I wanted to make an eggnog beer about 10 years ago but never figured it out. I then moved on with my life and just drank eggnog.
Thanks, I hate it.
The sad truth of the state of our current beer industry is that breweries have to make these novelty beers to remain popular.
I’m not sure why it’s sad that craft brewers are doing what they need to do to stay in business. What would be sad is if they all had to close their doors.
I recon i actually have some authority on this topic since I have started a regional craft brewery and am currently the head brewer at a local craft brewery … so, I’d rather concentrate on classic styles as opposed to trendy beers because that is what I like to brew. But if you can’t beat 'em, join em! ;)I’ll definitely be doing some more trendy stuff coming this year.
No peanut butter beers though. 
You fool. It is so easy to make it.
I make PB Milk Stout.
One time I made both Milk Stout and PB Milk Stout. I could not sell the straight Milk Stout and had to ad flavoring to remaining kegs. Now your market can be different thou.
OK … “fool” might be over the top! lol!
I have a local reputation to uphold.
There was a brewery in San Antonio (Branchline) that ten or so years ago put out an egg nog stout that tasted exactly like egg nog in a stout in a really great way. I went and visited them about five years ago and all the rest of their beers were pretty lousy and shortly after they closed down. I never figured out exactly how they did it but my guess would be lactose plus some kind of powdered egg yolk with the usual spices. As much as I liked it that wasn’t a beer I would drink often enough to endure experimenting to lock down a recipe even on one gallon batches.
i would imagine a brewery would have to declare they put actual egg in a beer since some are allergic, no?
part of it is simply the fact of cans. its a big space to put some stupid logo/“art”. i loathe the art-based breweries from toronto around here. they are CRAP, but have fancy BS can-art.
this stuff is absolute garbage, yet is everywhere with a high price point
it’s really difficult to remain relevant in the brewing industry. You can make the best beer on the planet but the consumer’s “scramble for the latest and newest and weirdest” is what drives the styles that pop up on draft walls and store shelves. But all of that is tricky.
As far as cans goes, brewers are running out of names that aren’t already taken or copyrighted, which is why there are so many cans out there, some of which don’t have sensible names. And it is not easy to get new cans to market. You have to be sure that your distributor wants the beer (is you are forced to use a distro, which many are), to begin with, and that the retailer wants the beer. It also has to be approved by state authorities, which can take weeks or months. Printing the labels is expensive. the graphics are expensive. The cans are expensive.
My distributor want two styles (in cans) from the brewery I work at. They are not accepting any other styles at this time because they have to convince already crowded store shelves to take those beers. The beers they will take are a 'not bad" West Coast iPA and a bland Cream ale which started out as the brewery’s flagship beers 7 years ago. There is a market for these beer. People want to drink these beer. These beers sell and a certain number of store shelves will take them. But there are a hundred other better beers i’d love to sell.
I imagine in states that allow for self distribution it is a lot easier to blanket different, weird and odd styles. I’ve never brewed in any of those states. I can brew anything I want for draft, so that is nice. But it’s important to make sure it sells and that you can sell everything you make.
Egg Nog Beer aside, it’s definitely a tricky business.
yeah, the distributors are probably a lot more savvy at this point in terms of understanding what sells in craft beer compared to 10 years ago.
it might have been stated here, or it was some other article but the fact is that even at the craftiest craft bar the ratio is still something like 10 kegs of bud-light sell for every craft-keg.
i think the most loathsome and invasive style is actually this “cream ale”. in my experience its simply the cheapest craft beer to make that will sell well. low OG, low hopping, simple and cheap grist. it would be better called “table beer”, and its often done with no particular pinache or even skill because they know who will drink it, and they know these peoples tongues will simply identify it as “like bud/bud-light, but not as gross tasting”. what a crap style.
I gurantee you that ratio doesnt hold around here at “the prettiest of craft bars.” Many sell no ABI, etc. products whatsoever.
that could be true, i know i saw this in an article somewhere. ill try to find it, but yes it could be an exaggeration or regional feature only. where i live here i would definitely wager it to be true.
I love a good Cream Ale. One of our locals (Wallenpaupack Brewing) makes a great one.
It’s a gross over generalization.
10 years ago, here in Alabama, craft breweries were a fledgling product. Neither the breweries nor the distributors had any idea what they were doing. I could brew anything I wanted and send it to the distributor (draft and bottles, before we even dreamed of owning a canning machine).
But suddenly the brewery and the distributor looked around at the inventory at the distributor and about 80% of whatever crazy styles were shipped weren’t selling and had to be bought back and destroyed, especially since at that time we didn’t have legal tap rooms yet. Things are a lot different now.
As far as Cream Ale goes, it’s a fine style when done correctly. I grew up sneaking beers out of my dad’s cases of Gennessee Cream Ale. I still could probably enjoy one of those from time to time.
i dont want to get into semantics, but i did some major research this year on craft beer vs. industrial vs. total alcohol consumption in some US states. and while for our world craft/homebrewed is everything, for the vast majority of the north american population industrially produced/mega scale brewers are still the default almost all the time. living in a mid-sized rust belt city, i can promise you that the figure in the link below of craft holding ~13.2% of the volume of beer sold in the US seems very accurate where I am, if not higher than i’d expect. and that naturally leaks into bars that brand themselves as craft/micro. to really restate that, 87% of all beer drunk in america is not craft. this probably decreases slightly in more urban/educated/wealthier areas and increases greatly in rural/poor areas.