$18/750ml isn’t a bad price in today’s beer market for sour beer although any price is too much for lousy beer.
Mainly this, I had favourite beers I knew well, but they’ve been pushed to the side for constantly rotating microbrews that, while being labelled “porter” could be insufficiently roasty, or too sweet, too hoppy, simply poor quality, anything.
I know roughly what I want, and it’ll be a lot cheaper than buying beer.
Preaching to the converted, I know. But it feels like commercial beer is worse than ever, cause we had a taste of peak microbrewing and it’s gone downhill since.
Dude, I feel like I’ve come full circle to this. I was this way back when I started brewing. Had only my own beer on tap and dirty thirties of Peebs in the fridge. Got back into craft beer a while after that and now I feel like the OP and Ken…just nothing is appealing and it’s all way too expensive. Now I’m back to PBR or Hamm’s for the most part. I did get my yearly stash of Oktoberfests from Costco this week though. Looking forward to those.
I guess I’ll add… no one is really brewing much that I want to drink - helles, kolsch, vienna lager, hefeweizen, bitter, witbier, oatmeal stout, brown porter. Maybe these styles exist elsewhere, but here in Iowa, you really can’t find them much. It’s all hazy something or other, or it has fruit, or it’s a peanut butter porter (what in the actual f*ck…), or some freakin’ shandy or sour. Ugh, Craft beer, come on! I will say, I’m seeing a resurgence in pilsners, but they’re all way too hoppy, way too bitter, and have very little malt character. Surly Hell anyone? (Yeah, that’s not a helles, probably not even a lager).
Sorry for the rant…
I think it’s location. No problem with variety around here. Sure, there are lots of weird beers, but there are also lots of straight ahead beer flavored beers, too.
Depending on the month I can easily find at a couple these (“helles, kolsch, vienna lager, hefeweizen, bitter, witbier, oatmeal stout, brown porter”) on tap in Urbandale, IA at the same time. Of course they are in my keg fridge in the basement. ;D
Iowa has a large number of breweries but they all want to chase the current fads. Even before COVID and land hurricanes I didn’t go to very many of the tap houses. They’re too crowded, to loud, too many young’uns, too many IPAs and I’m too old.
Paul
The availability of craft beer styles is certainly regional. I have found in my U.S. travels that some parts of the country are a little behind others in trends. For example I really enjoyed a lager resurgence in both Portland, OR, and Denver. It is slowly getting to Tampa now. We’ve got a couple of locals who do kettle sours and fruit-base Imperial stouts, but I rarely buy them. When the conference was in Rhode Island last year, I had trouble finding anything that was not a hazy IPA.
Unfortunately breweries get paid to sell beer not make beer. Market forces and all that…
I’d rather they asked ME what they should brew, but alas.
+1, what can I say. I wish some would stop attempting to hush/disagree with people expressing these feelings. “but over here you can drink whatever you want…”
its almost impossible to get a half decent stout in cans even now in ontario. seriously.
in my experience - >
this is the issue. canadian microbreweries care overly about the bottom line, and i know exactly why they make so many cream ales, lame kettle sours, session IPAs and “craft lagers”. they are cheap and quick to throw out. i see so many obvious LOW LOW OG beers, only reaching mid 4% ABV by having very low FGs. overcarbonated and crappy hops used. and sky high prices.
i dont want any sour because you dont have the skill to make a good one
i dont want an IPA of any kind because i am completely sick of them
i dont want a fake craft lager because they are incredibly boring, verging on bad and are twice the price of a decent macro ale.
its worse than ever before really.
At one time, I would agree with you, what package good stores (a.k.a. liquor stores around here because one has to hold a license to sell spirits to sell beer) are stocking has changed. Craft lager has all, but disappeared. Even quality European lager has been pared done to one or two brands. One usually has a choice between mega lager and hop stunt beers that taste like one is sucking on hop pellets. An amazing thing about this over-hopped ale craze is that I have been able to find Big Foot in two separate local stores this summer. Apparently, Millennials have yet to discover Big Foot.
Speaking of Victory, the brewers who started Victory apprenticed at the Baltimore Brewing Company (BBC) under Theo DeGroen. DeGroen trained in Germany.
I have no doubt that’s true for you, but itee very different here. That’s why it’s difficult to generalize one way or the other
Well, I did the happy dance earlier this week when a local store received Sierra Nevada Octoberfest. For as good as Sierra Nevada is for an ale brewer, they can make exceptional lagers if they chose to do so. Their Octoberfest made me stop pining for their Pale Bock (later named Glissade Golden Bock). What was interesting was that Sierra Nevada Pale Bock had to carry the label “malt liquor” because beers over 6% were classified as malt liquor in many states. Now, a 6% beer is nothing.
Luckily, many outdated beer laws have gone the way of the dodo bird. The main reason why a lot of the early micros failed was because they could only grow to a certain size before they needed to get into the distribution channel, which was next to impossible to do because AB pretty much owned the distribution channel. Well, they technically did not own the distributors because that would violate the tree-tier system that was put into place after Prohibition ended. However, AB had such a heavy lock on the average beer drinker that no distributor would dare risk infuriating AB. It was not until Red Hook sold a 25% ownership to AB that things started to loosen up distribution-wise. The AB lock on distribution was so strong that that was the only way Red Hook could get into the established distribution channel.
My beloved euro section was decimated. I have a choice between about five british bitter type beers now, none of them really what i want, three by one company. there is no attempt to bring in unusual stuff on occasion or seasonally anymore.
By mega lager you mean a strong lager right?
Many people are saying it has changed. Might need to sound off where we are located to illustrate. Here - Ontario.
I get what you’re saying, in that I don’t love all of the popular styles at the moment. Lactose in IPA and fruited kettle sours are not my thing at all. On the other hand, I absolutely love that 50% + of the shelf space in the craft section is dedicated to local beer. I will still buy the classics and imports, but most of the time I’d rather drink local beer that I know is fresh and support the breweries in my area. If I want the “1000 beers from around the world” selection, there are still liquor stores that do that. Usually not as fresh but I’d bet the supply chain has improved drastically since the 90s and it’s still an improvement.
I don’t feel that lagers are that hard to find. If anything, they’ve had a moment in the past 5 years after being made poorly in the early American craft days and then being completely ignored for a while. I’m drinking a Troegs Sunshine Pilsner from Hershey, PA at the moment, which is very well made and, at $18 for a 12 pack, is a relative steal. Other breweries making good lagers near central Maryland are Victory, Key Brewing, Union, and even Flying Dog. Jack’s Abbey in western mass distributes nearby and makes mostly lagers, and I actually had one of my favorite Pilsners in recent times from Trillium, of all places, when we stopped in for hazy IPAS on the way to home brew con last year.
Narvin, you must have heard that Jack’s Abby was in western Ma from a Boston native who thinks anything west of rt128 is “western Mass”. It’s in Framingham, very firmly east, and they do indeed make some excellent and affordable lagers.
Nope, I just mixed it up with other places I’d been to when visiting relatives in Northampton. I knew we hit it at some point last year between Vermont and Providence, but I thought it was at least west of Sturbridge.
Mega lager = lager brewed by mega brewers (a.k.a. Bud, Miller, Coors)
Wow! You and I are locals. I kind of knew it when you used the term “liquor store.” That tends to be a Maryland thing because most of the states around us allow beer to sold in stores that do not have licenses to sell spirits.
I agree that local liquor stores stock a lot of local craft beer. It is that is mostly strong, highly-hopped ale. Victory’s Prima Pils is a good lager, but the guys who founded Victory learned the craft under Theo DeGroen at the Baltimore Brewing Company (BBC). Theo received his training in Germany.
That being said, I consider Flying Dog to be a transplant from Colorado whereas Heavy Seas/Clipper City Brewing is about as local as local can get (plus, Flying Dog has more than its fair share of stunt beers). Hugh Sisson was to the person responsible for getting brewpubs localized in the state. Sisson’s Pub was the first brewpub in Maryland since Prohibition. A large percentage of local breweries are merely contract brewing with Peabody Heights. After the loss of the BBC and the old G. Heileman (Colt 45) Brewery that used to face I-695, Maryland has become a place where only craft ale is brewed, that is, if we do not count Gordon Biersch and they are not exactly local.
Ha, good point, I’m sure people are confused by why I’m looking for beer at a liquor store.
The breweries in Maryland do mostly follow the national trends. Key Brewing, Manor Hill, and Union all made some of their staples lagers. Some new farm breweries I’ve been to focus on lagers as well as ales, like Inverness and Slate Farm. It seems like if I go to a breweries tap room these days, I can usually find at least one lager. Not all are good, but it seems better to me than it did during the “big beer” craze of the 2000s.
There is a Craft Beer and Brewing podcast with Andy Ferrell from Bells talking about developing Light Hearted Ale. Scaling down Two Hearted resulted in a beer with a “hollow” middle. That was fixed by adding Munich malt to the recipe.