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Tuesday, January 10, 2012

You don't realize how lucky you have it...

I was going to finish out the cellaring series today, but instead I came across this thread on Beer Advocate and it broke my brain so instead I am going to rant a bit.

The first image that popped up on Google
when you type overrated beer. Original here.
You don't realize how good we have it right now in the beer world. Blue laws are crumbling and giving way to common sense, new breweries are springing up every day across the country, we have a more diverse selection of brews to choose from than ever before in history. We have brewers that are stretching the boundaries of beer, creating new styles, resurrecting old styles from historical and archaeological evidence. We are entering a new golden age of beer while at the same time the craft beer movement is preparing for its biggest fight yet, but now people have to complain about "Who's overrated." So much for appreciation.

One this blog we have two hard and fast tenets.

1. There is a time and place for every beer.
2. Beer should always be approachable.

I tell you this because while people can slag on Bells, Mikkeller, Jolly Pumpkin, etc. for a variety of reasons they can't fault them for not expanding the our selection or experimenting with new,cool flavors and styles, and in today's beer world that is what is really important. These guys were and are pioneers and leaders bringing us back to some semblance of not only what we had 78 years ago before it was all taken away but introducing new things that wouldn't have even been available to us even then.  I'm not saying that they are excused from critique or beer criticism, but here is the thing they just may listen if it is well-reasoned and logical. They are not MillerCoors or Anheuser-Busch InBev who could frankly give a shit what you the beer drinker think.

Thank you Dogfish Head, thank you Avery, thank you Sierra Nevada, and to every other craft brewer out busting your hump to slake our thirsts. I may not always like your brews but I'll always try them once and I sure do appreciate the fact that you are making them and the choices you give me.

If you think they are overrated then piss off and crawl back in your hole. It just leaves more for me.

3 comments:

  1. I, for one, am not ready to go back into the darkness, to the period when we only had choices amongst shades of grey. Are all of the beers coming out from small brewers outstanding? No, there is room for judgement, critique and improvement. But one thing that is clear is that we have not had the breadth of variety, the span of choices, that we have now. The market will sort out what is good, what is popular and what is overrated.

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  2. In my mind there are very few "overrated" beers and they are exclusively in the domain of the large industrial brewers. These are the Coors Lights, the Miller Genuine Drafts, and Budweisers of the world. They are overrated due to the artificial playing field they had created, there was no competition nor was there an educated, savvy beer consumer.

    Even now they still control a disproportional share of the market. That in my mind is an "overrated" beer.

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  3. I have to honestly say, growing up in a small country town, the big beer companies were all I knew. However, since spreading my wings at age 21, I have found new and exciting brews that I love to drink. After turning to brewers like Dogfish and other micro brews, I agree with Skye. I may not always like them, but part of the fun is trying new flavored. A prime example is Rid a la m'ale, I would never think of drinking a beer with vanilla in it. It's strange but it grows on you. Main stream beers are what I grew up on, but after tasting the treats that smaller brewers can create, I have learned to taste before I critique.

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