I call those NAILs…North American Industrial Lager
No matter, obviously just teasing anyway. Cool that you have relatives in NoHo, it’s one of my favorite haunts. A very cool town.
Did you go to Treehouse when you were here?
regarding what someone else said in a way, here in canada we are still denied even the mainstream US-wide big name craft brews. if i ever saw a two hearted ale, i would have bought it. over the past year they’ve had founder’s session IPA, i think an ommegang sour and thats basically it from the super famous US craft breweries available here. It’s still a govt monopoly. you probably get more unibroue than we’re allowed to have here.
anyway, it’s really beer hell here.
After so long of drinking only good beer, it’s crazy tasting stuff like molson ICE or malt liquor. i cant believe i choked that stuff down once to get drunk. it really tastes close to machine grease.
yup we call em nails too lol and if it warms up its a rusty nail
Bear in mind that logistic chains will be particularly screwed at the moment thanks to Covid - as one small example, I know of places here in the UK that have stopped carrying White Labs for the time being because they weren’t happy with delivery times from San Diego. And anything coming from the UK has the possibility of being affected by Brexit preparations - although they only affect exports to the EU directly, it’s taking up all the attention of the entire export-handling chain - and eg stock on hand for export to non-EU will be squeezed by the need for warehouse capacity to absorb delays to the EU. It’s going to be chaos.
Also bear in mind that Greene King and Marstons, the two biggest trad brewers here, have sold out and set up a new brewing JV respectively in the last year or so, so are likely to be changing their distribution arrangements which is never good for continuity.
its been since before covid, but the greene king and marstons thing could be a factor as the liquor board of ontario definitely had their products for a long time.
You don’t get Urban Chestnut or Schlafly in Iowa? At least in Central IL right now I can get an oatmeal stout, helles, and a kolsch from Schalfly. I’ve been seeing some beers disappear from the shelves, but I think that’s mostly limited run/summer seasonals. I’m wondering if we’re going to start seeing the effects of the aluminum shortages.
The UK doesn’t get their White Labs yeast from the Copenhagen location?
We never have gotten Urban Chestnut here and Schlafly is no longer here. Out east, a favorite brewery of mine is Devil’s Backbone. Their Vienna lager is the bomb. Really wish we’d get that here. Just don’t see quality brewed lagers like that much around. We have Millstream here, which makes a decent pilsner. And ReUnion makes good lagers, but aside from that, there’s really nothing in Iowa except the status quo. And I’m so damn tired of hearing about Toppling Goliath. It’s not THAT good people!
I was at my favorite local (tiny) brewery the other night and we were talking about this exact topic.
One of the owners said, “We make and sell all those trendy IPAs so that those people will pay the bills so we get to drink these.” referring to the Saison in his hand and the Marzen in mine.
In my neck of the woods there’s a tiny chain of pubs - Lucky Baldwins - the guy responsible for rehabbing the joints and putting in an incredible beer list was Dave. The Old Town location had 50 some odd taps filled with some of the most unexpected and outrageous stuff (like Cantillon on tap).
He also had a tap of Stella going and I gave him crap about it one night, which is when he made the same point - “this one tap, pays for me to have all of these others on.”
Stella is my go-to beer when I am dealing with a limited selection on tap. It is as consistent as Bud, but tastes at least an order of magnitude better. Heck, I usually chose it over whatever IPA that is on tap. I am so burned out on over-hopped, hazy, milkshake, IPA. However, like many have mentioned, these beers pay the bills. In my humble opinion, IPA is the Millennial equivalent of Bud. There, I said it! Sure, there are very beer aware Millennials, but most do not know anything about beer beyond IPA and sours for Millennial women who do not drink IPA. What is interesting is to share a bottle of Gueuze or other sour Belgian beer with a Millennial who claims to know about sours and watch the expression on his/her face. It is priceless. It is no different than the early microbrew days where American brown, amber ale, and sickly sweet American takes on the Marzen style ruled taps. Bar and Brewpubs are in business to make a profit.
the whole way microbreweries and craft beer bars descended into absolute garbage just reaffirmed to me the fact that i am someone who actually has particular tastes and sadly 90% of people just want to fit in. its the same as it always was, and i should just take my beer where i want to enjoy it and not get my hopes up at all.
also lol nice nod to overly sweet generic dark ales, i remember that. ontario is still doing that, we’re easily ~15 years behind the american scene always. such a joke.
If given the opportunity to drink beer 40 years ago, 20 years ago, 10 years ago, 5 years ago or today, I would choose today every single time. Our choices right now are an embarrassment of riches. Sure, some beers are way overboard, but please don’t talk about the “good ol’ days of craft beer”. We are in them, and they are getting better all the time. Drinking craft beer isn’t about fitting in or IPA’s equaling Bud. People drink craft beer because, for the most part, craft beer is reallly #!!*^!! good.
You know, Andy Rooney never understood Rock and Roll.
Totally agree that we have so much more choice than ever before and I’ve been drinking beer since 1970.
I agree that we have more variety now than ever before, but the marketeers still choose to pigeon hole us.
The “Craft Beer” section in my local SafeWay is shrinking. What’s left is mostly a mix of a million IPAs, the AB Inbev subsidiaries (I refuse), and an ever growing cider and seltzer section. I am fortunate that my favorite local breweries brew a good mix, but a decent American Stout, Dunkel, or Brown Ale is increasingly hard to come by in the beer aisle.
i had a longer reply ready and was about to hit post but my computer crashed.
in short, yes big business is now fully into this. and everything they do is dictated by MONEY.
-seltzers are being pushed because they are CHEAP to make.
-“session” beers are just CHEAPER versions of whatever beer its supposed to resemble. and they are not leaving decent FGs, theyre just lowering the OG entirely.
-these sour/fruity/tangy whatever things seem to be low in alcohol, so again cheaper for them to make and they are hitting a market that previously didnt drink beer.
craft breweries used to be more competent tbh. i tried two dark beers from ontario microbreweries this week, both were flabby underattenuated and gross.
it’s a huge pile of crap out there coming from north america right now.
I agree completely. I also think beer quality is higher than ever. There’s more knowledge easily available now than ever, and more quality equipment (to my limited knowledge). At this point, even homebrewers have access to professional beer analysis, ibu measurements, water analysis, etc. There are homebrewers that have and test for DO (far and few between, but that would’ve been unimaginable 10 years ago). More breweries does mean there’s more of a spread in quality, but I do believe the median quality is higher than it’s ever been.
I do think access has changed in mid level markets as the big boys (SN, New Belgium, Goose Island, etc.) push other breweries out on price/shelf space. On the other hand, go into any GAS STATION in Wisconsin and you can find 2-3 New Glarus offerings (No IPAs).
One the one hand, I agree with all of these points to some degree. I love hop bomb IPA’s, and if I’m bringing a sixer to a buddy’s house or going out to eat there is no shortage of decent-to-excellent local, regional, or national options to choose from. There are countless nano breweries in my area, and the majority are producing good beer.
On the flip side, the signal-to-noise ratio is pretty high. There are too many new breweries to keep track of, and the majority of them are just selling another “me too” IPA unless I go to the brewery and drink on-site. And many beers are one-offs or seasonal. When I first started drinking Microbrew in the 90’s, there were fewer breweries, and they almost always had a diverse, stable line of beers available. It was easy to find your favorite beers, styles, and breweries, even though there were fewer stores that sold a wide selection of craft beer. I like trying new beers or breweries from time to time, but now it seems like the majority of the time that’s all I have to choose from.
So many of the beers and breweries that I grew up on, are either long gone or a chore to find fresh examples. For example, Otter Creek was my favorite brewery until Harpoon took over. I could drink their Copper Ale, Pale Ale and Stovepipe Porter year-round, I looked forward to their Octoberfest each fall, and I could find them cold and fresh locally. Their current beer list on their website consists solely of 4 year-round IPA’s and one seasonal sour. Gone are the ubiquitous amber ales, porters and APA’s that used to be a staple of every brewery’s lineup.
I guess the most telling thing is my own homebrewing. When I started 10 years ago, I brewed IPA’s more than half the time. NEIPA’s weren’t all over the place, and I was chasing something similar. Fast forward 7 or 8 years, and now I rarely brew IPA. I still enjoy IPA and drink it just as often, it’s just that that almost every commercial beer I drink is an IPA. My homebrewing is mainly bitters, brown ales and lagers. It’s not necessarily that I prefer those styles, but it’s mainly because I’m always drinking IPA’s everywhere else.
I still see the lack of variety thing being related to location. Here in IPA Central there are still lots of other choices.
It depends on how one defines the word “quality.” When it comes to beer quality and quality control, AB kicks the crap out of even the biggest craft brewer. While a lot of people on this forum are not fans of AB’s products, I challenge anyone to brew a beer as delicate as Michelob and do it with the same level of consistency from bottle to bottle as AB. Now, factor in the reality that AB ferments at an O.G. of 1.080 and dilutes the finished product to maximize fermentation vessel space and no craft brewery can match their level of precision. It is amazing how well AB can control ester and diketone production while starting with an O.G. of 1.080. A lot of negative things have been said about AB’s claim to age Bud on beech wood chips, but that technique has been used in U.S. since the nineteenth century. Bavarian and Bohemian brewmasters brought the use of “chip casks” to America (chip casks are well documented in the Wahl and Henius book entitled “American Handy-Book of the Brewing, Malting and Auxiliary Trades”). Beechwood chips are a natural clarifying agent because they provide more surface area on which yeast cells can settle.
What craft brewing has done is increase variety; however, that is in danger because businesses are in business to make money, even craft breweries. I think that I mentioned what I experienced last Friday night on this forum. I stopped at well-stocked beer store. There was significant variety, but it was warm due to the beer coolers being completely filled with different shades of IPA. If anyone does not believe that this trend is a problem, they are not paying attention. What almost killed off craft brewing in the nineties was lack of distribution and self space. The fact that this very nice beer store dedicated all of its cooler space to IPA should be troubling to anyone who is paying attention.