Most of my beers are a single base malt, occasionally with an adjunct or brewing sugar, and most often a single FWH hop addition. Recipe wise I don’t think I could get much simpler. It’s pretty much how all beer was once. You can accuse my brewhouse and cellar processes of being complicated, but – and I think this jibes with Denny and Drew’s philosophy – there’s nothing in there that doesn’t have a good reason. The result is decidedly beer flavored beer (when executed well,) and the challenge is to make the most of what you have.
Reminds me of the old contractor’s saying:
You can have it done cheap, fast, or good. Pick 2.
I’m finding that more and more, enjoyment is my purpose in brewing. Not the beer, not the equipment just the joy of doing it.
For once Denny and I are in total agreement. With my return to brewing I know I’m not going to make the best beer. (Though it’ll still be superior for most Craft swill available these days…)
That’s not the goal though. I miss the process. I miss smelling the grain mashing, (Yes, I know that means it’s oxidizing) the boil, etc. I miss trying historic techniques. Taking a long break from brewing was a great way to realize what elements I missed, and which ones I did not…
See, that’s the thing. When admittedly suboptimal homebrew is consistently better than commercial craft beer, there’s a problem in the craft sphere, and it isn’t going to be some homebrewers on a forum, per se, that kill the industry. Have fun, Phil!
I can’t really say that suboptimal homebrew is consistently better than craft around here. We must be lucky.
There’s good and bad. Just more bad than you’d expect would be sustainable. But I guess a lot of that is operations not necessarily riding on the beer itself, from vanity projects, to those that attract customers by way of food, entertainment, activities, etc., or of course just hype and trend seeking. Occasionally those operations don’t survive, but it’s sometimes surprising what does survive (especially those that are primarily production breweries.) And you are no doubt lucky out there.
I managed to make it to a couple of brewfests near here this month and was very disappointed by the overall quality of the beers. I was amazed at the paucity of good beers, and the number of bad beers, and I don’t just mean the weird “blueberry- mint julip-frappe breakfast saison” crap, I mean beers that had so many quality flaws that even my burned out taste buds couldn’t help but notice. Granted both fests took place far from any population center, but I had the same experience last year at the Knoxville Brewfest.
I think breweries get away with selling crap beer because so few people can really tell the difference between well made beer and garbage, and because it’s cool to consume locally made stuff, be it beer, wine, spirits or someone’s tough, overripe field corn purchased at the local farmer’s market.
LOL. Exhibit A. [emoji23] Cheers!
Yeah well anything to do with Marion Barry is gonna contain some substances it oughta not. Oh wait that’s Marionberry. Still. [emoji6]
Hey, I LOVE marionberries!
Random dirty glass filled to the brim with no head? Check
Crazy ingredients that shouldn’t be in beer? Check
Stupid generic label to entice millennials?
Check
The exact beer I wrote my blog post about?
Check
You’ve got one thing right, the Germans haven’t restyled a car or a logo in decades… Centuries… Ever?
Actually they pretty much invented the idea of design, and redesign… see Bauhaus. And Spiegelau/Riedel is largely responsible for the increasingly absurd array of new glassware designs for various styles of beer. But redesigning what’s in the glass has never been seen as serving a useful purpose it seems. Nonetheless trends and fashions are forces in German beer drinking, especially generationally, just as anywhere else. Like when the utterly obscure Bavarian Hefeweizen exploded onto the scene in the 80s, when every student with Einstürzende Neubauten on their Walkman had to have one, with a lemon slice, in the newly anointed vase shaped glass. The German counterpart to the contemporaneous collegiate American innovation of a Corona with a lime wedge. Now both seem old hat.
Even if you don’t have a taste for German beer, still represents everything wrong with the average Craft brewery.
And I’m not trying to hate on fruit beers…just want them shelved differently from “regular” beer. It’s be nice to have the regular beer in a easier to pick over area…
It makes me sad when me, a homebrewer has nicer labels than them, a “professional” brewer. I have had my cans and labels for 2 years… They have a peel and stick label on a generic can…
Small breweries have a hard enough time just to get a space on the shelf, that what you want would be next to impossible. Big beer sales and delivery people are always pulling crap on us by taking our shelf space or burying our beer. I’m just happy to have any shelf space.
It’s not taking any more or less space, just re-arranging existing product…
And around here, shitty local breweries have displaced some of the stars of craft brewing from shelves…I really miss Anchor Steam, and the old SN Porter…Anything from Saranac, etc.
There is a local TV show about craft beer where they visit different local breweries.
They were interviewing a brewer who was talking about expanding into new markets.
The distributors don’t want another IPA or pale ale, or what some would call “normal beer”, so they are sort of forced to push the envelope on ingredients and style.
Just a thought.