BeerBorg

The past couple years, lets face it small craft breweries are exploding onto the scene. You guys ever get the feeling some of them might simply be doing it to jump on the wagon at the chance for a quick buck while not really having it all together? I have been to several of these new breweries in my area recently that just do not seem to offer much that would have me saying "wow, this is great" or anything that would make me come back for. Maybe the regular patrons are not as keen to the different styles out there or what the beer styles should resemble but us as brewers we know better.

Lets take my experience this past Saturday. A buddy and I stopped in at a place that has only been open a couple months if that. I ordered a flight, they had 7 beers on tap. They had what I can say was a Blonde Ale, some Slavic Beverage with Rye, a mild Pale Ale, a Scottish Ale, a Red Ale, an IPA and a Porter. Aside from the Slavic beverage which I know nothing about, none of them fit the description of what they were claiming to be. I guess the Blonde maybe, you know an extremely light, crisp lawnmower beer...wow, exciting. None of them were flawed as in off flavors, infection, poor fermentation...etc. But, they all were waaaaaaaaay to light and lacking complexity and flavor. It's like they took one base beer, like the Blonde and added different specialty grains and hops to make different beers. The Scottish Ale was as dry and crisp as the Blonde Ale. The Porter was only a dark reddish Brown at best, the IPA had hop flavor but no bitterness punch what so ever. I'm willing to give any brewery a 2nd or 3rd chance and come back to them at a later time but I've seen this over and over as of lately. The sad part is the owners have been home brewers for over 20 yrs...so you should at least know something about styles and recipe formulation. I got the feeling that everyone of these beers were brewed with the same, low mash temp. The Scottish Ale and Porter, even the Red Ale and IPA needed body, they had zero mouthfeel. The Porter had a slight toasty character, but was missing any roast to make it a Porter. They were all drinkable, but only because I had to pay for them. The beers need some serious recipe tweaks.

How about you guys, anyone else seeing anything like this in there area. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of great breweries in my area but some not so much. I feel when these guys go all out like this, which this place did. It was like a $3 million project. Nice brand new building, beautiful pre-packaged brewery, the food was really damn good but once the real beer lovers come in and check them out, what is there to keep them coming back if your beer kind of sucks?

In Utah, there are a few established microbreweries. Considering the demographics in the state, I doubt if there's a lot of room for more entries into the fray.

I travel to Northern VA pretty often, and there are more breweries there, and more room for growth, as well.

I suspect that a micro/nano/pico brewery that doesn't have good products to sell won't last.

I was at a nonobrewery in VA last week. I bought a flight of what they had on tap. Two IPAs, a kolsch and an imperial stout. All were good, and I got a growler of the stout to take back to the hotel. The next time I visit, they will probably have completely different offerings.

We had a brewery who's "gimmick" was to open ferment and let their beer get infected by our local bugs. And I don't mean sour styles. I mean every style of beer they made.

Unfortunately where we live is not Flanders. Our wild bugs do not usually make good beer. I'm lucky (I guess) in that my house is infected with so much Brett C that it outcompetes any of our local bugs, so worst case I get pinapple and hay beer that I actually like to drink. But they didn't have that, they just had whatever blew in from the dead fish rotting on the shores of the Eerie lake or something. And they used hops. Lots of hops. And other stuff that doesn't belong in sours. At least not if you want to drink them.

So they capped their beer with wax to make it look all fancy and said it was special because of the local flavors and sold it in some local groceries who got it because you know sours were supposed to be cool and all that.

The reality was that all their beer had this horrible thing going on - a bad sour not a good sour thing - you know, beer with lots of hops + lacto sour + I got infected with pedio and other weird shit but nobody aged me for 2 years, so I have a background flavor that is best described as "I burped an puke came out my nose" general bleah.

Luckily they no longer exist.

Compare that to these 2 dudes who ran a Pico out of their garage near Seattle last time I was there. They made English beers. And their beers were great. They didn't do something stupid like "lets try to make sour beer out of every style because sour is cool". They made beer like you could get in a pub across the pond but not here (at least not fresh).

If your gonna do it - be those 2 dudes. Not sour dude.

This is coming from someone who LIKES sours. But what they did wasn't making sours. I was *$&*ing up perfectly good beer by doing it wrong.

Yes,the waters have been muddied. Not every microbrew is good. It is similar to Mom and Pop pizza joints. Just because it's crafty and local doesn't mean it's better or even good.

We have a place up the road. Their beers are just bland. I don't know if they're old or what. Great food and the place is always packed, but the beers are just bad. They do have a nice stout and their IPA is on the low end of APA. It isn't too bad if you think APA or even a darker Blonde Ale when you drink one. That's just bad.

MadBrewer wrote:The sad part is the owners have been home brewers for over 20 yrs...so you should at least know something about styles and recipe formulation. I got the feeling that everyone of these beers were brewed with the same, low mash temp.

This actually may be the root of the problem. They've been home brewers for over 20 years. But they may not be educated Master Brewers. They may have been brewing what they like all this time, and never going beyond their comfort zone as far as styles, ingredients, process, etc. And they may have grown a bit lazy, especially if they've been getting consistent results. It's possible they're mistaking being stuck in a rut for being in a groove.

mashani wrote:We had a brewery who's "gimmick" was to open ferment and let their beer get infected by our local bugs. And I don't mean sour styles. I mean every style of beer they made.

Who was doing that? A place in the Flats @ The Powerhouse?

FedoraDave wrote:

MadBrewer wrote:The sad part is the owners have been home brewers for over 20 yrs...so you should at least know something about styles and recipe formulation. I got the feeling that everyone of these beers were brewed with the same, low mash temp.

This actually may be the root of the problem. They've been home brewers for over 20 years. But they may not be educated Master Brewers. They may have been brewing what they like all this time, and never going beyond their comfort zone as far as styles, ingredients, process, etc. And they may have grown a bit lazy, especially if they've been getting consistent results. It's possible they're mistaking being stuck in a rut for being in a groove.

I think this is a big part of the problem. I feel the baseline mash temp might be a "getting a feel for the new system" kind of thing. But, it's a fully functional professional small brewery they put in place. I'm not sure what size but I would hope they are able to program different mash temps. Hopefully it's something they get worked out.

Pudge wrote:Yes,the waters have been muddied. Not every microbrew is good. It is similar to Mom and Pop pizza joints. Just because it's crafty and local doesn't mean it's better or even good.

Yes, this is true. But you want them to be good. The thing that got me the most with these beers is like I said it's like they were just different colored, flavored versions of the same beer. It was bad.

mashani wrote:If your gonna do it - be those 2 dudes. Not sour dude.

I would also be like "those 2 dudes". Out of the other breweries that popped up in my area there is one that has been established for a while. Nice place in the center of Downtown. Great food, nice environment. The beers were "good", they all have fancy names and most of them were high abv...that's their thing. Better than the others in the area but still nothing WOW, at least for my tastes.

There's a place that opened up a couple years ago right in the center of a small downtown area. Perfect location on a strip if you will. Nice building, kind of a storefront. Food was good, I was in there a couple times but that was it. Their beers were also just ok, seemed like they never had anything special. They had a few signature beers that seemed like the brewers go to home recipes but eh. The thing keeping them going is they also have a bar and they do music on the weekends. The place stays packed. Maybe they are tasting a little better nowadays.

Then there is this new tiny little tasting room on the outside skirt of the downtown area. They seem to focus on solid straight forward styles. They have some decent beers. They had a Brown Porter at a Brewfest that I kept going back to over and over. They do not do any food other than snacks. They have a limited seating area...there's a lot of standing around. But they seem to be doing their thing and as far as the beers seem to have the most idea of what they are doing.

Let me talk about one of the worse cases I've seen. There was this place that opened up several years back. Another large, store front kind of place right in the downtown area of my own neighborhood. All new equipment, huge restaurant, long full bar open view to the brewery. Very nice setup. I was there on the opening week. It was a hot August night, they were not running the AC. Do not know if it was because it was broke or maybe they were cheap. But imagine sitting in a busy bar/restaurant/brewery on a hot August night...comfy huh? I can forgive that if the AC was broke, but who knows. So we go to order some beers and they actually DO NOT have any of their own beers ready! Wait, what? On top of that, what made it worse the young girl taking our orders didn't even have a clue what she did have to offer me, instead. Anything I asked about she had to "go check" or ask about it. So we ate and had a beer and left. I never went back, and this place was right in my own backyard. How many others did the same? How are you going to open and not have any of your own beers ready in the opening week? On top of that I heard horror stories, everyone that would drink there would get headaches, probably from Fusels I would guess.

This place was open exactly 11 months from start to finish. In an area that would make it a gold mind. The guy got in trouble with debt, he got shut down by the city...it was just a mess. I'm really not one to complain, but when it comes to things like this it's a case of you gotta have your shit together. Another guy that went all in at the beginning and flopped. Luckily in my area, it is not overly saturated with breweries yet. They are popping up, but there is plenty of room for more...and better ones hopefully.

Dawg LB Steve wrote: Who was doing that? A place in the Flats @ The Powerhouse?

I don't want to name names but I think their brewery/tap room was near "Asia Town". I never went to it. I had samples of many of their bottled beers over a few year period at various beer tastings at my local grocery store. Every of them was like I described. For some reason that I don't understand some folks would claim they liked them. Some kind of hipster thing - IE "Sour beer is cool, so if it's sour it must be good, even if it is supposed to be an APA or IPA or Porter and it has a strong flavor of baby puke." If I had entered any of the stuff I tasted into some comp, I'd expect the judges to say "sir, your beer is horribly infected" and spank my score.

Maybe when very fresh their beer was good or at least "OK" to drink, IE if you got it right at the tap room before the infection really got going in it. But in the bottle with any age (IE the stuff that sat at the grocery store), it was just nasty. They somehow stayed in business for many years. I don't understand.

Baby puke huh? Not sure adult puke would be any better.
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Beer-lord wrote:Baby puke huh? Not sure adult puke would be any better.

Oh, I see. Another puke snob. Can't we all just get along?

MadBrewer wrote: How about you guys, anyone else seeing anything like this in there area. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of great breweries in my area but some not so much. I feel when these guys go all out like this, which this place did. It was like a $3 million project. Nice brand new building, beautiful pre-packaged brewery, the food was really damn good but once the real beer lovers come in and check them out, what is there to keep them coming back if your beer kind of sucks?

No, I'm not seeing anything like this in my area. Last new brewery I visited opened in January, ex-brewer from Elysian. Opened in a dumpy old historic building in downtown Seattle. No food, just a bunch of delicious beers.
Another little place opened up near me this year as well. Taproom & grill; they have two house brews they have contract brewed for them by Lazy Boy Brewing in Everett, WA. The rest are guest taps from a bunch of local & NW breweries. I remember one of the house ales is called 'JP's Mediocrity IPA'. The other is 'JP's Insignificance Red Ale'. Well played JP!