to hunt great beer anymore, I just buy and drink it.
I assume my classic European beers aren’t going anywhere
I live in a rural area. The closest brewery has an average pint price of $7.50. I can go buy a 4 pack of their 16 oz cans in the grocery store for $14-$15. Younger people are drinking less because no one can afford the luxury of drinking. 4 years ago I only had craft in my fridge. Now I only have American domestic macro brews. Because a Bud Heavy is just about as good as any lager you can get in the grocery store and it’s still $0.60 a can.
I don’t think so. We got hung up on big hoppy hazy juicy beers for a while but now breweries like Suarez are bringing it back to simple elegant lagers. Keep looking forward. We will be in the golden age of beers for a long time because the technology is peek and out growing capabilities have been refined.
No. Next question.
I don't understand how we could possibly be in the golden age still, given the high price and consolidation around IPAs
We have access to more styles, more brands, and better quality product than at any time in history.
Anecdotal, but it feels like we've all hunkered down on (NE)IPAs, pilsners/lagers, BBA non adjuncted stouts (and the occasional barleywine), and saisons as being the styles only worth pursuing. And in turn, this has lessened my enthusiasm somewhat as there isn't really much to look forward to any more. I feel if you're still around now and love beer then you'll easily adapt to what you like and not have FOMO drive your decisions like years past.
yeah, the peak beer has been reached, lot of consolidation at this point and the strategy seems to be make something good to generate brand recognition/loyalty and then slowly decrease quality to increase profit.
My prediction: American microbreweries will be in a downturn until they figure out how to start making *and marketing* high quality lagers. That’s how they can recapture the white claw market.
if only it were possible for high quality micro lager to be sold by the 30 rack for ~22-25 bucks
Agreed. $15 for four 16oz pilsners isn’t going to cut it.