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Has anybody gotten fed up with all the ridiculous and awful microbrew ales? There are about 200 gazillion microbrews all over the place and 99.999% of them all seem to make make the same ales. And these are almost always unbalanced, over-hopped, bitter bile. Seems like they're in a race to see who can make the hoppiest and highest EtOH while and all the moronic yuppies and hipsters just suck it up. And even worse, when fall rolls around they take their IPA, dial up the malt a little, and call it an "Oktoberfest" "in the style of Munich." In Munich they'd puke on that stuff.
I think reason is that neither the hipsters not their brewMASTERS have ever been to Germany or the Czech Republic. In these places they haven't forgotten how to make lager - apparently a skill too difficult &/or expensive for the microbrewers. I'd rather drink Pilsener Urquel out of a bottle than the "fresh" ale at any of my 4 local microbrews. Or any microbrew, for that matter.
I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore. There, I said it.
I am sorry that you have no option besides incompetent and/or deceptive small breweries around you. But to say that this is the standard for microbreweries is like saying you are fed up with independently owned restaurants because thy all make terrible food and you will only be eating at Applebee's from now on.
Yeah sorry about your luck. We have GREAT local breweries around here and Scottish Ale from Kettlehouse (Coldsmoke), is some of the best beer I've ever tasted. A lot of these guys HAVE studied in Germany, Belgium and other places in Europe and have really developed a fine craft here in Montana. They also have a BOUNTY of fresh ingredients right here in Montana- they can select grains from the finest producers and local hops grown to their liking. There is something to be said about living in a producer state like Montana!
The Lewis and Clark B2W is an awesome Weizenbock, and their seasonals are just fantastic. I love to go the tasting room and get a fresh growler on Friday nights.
I hope I never have to settle for that p*ss water that Coors, AB or Miller produce ever again. Bleech.
Sorry guys, I'm not buying it. I've had microbrews all over the country. I live in NY and we have a bunch of very highly regarded microbreweries. I've had them in the east, the west and the south (sorry midwest). They all do ales, I can't recall a single exception.
If you think that ale is the pinnacle of the brewer's art, then no problem. You're good to go. But if you can cite even a single microbrewery that does lagers then tell me about about it. What's most amazing to me is that Sam Adams, which used to be a microbrewery back in the day, does brew some lagers. And guess what? They somehow manage to make them taste like ales. What say ye to that?
Well, lagers are fine and dandy and all, but it's a very small subset of beers, and there just isn't a whole lot of "wiggle room" with them. Craft brewers can make tiny variations on lagers, but if they can only make tiny adjustments, why would they bother? Pilsner Urquel already exists. The best they can do is make something that people will compare to Pilsner Urquel or another well-known lager.
It's kind of like trying to open a burger place, but instead of unique, original burgers, all you do is tiny variations of the Whopper or the Big Mac. You could say "hey, my Whooper is better than the real Whopper!" or "try my Big Mark! It's better than the Big Mac!" or "I don't have a Happy Meal! I have an Ecstatic Meal!"
Small microbreweries aren't normally going to make lagers. Lagers, be definition, require fermention at lower temperatures than ales. They also have to ferment longer. Assuming that a small brewery has the ability tto regulate temperatures low enough to make lagers, it may still not make sense to tie up a fermention vessel for the extended time it takes to lager a batch when that same fermenter could make two batches of pale ale or Witbier.
BTW, I agree with you 100% about small brewers going overboard on hops. For some (unknown) reason they all seem to think people want to drink an IPA. I seriously dislike almost every IPA I have ever tasted. I's just too much hop flavor for me.
An Octoberfest requires specific grains to even come close to the right flavor. Munich malts are not anywhere close to something you can get by "upping" the malts a little.
Sam Adams makes lot of different beers. Personally, I don't care for Boston Lager or ANY of their IPA offerings. However, their sessonsl beers sre mostly top notch. Octoberfest, Pumpkin Ale, Cold Snap, Escape Route, Noble Pils, Blackberry Witbier, and a few I can't think of right now are great specialty beers.
If you think that ale is the pinnacle of the brewer's art, then no problem. You're good to go. But if you can cite even a single microbrewery that does lagers then tell me about about it. What's most amazing to me is that Sam Adams, which used to be a microbrewery back in the day, does brew some lagers. And guess what? They somehow manage to make them taste like ales. What say ye to that?
Starr Hill Jomo Lager is pretty good out of Charlottesville, VA.
Has anybody gotten fed up with all the ridiculous and awful microbrew ales? There are about 200 gazillion microbrews all over the place and 99.999% of them all seem to make make the same ales. And these are almost always unbalanced, over-hopped, bitter bile. Seems like they're in a race to see who can make the hoppiest and highest EtOH while and all the moronic yuppies and hipsters just suck it up. And even worse, when fall rolls around they take their IPA, dial up the malt a little, and call it an "Oktoberfest" "in the style of Munich." In Munich they'd puke on that stuff.
No.
There are plenty of fine beers out there. Why should I if I don't like most of them? I just enjoy tyhe ones I do like. It's like whining that you don't like 99% of the books in a library - what, the 1% (thousands of books) aren't enough for you? So it is at the liquor store. Between the liquor and wine and beer and whatnot, there's a thousand or so varieties. Thanks, the couple dozen or so that I like are more than enough for me.
Quote:
I think reason is that neither the hipsters not their brewMASTERS have ever been to Germany or the Czech Republic. In these places they haven't forgotten how to make lager - apparently a skill too difficult &/or expensive for the microbrewers. I'd rather drink Pilsener Urquel out of a bottle than the "fresh" ale at any of my 4 local microbrews. Or any microbrew, for that matter.
I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore. There, I said it.
You're hopelessly confused if you're comparing lagers to ales. That's like comparing whiskey to gin. They're really very different animals.
Oh - I also don't give a damn what they'd think in Germany. I drink to enjoy what I like, not to impress someone on the other side of the world. The notion that there's a right way to make a beer and a wrong way is only so much self-absorption.
Well, lagers are fine and dandy and all, but it's a very small subset of beers, and there just isn't a whole lot of "wiggle room" with them. Craft brewers can make tiny variations on lagers, but if they can only make tiny adjustments, why would they bother? Pilsner Urquel already exists. The best they can do is make something that people will compare to Pilsner Urquel or another well-known lager.
It's kind of like trying to open a burger place, but instead of unique, original burgers, all you do is tiny variations of the Whopper or the Big Mac. You could say "hey, my Whooper is better than the real Whopper!" or "try my Big Mark! It's better than the Big Mac!" or "I don't have a Happy Meal! I have an Ecstatic Meal!"
But why would you bother?
Why do they bother with the ales? bother? About every possible permutation of microbrew ale already exists too, and that doesn't stop them. And, in fact, they are all pretty generic - the offerings of microbrewery A are virtually identical to microbrewery B, and all are ALES. That's cause they're all made in more or less the same equipment. Lagers take more time, more equipment, more storage and generally more expense. It's a matter of $$. Why should the little guys invest in that when they have so many so-called connoisseurs convinced that their over-hopped ales are so wonderful?
But back to the lagers. There's LOTS of wiggle room, every bit as much as the ales. Ever travel around in Germany, Czech Republic or Austria? I think not, because if you had you wouldn't be saying this. There are countless local breweries, precisely analogous to our microbreweries. And they ALL serve up lagers, none of which is a clone of another. Moreover, none of them resembles the exported stuff we see cause it's fresh. None of them even remotely resembles any of the lagers I've had domestically. Ironically Becks comes closest to that category (Becks Sapphire most of all), and for years Becks has been made in the USA. So it's possible.
In the USA the choices actually suck. I boil it down to essentially the following:
[I'm excluding the all the ridiculous flavored & spiced Belgian-style brews and guys making $10/bottle high gravity, sipping stuff. That isn't even really beer IMO, it's something else. Also excluded are the Mexican beers apart from Negra Modella which stands out as a rare exception.]
We have all the pointless, high-volume tasteless lagers: Bud, Coors etc, including all their "lite" versions. some are national, others regional.
The microbrews, all of which make nothing but over-bitter, over-hopped, under-malted ales.
Imported pilseners (the German and Czech being most widely available)
If the guys doing 2 started to do 3 they might convince the people that drink 1 that there's something else worthwhile that isn't just more of the same 2. Or are you seriously saying that 1 and 3 are just fine? Put differently, if more Americans knew what a good, fresh, locally made pils tasted like then our lives would be better.
Has anybody gotten fed up with all the ridiculous and awful microbrew ales? There are about 200 gazillion microbrews all over the place and 99.999% of them all seem to make make the same ales. And these are almost always unbalanced, over-hopped, bitter bile. Seems like they're in a race to see who can make the hoppiest and highest EtOH while and all the moronic yuppies and hipsters just suck it up. And even worse, when fall rolls around they take their IPA, dial up the malt a little, and call it an "Oktoberfest" "in the style of Munich." In Munich they'd puke on that stuff.
I think reason is that neither the hipsters not their brewMASTERS have ever been to Germany or the Czech Republic. In these places they haven't forgotten how to make lager - apparently a skill too difficult &/or expensive for the microbrewers. I'd rather drink Pilsener Urquel out of a bottle than the "fresh" ale at any of my 4 local microbrews. Or any microbrew, for that matter.
I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore. There, I said it.
So don't drink them. And take a chill pill.
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