Cheap beer still is cheap beer, even if you call it craft style
This article in the Denver Post highlights the desperation of the big breweries to catch the fast-growth craft beer industry. They are failing badly.
Here’s why:
- Craft beer is a relationship between brewer and beer lover. Big breweries lost that relationship when they went after market share.
- Craft beer doesn’t skimp on flavor for production. Though some brewers filter their beer to prolong shelf life, most brew to exacting standards to preserve the taste and quality of their beer for conscientious beer drinkers.
- Craft beer drinkers like real choices, not one beer interpreted three ways.
- Craft beer often is real beer. It is a living organism not heat pasteurized and cold filtered. With apologies to Bayern, which produces lagered craft beers that go through a cold filtering. See the video here.
- Craft beer is a lifestyle, not an unrealistic beach volleyball scene with voluptuous women falling out of their bikinis.
- With the vast majority of the more than 4,000 breweries in this country being destination craft breweries, it won’t be as easy to dupe beer drinkers into believing the Miller Light Brewing Collection is anything other than Miller Light.
- Craft beer is local. Even regional microbreweries are pulling back to make sure their own backyard is covered. With so many small non-production craft breweries popping up, the landscape has changed to hyper local. There is nothing hyper local about Miller Light’s Brewing Collection.
- Craft beer is changing the way people think about drinking and eating. Beer is not just for chugging any more. Beer is now the hot item at fancy restaurants as sommeliers are constantly asked for a beer to match with food. Beer is food. Miller Light is not.
- Craft beer’s growth can be partially attributed to the education of the American palate. Once you go craft, you never go back. Though my best friend Jason has reverted to drinking PBR, I attribute that more to the fact that he’s an urban hipster and doesn’t want to hurt his image by drinking that bourgeoisie craft beer.
- There’s a new king in town, and its called craft beer. It is not one dominant brand, it is a nation of breweries as distinct as the geography and the humanity that define them.
A rose by any other name does not apply here. Cheap beer still is cheap beer, even if you call it craft style.
Budmo!
GG
I think I will play devil’s advocate on this Friday afternoon. (Tim, this is not a personal affront! Just something to talk about over a beer, or two!)
1. “Craft beer is a relationship between brewer and beer lover.” AB, as demonstrated by the efforts of AB beer lovers to stop the Inbev deal, certainly would object to your contention that there is no love. Market share is market share, appealing to the most people in a given demographic. People drink what they like. Excepting the facts that people also drink what they are told to like, what their friends like, what they grew up with or on, and how much money they have to buy beer.
2. “Craft beer doesn’t skimp on flavor for production.” As a home brewer, you know how tough it can be to make a clean tasting “American light lager”–a category in itself. The big boys are very good at what they have made for a long time.
3. “Craft beer drinkers like real choices, not one beer interpreted three ways.” This is splitting hairs. Blackfoot often has two choices of an IPA. Plenty of breweries produce more than a couple varieties of “American Pale Ale”. How is that any different?
4. “Craft beer often is real beer.” Now you are really splitting hairs. The only real group that would adhere to this opinion on “live yeast” being necessary in the final beer product is CAMRA. (Campaign for Real Ale). A lot of breweries (small and large) filter their beer to improve flavor and durability during storage. Most smaller breweries do not heat pasteurize, but many cold filter to remove chill haze. Many big boy techniques are employed in smaller scale.
5. “Craft beer is a lifestyle, not an unrealistic beach volleyball scene with voluptuous women falling out of their bikinis.” NO WAY! Say this is not true! You take that back! This is what made America great!
6. “destination craft breweries, it won’t be as easy to dupe beer drinkers into believing the Miller Light Brewing Collection is anything other than Miller Light” Who are they trying to dupe? Not the people that actually want to go to the 4000 craft breweries? Maybe not even the 1000’s of people who visit Coors in Golden CO to see the mass production of beer (including a traditional malting floor, AND a high capacity spiral malting building–both fascinating, and features that I dare say, NONE of the 4000 craft breweries have or want to have!). Miller simply wants to expand the taste buds of their current Lite drinker-and to that I say Good Luck and Awesome–give it a shot!
8. “Craft beer is changing the way people think about drinking and eating. Beer is not just for chugging any more. Beer is now the hot item at fancy restaurants as sommeliers are constantly asked for a beer to match with food. Beer is food. Miller Light is not.” Me thinks you should attend a night session at GABF and see who is drinking beer. Yes, it is those tasters, but also those gulpers. Listen for that breaking glass! Personally I don’t want my beer getting so hoy-tee toy-tee that I need a sommelier explaining it to me–I am happy with the waitress who tells me that Inversion IPA comes from “Bend Brewing”. Makes it all the more fun.
9. “Craft beer’s growth can be partially attributed to the education of the American palate.” Most of our palates were educated on American light lagers like Bud, Coors, PBR. And, again, there is nothing wrong with that official category of beer, especially if it leads to more “experimentation”.
10. “There’s a new king in town, and its called craft beer. It is not one dominant brand, it is a nation of breweries as distinct as the geography and the humanity that define them.” I remember way back when in 1994, attending my first GABF in Denver. I made a comment as I dumped out beer after beer, that many of these breweries who had jumped into the microbrew arena were going not going to last. And, I was right–the good ones survived, the bad ones went away (leaving a nice market for used equipment!). Survival of the fittest has produced a craft brewing environment where mediocrity is not tolerated all that long, and the percentage of breweries who actually know what they are doing has increased as part of the total population.
All this talk about beer has made me thirsty!
Think I am going to dig into a Chimay Premiere right now!
(is Chimay “beer” or is it food?!). Will there ever be a Miller Chimay Lite? I think not.
Cheers!
Wow! And I thought I went off on tangents, riding tandem with the random, et cetera…
This thread might be whipped like a stolen mule, before it’s over. (HeeHee! that being never over)(and NO!, I would NEVER condone such treatment of such a noble animal; am just using the old adage…)
My take would be; “to each his own”. There are myriad+ reasons people drink/enjoy/tolerate/abuse what they do.
The American beer scene was thrown askew after the “great experiment”. The big money survivors of Prohibition found a very popular product, that was only reinforced by big budget advertising campaigns. I’ll certainly not blame anyone for making the dollars.
Today’s “craft” brewers are filling (quite adroitly) the extensive void left by the unfortunate closing of many (all?) styles brewed by just about all families/creeds of the “great melting pot” that was (and still is) America at that time, that the rest of the World was lucky enough to not be bothered with; and, still enjoy today, yonks ahead of America.
Hoist your choice; we have no problem with that.
The only request a small brewer might have; is, that the general public become more educated to the history of fermentation than Madison Avenue provides us with.
Heck; the roots of the word “honeymoon” has ramifications everyone would be enthralled with, if only we took the time… Beechwood aging pales (<-heehee!) in comparison to the wonderful history and variety of all things theretofore (pre-temperance) “tried & true”. Exempli gratia: most modern imbibers might think beechwood adds flavor to their favorite product, as hickory might to their smoked ribs. “Surprise, surprise!” (in best Gomer Pyle voice), beechwood adds no/none/zip flavour. It’s all in how you present your case; which, the power of the ad campaign has so efficiently proven in the last 7+ decades.
Please do go on with this friendly argument that you have initiated. No one is wrong, and no one can say they’re totally right.
Peace
(and damn!, i’m good @ rambling on) (my apologies:))
Dan brings up some good (if unpopular) points. There are a lot things the big breweries absolutely do better than anyone else. It is ironic that they have the best quality control yet they use it to brew with rice. To me that is like pouring a Pepsi in a Riedel Sommeliers glass.
We could all talk at length about the technical aspects of brewing beer but at the end of the day, good craft beer has a soul. Beer made with cheap ingredients or without the passion of a craft brewer just doesn’t have the magic.
Respectfully, Shawn;
As a craft brewer, I have no qualms about using sparing amounts of rice grains, solids, or hulls in certain styles. I understand and admire your very valid point that this rubs against the “grain” of the Rheineitsbegot; yet, remember the Germans made an exception for malted wheat (as over 1/4 of all beer consumed in/from Germany now contains wheat in 1 form or another.) (the Purity Law was changed from “malted barley”, to “malted grain”); so, please include rye, rice, and many other sources of fermentable starch/sugars in that mix/mash, too. best e.g., Roggenbier and the Weiss families).
Rice products can lighten mouth-feel, and reduce finishing gravity without some of the off-flavours associated with corn and/or other adjuncts. The only corn product I ever consider, is molasses/treacle (tho I have never tried sorghum, which we understand to be gluten free, and maybe allowing some people now allergic, to enjoy beer, when they couldn’t, before.)
Oatmeal, spelt, and many other products have their place in our ever-reaching quest to enrich the beer lovers’ options.
I’m not a fan of bulk brewers’ overuse of cheaper ingredients, either. We just like to keep our minds and options open.
Peace
(and, the use of fruit, honey, nuts, onions, garlic, capers, anchovies, salmonberries, huckleberries, tree bark, fern fronds, pirhanna, and the like; lie within the parameters of another friendly exchange of feelings and ideas.)
(and, as long as the glass is “beer-clean”, i have few issues with what shape it is.)
(and, the only thing the big brewers do better, is have access to the capital that has enabled them to flood the market with generic products and too many commercials.)
And, please excuse my mis-spelt version of Rheinheitsgebot…my spelling sometimes suffers when i’m on a good rant.
And, please correct my statement about molasses being a corn product. Should read processed sugar.
In a recent Zymurgy, a brewer took some beers and tried different kinds of sugars as primers. Of course, in home brewing, processed corn sugar (as dextrose) is the most common priming agent. Sucrose has traditionally not been used because it tends to produce more alcohol heat rather than alcohol balance and carbonation. Surprisingly, brown sugar produced some interesting and balanced results. And, brown sugar is really just the tail end of the processing of any sugar, white sugar coated with just a smidge of molasses.
My point is that processed sugars added to a malt product really are no different than adding rice as an neutral alcohol builder. And, in American Light Lager– rice is an acceptable adjunct. Rice allows more alcohol without more flavor…. just what Americans like with their buxumous bikini clad beach volleyball lifestyle!
My favorite primer? An entire bottle of Chambord (a raspberry liqueur)/ 5 gallon batch of a porter. All the sweetness fermented out, leaving a raspberry chocolate note…. and I don’t usually like fruits in my beer, but this turns out great.
rambling.
Dan,
That sounds great. I never thought about adding Chambord as a primer. Will have to try that next time I do my raspberry porter.
Tim
We do have an old sack or 3 of dextrose lying around, but still use plain malt for bottle conditioning; occsionally pure cane sugar for a little extra something we can only describe as “oomph” in a dark rye. Not that it’s a priming agent, but don’t mind a touch of lactose in the stout @ kegging or bottling, either. We tried brown sugar (in boil) once, ’nuff said. The use of molasses is more for flavor than alcohol content. Old Peculiar is a raw arse ale, par example.
It’s easiest to tell the difference when a person force carbonates a keg, and then tinkers with the priming of some bottles of the same batch. Ya wouldn’t even think they were the same beers, sometimes. Gonna give the “carb tabs” a shot. Looks like they have dextrose, malt, and heading powder in them (the last ingredient making my skin crawl).
We applaud you for the clever innovation of prime Chambord priming. Now, where’s that volleyball game?
You’ve really got my addled brain working overtime, now.
I’m thinkin’ (you can prolly hear the gears grinding) about just how clever the use of Chambord is.
I’m surmising there’s probably enough residual sugar in Grand Marnier that a person could prime a grand cru with, to add to the orange-ness of flavours.
Same would probably go with using Ouzo in a spiced porter/stout.
Only problem is: we’ll need donations to see this grand experiment through to fruition.
1 thing about this thread; we’ve covered the spectrum of ingredients from the use of the cheapest, to spending mucho dinero to fizz our beer.
Peace
Grand Marnier…. in a grand cru oh yeah! Maybe a Weiss Bock that could assume some of the sweetness? Yes, Bullshipper, even that 5 gallon batch is getting pretty expensive. But, I tell you what.. you invite me to dump a bottle of GM or Chambord into your large fermentation vessel as a contribution to the effort (maybe a free beer somewhar), and I would do it as quickly as I could buy the bottle–just to say I helped! Hey, I see a BBC (Buxumous Bikini Clad) Beach Volleyball lifestyle party a comin’.
Wheee!! Ya never know know until we try…
Only thing we might worry about, is the brandy/cognac notes it might add to a lighter gravity beer. Maybe GM being considered for an Imperial Stout, or the Weiss Bock, yes! We’re thinkin’ maybe a good grade “triple sec”, or (notwithstanding colour issues)”curacao” style liquer might be more neutral in taste for the grand cru?
Anyhoots; we’d be honoured that you’d take the time to try our beers. Right back @ y’all!
We’re ALL FOR the BBCBV LifestyleParty in the works. We say: let’s forego the “roll-call”, and make plans by “affirmation” this exchange/party moves on. (All in favour?: (Aye/We/You). We just hope the buxomous-bikini-clad-individuals won’t over-exert, and end up with 2 black eyes from the effort… :O
I discovered an Italian “GM” last year.
While it is more expensive than standard triple sec (or another favorite of mine–being from the South, and loving orangey things, Southern Comfort!) it is less expensive than GM–
It called Gran Gala “A rare triple orange liqueur made with VSOP Brandy”. To my tastes it is really close to GM, with a bit more of the bitter orange that I like to offset the clingy sweetness inherent in these types of products. Won some award over GM …. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gran_Gala
Me thinks a nice play on the citrus qualities of Cascade and Simcoe hops offset with some wheat sweetness and an addition of a citrus liqueur might be just what the Fall season demands!
Tell me where the fermentation is occurring I will be there!
DL
bullshipper, one more question.
where are you located?
maybe contact me through my democracy’s drink webpage?
here… http://www.democracysdrink.com/profile/DanLeithauser
BTW, anyone reading this blog should have a democracy’s drink profile. It is a myspace for beer people!
http://www.democracysdrink.com
Thanks!