i think this is the key thing. and while it does sort of fly in the face of the premise of “novelty beer”, but a “novelty beer” can be so well polished and tweaked over a lot of R&D and brewing sessions it can be a beer you want to drink again, this rarely occurs. i dont drink novelty beers after bad experiences with them, but an example of novelty beers that i find to be well tweaked are the gruit ales by williams brothers in scotland like fraoch ale. this is something they did not just throw out the door, but actually made a flagship product using an unusual recipe.
its totally possible to spend a lot of time really working on a recipe that has an unusual ingredient, but why bother when the vast majority of people now look at the wacky picture on the tap or can and see a wacky name like “maple doughnut stout made with REAL DOUGHNUTS” and get one. “how was it?” “ehh it was okay, it got me drunk”
this kind of thing happens in all creative industries, thats why we have marvel movies and mainstream pop/rap music. its about selling.
My interpretation is very simple: novelty beer is a subset of flavored beer. Beer by definition is malt, hops, yeast and water. Anything else is flavored beer. Flavors that aren’t traditional (fresh fruit, for example) are novel.
That isn’t necessarily a value judgement, but novel can also be a fad if its sole value is that it is novel (i.e. the beer sucks) and no one wants to have it again. Peanut butter might have more staying power than some of the other things people are doing.
I recently saw a Peanut Butter Porter for sale at a brewery in Colorado. I was about to try it but then I saw the ABV was 9.6%.
I’m over 50, too and as such, I have as much problem with beers over 6-7% ABV as I do with novelty beers. I hate when half the taps at a pub are high alcohol. I understand some styles are high ABV, but geez they don’t all have to be.
I think American brewers in general have a tendency take a style and increase the ABV, increase the IBUs, increase hoppiness, and increase the roastiness. Bigger and bolder. These beers seem marketed to the same crowd that wants novelty beers. If a beer’s name includes Imperial or double, I don’t buy it.
While I’m able, my intention is to (in moderation) drink and brew beer that I enjoy: classic, novelty, or otherwise. I also intend not to pass judgment on that which others seem to enjoy. Because what do I know?
That is somewhat selfish of course, because unlike majorvices, I don’t have any skin in the game. For a Craft Brewer, it can’t be easy.
While I enjoy the traditional brews, I do wish a had a real German Biergarten near me, isn’t a novelty beer simply an expression of artistic creativity? If so, why can’t we have both? Would we ever have Belgian beers if tradition was a strick factor?
Without the historic creativity we’d still be drinking the nasty native brews we’ve read about in Zymurgy. No thanks.
I stand by my OM. The Peanut Butter Porter was amazing. Would I drink 5 gallons of the brew? Probably not. 1 or 2 pints? Yes.
To me, the end of the day/bottom line about the Peanut Butter Porter was it made to think. Made me consider other things such as a Lime Hefe. This too was amazing.
I’d like to turn back to the OP’s request and comment on what I see both on the podcast and in this particular thread. My intention is one of feedback rather than of criticism of anyone. The podcast’s name- Experimental Brewing- isn’t quite reflective of the majority of the content of late. I don’t hear a lot of reporting back on actual experiments (in the scientific-esque sense); rather I hear more content relating to and coming from the professional brewery world. When I do hear about “experiments” its more like Denny or Drew substituted a new ingredient in an old recipe and report back their impressions. I did think Drew’s coverage of the hot steep method was useful and have been using it to answer a question of mine about extract efficiencies from some local malt that I got. I’d love to hear more about approaches to evaluating new ingredients, more controlled experiments, and “how I solved this problem” type of content. All of this said, I really like the podcast and listen avidly.
I don’t find opinions on what is and what is not good craft beer and what different breweries are making all that engaging- its so subjective. One of the reasons I brew (a lot) is to avoid purchasing commercial beer.
I’m not trying to pass judgement. There are plenty of excellent flavored beers, including fruit beer. However, I’m not going to put advancements in the malting process, purification and isolation of single strain yeast, and hop breeding in the same category as throwing a donut in the mash. Some things are novel and stand the test of time. Others are novel as simply a novelty.
Also, there are far fewer spiced Belgian beers than people think. The really wild stuff (literally) is about as traditional as you can get… wild yeast from a cherry orchard. Fantome is an exception, although I’d definitely put some of them in the novelty category. Not sure I’ve heard anyone talking about them in a while, come to think of it…
Who is doing that? Nobody here that I can tell. Even the people who make novelty (using this word not because I agree with it, but because it’s been established in this thread) beers are not doing that. And to your hyperbole, I doubt any of those brewers are “just throwing a donut in the mash”. However, since I’ve never seen any of these brewers in action, I’m willing to accept that I could be wrong on that.
Sadly, you’re partially right. Homebrewery experiment with food in the mash or boil, but the breweries I know that make a lot of flavored beers use flavor extracts from an industrial supplier, according to friends who work there. Not what I would consider craft in any sense.
Ok. But just so I understand, the “plenty of excellent flavored beers, including fruit beer” that you alluded to…they are not craft beer? Or they might be craft beer if they don’t use flavored extracts? Are there other rules?
How a brewer gets to a great tasting beer, to me, is irrelevant.
New Glarus Wisconsin Red and Boon Kriek taste like fruit beers because they are made with real fruit. Is that the only way to make a good flavored/specialty beer? Of course not, but if more breweries actually made beers of that quality, I don’t think this topic would be as popular as it is. Aside from saying “Wow, I’ve never had that before” in an ambiguous tone, there’s not a lot that’s memorable about most of the “experimental” beers I’ve had recently. Was it better in the days of Randy Mosher inspired “Radical Brewing” and 1000 IBU IPAS? Maybe, maybe not, but aside from a few experimental breweries, half of the taps weren’t filled with these beers.
I don’t drink flavored vodka, so I’m not in the market for most of these beers anyway, but to me it seems like that, or adding a flavor shot to your coffee. Might as well just open a bar with one beer and 50 toppings, like a sundae bar. You could probably save a ton of money that way too.
Well, that’s not quite the kind of question I was thinking of for the show, but it’s a valid comment. We really wish we could get back to the kind of experimentation we did when we started 5 years ago, but it’s just not possible for a number of reasons. So about the best we can do is talk about our own brewing experiences. Personally, I’ve been pushing for us to cover less commercial brewing subjects. It’s nothing that really interests me personally. I appreciate your comments and hope we can address them in some way.
No problem, we don’t all have to agree on what makes great beer.! I respect experimentation but personally get bored of it when it seems to be a search for the next unusual ingredient or the 1000th fruit IPA that doesn’t taste as good (to me) as a well done regular IPA. The issue of flavor extracts is probably a separate one, but it’s not new, I guess. Shipyard Pumpkin was the typical mass market “craft” flavored beer that was a big thing in its time.
Thank you Denny- I appreciate your response, point of view, and willingness to read my comment rather than question (I submitted one of those too via email). One topic that I’ve heard bits and pieces of, but am not sure was talked about in one episode was your American mild recipe development. I think it might a good thing to encapsulate in one episode in more depth: you had the idea and did a number of iterations to get what you were happy with as I recall. Maybe a review of those iterations and your thinking behind them might be interesting to your audience. Would be to me.
I try really hard to respect everyone’s tastes, likes and dislikes…especially when they don’t jive with my center of gravity. But pumpkin anything really tests my resolve. ;D
