Here's a question most of you are too scared to ask or even ponder. Has the quality of beer dropped over the last few years? Suddenly, this idea struck me the other day randomly and it got me to thinking about the state of the craft beer world. If you read our previous article you found out about the shocking trend of breweries closing across the United States and parts around the world. We went into many different factors that have contributed to this, but could the most obvious reason be right in front of our noses...literally? Has the quality of beer declined in the last few years?
Let's start with the ever popular and ever controversial hazy IPA. I remember years ago dishing out 5 star ratings to these beers like it was no one's business. Looking back now, I can't remember the last hazy or New England IPA I gave a 5 to! That one popular beer rating app is in no way a deciding factor on whether or not a beer is good or not, but it really got me thinking. Is it me or is there some other reason?
Let's figure this out by staying with the hazy IPA as it's the perfect example. I remember years back when the haze craze first started and haze bros lined up at 6am for the newest milkshake IPA or triple hazy IPA. Well those lines are mostly a memory now, but the hazy IPA remains. However, they just tasted better back then didn't they? The the camaraderie of the line life and sharing beers with friends might have played a part as well as the joy of scoring the newest release before anyone else.
Now, every brewery has an hazy IPA or in most cases, several hazy IPAs. Most are good too. It's simply not special any more to have a highly sought after hazy IPA. So many brewers have gotten so good at brewing them and the market is so over saturated with those lovely hazy treats that we've all grown accustomed to them. None of them really stick out any more. This all contributes to the mentality that this type of beer has lost quality over the years, in my opinion. Our pallets are searching for that joy we first felt all those years ago making us believe the quality has diminished.
Another great example I can give is a local brewery near THEbreweryauthority's home base. This brewery was one of the first places we had a fresh, hazy IPA straight from a brewery. Obviously, we were blown away with not only the IPAs, but all the beer they produced. A blackberry/jalapeno amber ale?! Crazy! This became our go to local brewery for these reasons. However, over the years we've traveled to many new cities that produced way better beer than our lowly hometown brewery. After a while our opinion of this brewery changed as we felt the quality was decreasing, to the point where some beers actually sucked. But was this because our eyes had been opened up to the national craft beer scene? Did cities like Portland OR, Burlington, Denver, Asheville and more change our perspective of what a good quality beer was? Or did the quality of the beer actually decrease over the years? Some might go insane pondering the answer.
Could the answer be that quality has shifted over these last few years? Recently we've seen a tremendous increase in traditional styles of beer being made. Those includes various European lagers, Belgians, and more. Years ago those were the styles we would avoid as American brewers (politely saying) had no idea how to brew those beers very well. It's easy to hide a bad beer behind a mountain of hops, lactose, or fruit...but it takes a special brewer to make a high quality Czech pilsner or German helles. It takes more than a good recipe. Water chemistry, quality control, fermentation temperature, carbonation all play into these beers and the final product. It's safe to say that American brewers have vastly improved on these styles.
Another gripe about the state of craft beer nowadays is the lack of ingenuity. Sure, we have refined our brewing practices to create higher quality lagers and other traditional style beers, but where are those ridiculous beer ideas? Let's face it, no one liked glitter beer. However, I respect the risk it took to come out with something so outlandish. I miss those days you walk into a brewery for the first time and you have a beer with basil and peaches or a bacon stout. Hell I've even tried a rosemary and onion beer! Were they all winners? Absolutely not but that was the fun! Now it seems everyone has the same styles up and down their menu board. Drinking the same styles over and over for years with not much variation drives down our opinions of those beers.
Conclusion
Seems as though the answer to the question, does craft beer suck lately, is a complicated one. In my opinion the fun days part of the craft beer days are gone, but at the same time the quality has improved vastly. It's improved so much that our perspective has changed to point where it can't get any better. Someone needs to come along and push that barrier down again with some risk taking. This could be a new style, a new adjunct, a new brewing process, or whatever! Lucky thing about the craft beer world is that it's always changing and we are most certainly in one of the most revolutionary time periods of this industry's young life.
What is your opinion? Has craft beer sucked lately? Has it gotten better? Have our palates adapted to crave higher quality beers? Make sure to let us know. Thanks for reading.
Cheers
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