This is true. It just means that half of their selection is immediately off the table for me.
I don’t buy them, but they have crowded out some of the beers that I do like and miss. Also, one of my besties works in a muni liquor store and was always forcing them on me. I finally got him to understand that I don’t like IPAs so he gave me a chili mango beer to try instead. It’s an interesting life.
Where I live, if one goes away, 6 others seem to pop up in their place, and the same thing is true for independent coffee shops and bakeries.
Yeah, that’s pretty sad. It’s 2022 and it’s still this way. Like I said, it was like that in 2012, and I thought the trends were shifting, but, no.
One of the things I loved about the Goose Island Clybourn brewery back in the day (I haven’t been there in about eight years now, so pre-inBev, I think), is that their taps had a ton of variety, and plenty of beers not available at the store. You’d have some pale ales (not all IPAs), a few Belgians, multiple stouts (like an oatmeal and an Irish), their American wheat, and then less-known styles like an English mild, or a Finnish sahti, a kölsch, a bitter, a fruit beer, etc. Lots of fun going to that bar, getting a plate of charcuterie, and then tasting whatever new beers they happened to have on tap. There was truly a good selection.
I love IPAs but I want to crucify the guys that developed Citra and Mosaic hops. I don’t like grapefruit and a huge amount of the craft IPAs in this country are using those hops. I have to drink imports to get the Kent Goldings/Fuggles taste I like. I blame the West Coast for this.
But it’s not just Citra and Mosaic – Your Cascades and Centennials, a signature of the Northwest – have that profile, too. It’s all pine and grapefruit to me. I mean, I happen to enjoy it, but, yeah, the classic spicy English Kent Goldings/Fuggles is a bit more difficult to come by with American breweries. Goose Island’s Honker’s Ale is actually supposed to be English style – they use Styrian Goldings. I’m not a big fan of any of the bottled versions I’ve had, but I’ve had some tasty taps of it.
I hear ’ya. Dime a dozen.
I confess: I don’t like any beer. And I drink it - a lot. It’s cold, and good for washing down grub. And gets you feeling happy. Why else would I drink it? So I’ll basically try anything, and some are less-bad than others, but I don’t especially prefer one to another, or even find myself thinking, “huh, that wasn’t so bad, I must remember that one”, no, when I go to the beer store I just buy beers with interesting labels or names, and there’s always plenty of those. I bet some of you are the same.
The only thing I know for sure is, French beer is not very good. (But I’ll still drink it.)
It took me years, but I finally found a kind of beer I actually like: Hefeweizen. Unfortunately it’s not that popular so it’s not always available.
My favorites are porters and mild stouts, so similiar issue with availability.
PNW is very good for those of us who prefer the darker beers–Black Butte Porter is my go-to readily commercially available beer, along with Rogue Hazelnut Brown and Shakespeare Stout. Pretty much any decent microbrewery here will have at least one or two of the darker brews and that makes me happy. Hefeweizens are likewise pretty popular–I’m a bit “meh” on those myself but I can see why people like them.
And guess what the #1 reason is that they don’t last very long.
Yep.
They can’t find employees. Yeah, like people are going to stand in line for a job with irregular hours, that pays minimum wage and has no benefits.
Long time home brewer here.
The math works out to small brewpubs can make a modest living for the owner/brewmeister depending on the location. Even in bumfuck anywhere USA, someone can brew local beer (good or bad) and run an ok small business.
I think that reason for the iniquitousness of Micro Breweries. Stems from
- Beer drinkers are always up to try the local beer
- home brewers going pro is a thing. Start in the garage, get funding, expand – Profit!
- microbreweries with a lot of sweat equity from the owner/braumeister can earn a modest to decent living (with some exceptions doing very well and others going bankrupt
- Macrobrewery beer is pretty lame
American IPA’s are not my thing but they are a major category. Just go to the supermarket and after taking out the selzers, IPA’s and mass market beers, there isn’t a lot left. Me, personally, find that most American hops taste like ass, so the last thing I want to drink is an American superloaded IPA, which to my palate tastes like dank, skunked cat whiz.
Given how expensive alcohol is, can it be cost-effective for a brewpub to brew their own? My initial assumption is no what with all the labor and equipment. However, when I homebrewed it was very reasonable – granted I wasn’t paying for labor. A brewpub has to cover a lot of additional labor, but equipment and ingredients get an economy of scale.
Same here. And while I enjoy IPAs, I don’t usually order them in my old age because they give me a headache when the buzz wears off. It can be disappointing at the restaurants where 7 out of the 10 craft beers are IPAs.
I can remember when Widmer Hefeweizen was the beer to drink in Portland. But that was back in the dark ages before anyone had even heard of IPAs. And Portland and Seattle were pretty much the only cities that even had microbreweries.
Here in South Africa, it was changes in the licensing laws for small breweries. This happened gradually from 2003-2012.
I welcome the boom in micro and craft breweries mainly for one reason: variety. For many years in the US, it seemed mass-produced lagers were the only beer that existed. Now, there’s nothing inherently wrong with lagers. I occasionally drink lagers myself but it would be boring if that continued to be the only style available. Fortunately, there are now dozens to choose from.
IPA’s are okay but I’m rather burned out on them. The one exception is Dogfish Head’s 90 Minute IPA which I think hits the bitter/citrus sweet spot. However, since it’s ABV is 9% it does pack a punch. I prefer stouts, porters, Belgians, brown ales, and Scotch ales.
My beer preferences have slowly but steadily moved from the lagers of my youth to the stoutest stouts I can find. I’ve now gone so far to the dark side that if I can see light through a glass of beer, I know I’ll be bored by it. I’d honestly rather have water than drink beer that doesn’t have all the beer in it. I can only sustain this preference because there are so many craft breweries.
Yeah, I wonder if maybe what we’re seeing with the microbrewery “boom” is the expansion of microbreweries into previously underserved markets, not a new boom.
Around here (where @MandaJo and I both live), the big boom in microbreweries was about 15 years ago. A bunch opened, a bunch closed, and some have stayed in business. The brewpubs that brewed their own have largely ceased to exist by now, and now the area’s got probably a dozen or so actual microbreweries that survived it all.
But other parts of the state/country may not have seen that yet. On vacation, I was surprised to see that nearly every little podunk Alaska town seems to have their own microbrewery, in spite of how difficult it must be to bring in supplies, etc… I’d have expected to see two or three in Anchorage, and then maybe a couple more, but there were dozens. I sort of doubt that’ll last, unless they figure out a way to capitalize on the intense summer tourism demand, and then shutter things for the winter, or something like that.
See, I’m the opposite. My favorite local brewery added a lager to its standard offerings a few years ago and I was over the moon. Now I can always expect to see a number of lighter beers alongside everything else.
I’m sure some of it is regional. Summer (and spring, and most of fall) here is long and miserable, and ‘refreshing’ is an incredibly important component for lots of people. So we get plenty of sours and blondes and ciders and so on.