"Craft" Beer

Hopefully, this wakes more people up. Always cracks me up when someone shuns BMC and then orders a Blue Moon or Shock Top.

You can shun Budweiser, Millers, and Coors and still enjoy Goose Island brews, and others. If the recipe has not changed the flavor has not changed despite who owns the brewery.
When the recipe is changed you can lump it as BMC

craft beer for me is less if it actually fits into the pure statitics (independant, # of barrels etc) and more the taste and quality.

what is funny is I think a beer like an American Lager like a normal Budweiser etc is one of the hardest types of beer to consistantly brew without great variations in taste etc. There is not a lot to mask/hide like a very malty or hoppy beer.

I am not saying that makes it good, just that just because it is a budweiser doesn’t mean it is somehow a beer that requires less work or effort

still I prefer something a bit more complex (as I would guess everyone on here would).

having said all that, the intent of the actual post and article is funny when folks do think they may be buying some of these beers to support the struggling Mom and Pop brewry.

I agree with fullhousebrew regarding the expanding definition of craft beer. As the ranks of craft beer drinkers expand some of these breweries are getting LARGE. Taste is subjective by definition. I got a kick out of reading the latest BA magazine and finding out the brewer of Boneyard, a cult IPA in the northwest, drinks Busch and Busch Light when at home! :shock:

I’ve been saying for years that “craft” should not be decided by the size of the brewery…it’s all about the quality of what you experience in your glass. These days (especially) it has become painfully obvious that “smaller” is clearly not always “better” with regard to the quality of beer being produced. To me (and to many other ‘good beer’ lovers), the size of the brewery which the beer comes from has little or nothing to do with the decision of which products I might buy in those rare instances where I run out of the homebrewed stuff.

I think it’s a pretty bizarre twist that some really great products get shunned simply because they are classified as “crafty” (made by a large brewery), have become too “mainstream”, or have experienced substantial growth via acquisition. Instead of celebrating their quality or success, many über-geeks tag them as “posers” or even worse, as “sellouts”.
It all just seems so contradictory to me.

Personally I’m getting sick of terms that used to mean “made by hand” turning into marketing BS. “Craft” and to a lesser degree “Artisanal” are just the latest victims.

I’m not saying mass produced beers can’t be good, or even excellent. And I’m not saying all hand made beers are necessarily excellent or even good.

When I travel, I like to look for the smaller mom-and-pops and it just makes it harder when I can’t tell what’s actually local, versus mass produced, but just not available at home.

So yea, I’m done caring about “craft” beer like I’m done carining about “gourmet” pizza.

[quote]I think it’s a pretty bizarre twist that some really great products get shunned simply because they are classified as “crafty” (made by a large brewery), have become too “mainstream”, or have experienced substantial growth via acquisition. Instead of celebrating their quality or success, many über-geeks tag them as “posers” or even worse, as “sellouts”.
It all just seems so contradictory to me.[/quote]

Exactly. A good analogy would come from the music world. I can’t stand when fans of a particular band no longer like or support the band because they “sold out” or became “mainstream”. “I really liked them when they were underground”. Really?? I like music regardless of how popular the band has become or how “calculating” their PR targets a certain demographic.

Same with beer; though I prefer to send my money to true micro-breweries, I drink what I enjoy.

[quote=“JMcK”]Personally I’m getting sick of terms that used to mean “made by hand” turning into marketing BS. “Craft” and to a lesser degree “Artisanal” are just the latest victims.
[/quote]
I make hand-crafted, artisan, rustic, Farmhouse beers. :expressionless:

[quote=“JMcK”]…So yea, I’m done caring about “craft” beer like I’m done carining about “gourmet” pizza.
[/quote]

You, and quite a few other beer lovers I know!
I long for the days where a beer can be judged on it’s own merits, rather than the size of the brewery from whence it came. The whole ‘hype machine’ is becoming rather tiresome.

Thankfully, tere’s more great beer out there than there has ever been…and at least some of it is coming from the larger brewers.
Quality gets my money; pretense and hype doesn’t.

I’m still pissed at Miller for having bought Linenkugel. Liney’s in general weren’t craft, but their seasonal bock (“you can stick a pencil in it” was their ad campaign) was fabulous. After they sold out to Miller, they changed the recipe and trashed what in those days (1988) was a truly great beer when there was slim pickings in the domestic beer market. I wrote them an angry letter - as if they cared - and told them their brewers were going to beer hell for committing such a sin.

[quote=“Ken Lenard”][quote=“JMcK”]Personally I’m getting sick of terms that used to mean “made by hand” turning into marketing BS. “Craft” and to a lesser degree “Artisanal” are just the latest victims.
[/quote]
I make hand-crafted, artisan, rustic, Farmhouse beers. :expressionless: [/quote]

Ken,
I meant no disrespect to true craftsmen, or their products.

I think the titans of should stick to what they are good at, marketing consistent beers to people who don’t care about beer.

[quote=“Mabus”]Hopefully, this wakes more people up. Always cracks me up when someone shuns BMC and then orders a Blue Moon or Shock Top.

[/quote]
So I was in the beer and wine super store; walking up the “craft” aisle, when I see this dude, maybe 95 pounds soaking wet, uncombed hair, soul patch, skinny jeans, and grommets in his ears, turn to his girlfriend (at least I think it was a girl) and say, “So, should we just get one 12-pack of Stella Artois?”

I can tell a fake “craft” beer any day of the week, anyway, without knowing anything about who owns the company. Leinenkugel has been making crappy beer for a long time, and I couldn’t care less if they fit some arbitrarily imposed definition of a “craft” brewery, or how many times the company has changed hands. On the hand, I will say that I think Goose Island’s beers are as good as ever, although they’ve never been quite up there with my favorite breweries, and I don’t think the change in ownership has really had a noticeable impact on the flavor of their products. In fact, back in the days when they were still relatively new, I thought their beers were wildly inconsistent from one year to the next, and they seem to have finally nailed down their recipes only within the last few years, and I have to wonder if the reason for that isn’t precisely because they got bought out by a large company who insisted on getting their products consistent once and for all.
Actually, what’s been pissing me off the most lately within the last year or two is the fact that so many beers that were formerly imported have been picked up as contract brews by ABInbev and other companies, and pawned off as the originals, especially Beck’s. That one really burns me up. That used to be my number one old standby German import that I could get anywhere, and it was always good, and now it’s made in St. Louis by you-know-who with the words “Originated in Bremen” on the label, and it’s been turned into utter piss. Grrrrrrrrrr!!! Man, was I outraged the first time I tried the new version, which was brewed under strict supervision by ABInbev’s most highly trained brewmasters, I’m sure :evil: Most of the Japanese beers are now brewed in the states now, too. And just when I discovered how good the old Sapporo lager actually was, it was picked up by some macro piss factory and totally ruined. And I’m not even gonna get myself going on about the horrible fate of Guinness Extra Stout in the US market.
Anyway, I have to stop myself from ranting on forever on this particular topic :slight_smile: