Beer in the new era

http://www.weyerbacher.com/cwo_images/image20.jpg

presentation is important - i want my beer to look good - im into how things look

^^^^ "designer"

that's why u should pour it into a glass, looks best then

fuck, good-looking american microbrew labels is a much tougher nut to crack.

i like sierra nevada and brooklyn well enough for starters. oh yeah i dig victory labels too.

http://thefullpint.com/pics/stormking.gif

srsly this shit is so classic:

http://www.lovebrew.com/images/Pint_glass_300x509.jpg

Bell's Kzoo stout is one of the best imo, but I am a Ladislav Hanka stan.

http://www.thebarleyblog.com/images/label_kalamazoo_stout.png

my fave labels are basically regular bud, miller high life, rolling rock, red stripe

these might even be better:

http://www.acemart.com/renderImage.image?imageName=graphics/00000001/products/LIB14801.jpg

what do u guys think of ommengang's labels?

http://www.blogaboutbeer.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/11/ommegang.jpg

I like the color

My favorite beer of late has been Firestone Walker CPA. On sale at Whole Foods, and very tasty.

[see the thing that kinda gets my goat abt the micro brew culture is so much of it seems to be abt the miutea of the process over the more subjective qualities of flavor and style. add the extreme double bock gracious! crazy ingredients n strong flavors at the expense of subtlety aspect and thats why imo it appeals to dudes so much. also their bottle labels are why so universally awful.

― ice cr?m, Wednesday, April 1, 2009 2:54 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

yea, i can get with this in some ways. right now i'm all about trying to learn more about traditional styles and all that. the american breweries that have most impressed me lately have tended to be the more 'conservative' ones more or less, say great lakes, bell's (tho they have their extremes), ommegang, brooklyn.

but at the same time i appreciate brewers trying to mess around and try out weird new styles. think about it - for like 60 years after prohibition, american beer was boring as shit! before prohibition it was one of the most diverse in the world! i get annoyed at the double IPA HOP OVERLOAD bullshit too but in the end i've got nothing against brewers trying out weird stuff

― mark cl, Wednesday, April 1, 2009 4:05 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

im not against people trying new things - but there seems to be a lack of of discipline and taste operating - maybe the industry just needs time to mature but the whole bro culture thing is really off putting

microbrews too are totally shooting themselves in the foot from a business perspective w/their nerdism when they could appeal to a much wider market w/a more measured approach

its interesting the american wine industry suffers from some of the same flavor bomb problems but have been way more successful marketing their product to a wider audience - some of this im sure has to do w/the fact that theres already a lol hueg american beer industry in the form of bud etc - but still i think micro brews would be all round better off if they grew up a little

my fave labels are basically regular bud, miller high life, rolling rock, red stripe

― rip dom passantino 3/5/09 never forget (max), Wednesday, April 1, 2009 4:15 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yes def love the classic labels - btw this goes beyond design considerations - i mean i dont think anyone would be lol designer abt food presentation - it just plays a huge part in the experience

xp really? i thought microbrews were holding more of the market than ever. there's also production issues to think about--dogfish head can't even fill all of its orders and it only ships to like the northeast and atlantic coast. the really successful microbrews are like full steam ahead right now i think.

yr IPAs in the states are what get the negative comments from us Brits - me among them, that overload of hops just isn't what we order when we order an IPA, we expect a mildly hoppy, well rounded and smooth beer, not something that makes yr mouth do backflips. That said I did have some cracking beers last time I was over - a particular favourite was this one:
http://www.ciscobrewers.com/OnlineStore/images/WhalesTalePintGlass_small.jpg

nice label too.

the pint glass with the bulge is the one for me though as posted above

yeah dude whale's tale is a winner.

as i recall the stats in that nyer article were not that impressive - i mean maybe from their own pov the microbrews are doing well which is certainly fine - i mean i dont at all think businesses are best when theyre as big as they can be - but i do think its inevitable that someday someone is going to look at making high quality beer in america in a diffent light and expand the audience a bunch

The flip side to that is that product can suffer. I hate to keep talking about Bell's but when they started expanding a few years ago (built a whole new brewing complex, started making some of their popular seasonal offerings year-round) a lot of the qualities that drew people to them in the first place suffered.

One that sticks out in my mind is Oberon -- it was a summer yeasty wheat ale, very easy to drink but with a flavor all its own that was unlike German hefes or Belgians or whatever. People used to count down to the day it would go on sale in stores and bars. Then they made it available year round and it lost those flavorful qualities. It got a lot lighter in body and blander in flavor.

This is only one example, of course. In my mind it's always kind of been like indie labels: you have your Merge, Sub Pop, and Touch & Go like Sierra Nevada, Red Hook, and Sam Adams... and then there are the smaller regional labels putting out noise bands and the smaller regional brewers experimenting with crazy ingredients or techniques.

tl;dr - shut up and drink

I bet u label guys would hate 3 Floyd's

disclaimer - i don't know shit about business

but for a relatively young industry (dogfish head and sam adams aren't old at all, compared with the big beer giants a la budweiser), i think they're doing fairly well, esp. considering the near-total market domination the beer giants have had since prohibition

also - dogfish head for example has gained their success precisely by being over-the-top, crazy-ingredient beer nerds. not sure if that's a winning long-term business solution but i doubt they would be such a prominent beer label if they were traditional and/or classy

wrong choice of words re: "classy" but you get my point

semi-interesting stats: http://www.beertown.org/craftbrewing/statistics.html

I like Rogue's Bolshevik aesthetic.

Ska Brewing's labels seem a little too tacky/garish:
http://www.viewpoints.com/images/review/2008/338/12/1228329158-37509_full.jpg

totally agree with dan re: oberon--it was good the first year i tried it and then the next yeah it was kinda bland

I bet u label guys would hate 3 Floyd's

so otm! gumball head has the nastiest label (reminds me of those skin graft records back in the day) but man is it good.

also, is it even reasonable to think that the mass market bud-miller-coors "regular beer consumer" is going to open up to microbrews? IMO they might have a better shot going for the upmarket wine/fancy spirits consumer, cutting into that market, then trying to compete w/ budweiser

i wish more microbreweries were as experimental as dogfish head. most of them are content pumping out IPAs.

any recs for a really interesting micro brand?

For all its success, craft beer has yet to reach the mainstream. Ninety-six per cent of the market—about sixty-seven billion bottles a year—still belongs to non-craft beers and imports. Oliver remembers talking to a brewer at Anheuser-Busch a few years ago, when sales of Michelob had fallen to about a third of a billion bottles a year. “He told me, ‘I wish that brand would just die.’ And that one beer was the size of the entire American craft-brewing industry.” The disparity is partly a function of poor marketing, Ogle argues—craft brewers are still preaching to the converted—and partly of cultural conditioning. Until more Americans wean themselves from ketchup, soda, and other sweet foods, they may never enjoy the taste of hops. “When I talk to people like Sam, I’m constantly amazed at how persuaded they are that everyone drinks craft beer,” she says. “If that’s true, why are they still sitting at four per cent?”

In a decade’s time, Oliver believes, breweries like his could claim a quarter of the market. (Paul Gatza, director of the Brewers Association, predicts something closer to ten per cent in twenty years.) But only if they don’t scare people off first. “The whole idea of extreme beer is bad for craft brewing,” Oliver says. “It doesn’t expand the tent—it shrinks it. If I want someone to taste a beer, and I make it sound outlandish and crazy, there is a certain kind of person who will say, ‘Oh, let me try it.’ But that is a small audience. It’s one that you can build a beer on, but not a movement.”

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/11/24/081124fa_fact_bilger?currentPage=all

otm imo fwiw

Huh, I didn't know that Magic Hat had acquired Pyramid.

xp true, but why is dogfish maxed out? mostly because of 60-minute IPA, a solid mainstream IPA that lots of people like (and gives them license to brew all their weirdo shit). i would really be curious about actual instances of craft brewers "scaring people off."

when people talk about a craft brewer going mainstream, the result is sam adams. which is fine, but i'm not sure if it's "better" than the model they have now except from a moneymaking standpoint.

xxp that is of course assuming that craft brewers want to grow that big

I mean, Larry Bell stopped selling beer in IL, his home state, because his distributor wasn't going to sell any but his top 4 popular brands.

right and i would assume this industry attracts a lot of guys who want a small-ish environment where they have a lot of control, make some money, pay good salaries/benefits to maybe 10-15 people, and live very contentedly. not sure there's much killer instinct in microbrew world.

^^^this

addendum--which is in total contrast to their evangelizing tendencies but if you want to brew beer for a living you might be a little weird anyway

Do Sierra Nevada, Sam Adams, and Red Hook count as microbrews? It's pretty hard to find a bar around here that doesn't sell those beers.

i agree w/ NYer quote in many ways

but take sam adams for instance. straightforward, "grown-up", all-american, nothing quite extreme about them. IMO there's really nothing that's altogether that convincing about sam adams to make an everyday-average-beer-drinker change over from their budweiser or miller.

some of these bros must have grand ambitions

sam adams is boring imo, also their cherry wheat is the worst beer i have ever had

also they all have big beards

xps I would say yes, or at least "independent" in that they're not owned by Parmalat or whatever company just bought A-B.

red hook was owned by anheuser-busch, not sure if that is still true. sierra and sam are both too big for the micro category. but both started small and are probably not going to grow much more (having been around for 30+ years)

a couple of my faves from Europe at the moment - if you see them I can't recommend them highly enough:

http://www.freebase.com/api/trans/image_thumb//guid/9202a8c04000641f8000000008ddef69?maxheight=560&mode=fit&maxwidth=280

from North East France - a really underrated beer region, crazy considering it's basically Flemish like lots of the great Belgians

such as:

http://www.brasseriedelasenne.be/images/zinnebir.jpg

and how's that for a cool label? The de la senne beers are all great and all fantastically labelled.

Do Sierra Nevada, Sam Adams, and Red Hook count as microbrews? It's pretty hard to find a bar around here that doesn't sell those beers.

yea, more or less. i think there is a technical distinction w/ regard to the term "microbrew" but they really have a lot more in common w/ ur average microbrewery than they do w/ anheuser-busch, i.e. they are really pretty small compared w/ the market kings

most sam is boring but sam summer is fuckin tight imo

btw for mark cl: fun midwest micros

Bell's (stan)
3 Floyd's
Great Lakes
Founder's
Atwater Block (newbs outta Detroit)

k according to biz journal A-B owns 35% of red hook.

(point taken re: red hook & AB) xp