Yeah, it"s personal for you, I’ll wear off. Porchbombs will lose their luster.
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Everyone wants their personal opinion to be The Right One. Especially on the interwebs 
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Mea culpa. But the thing is that in my area of Montana the breweries seem to be doing very well. Some are built on the “export” model and some on the “domestic/hometown” use model and both seem to be doing ok. My hometown of Glasgow Montana may be The Middle of Nowhere according to CBS News but it seems to be supporting Busted Knuckle Brewing well enough that it is thriving on the domestic market of just beer drinkers from Valley County. Well, mostly just locals. They have a map showing where people come from and it is well covered with pins.
Juice bomb ipas are along lasting fad that have changed the industry. We just have to hold on. There are some good ones, but i cant drink more than one of so many of these. Seems to be a nascent push back w/the rise of some lagers, pilsner style brews. But, it’s so hard to make a really good lager, it’s much more subtle. Schilling in NH is good as is Notch. I’ve been buying/drinking more Czech beers of late. Harder to find, but percentage wise, I’ve had very few clunkers and they are way more affordable.
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No need to apologize at all. I generally watch from the sidelines bc I don’t care much for pissing matches, online or off.
Also, my comment wasn’t referring to you, specifically, or HO exclusively.
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I mentioned it above, but my all time favorite beer is one that is really hard find done right. I like an excellent pilsener but I do not like a mediocre pilsener. I think the “simplicity” of the beer makes brewing flaws or mediocre ingredients immediately obvious. I love Staropramen or Pilsener Urquel in Czechia but not the export variety so I tend to avoid pilseners altogether now. I love Czech beers but for me they do not travel well, though that may be my own biases manifesting themselves.
I grew up on poorly made mass produced lagers in the 1970’s and avoided them for that reason. I have to start including one in my flights.
I am not a fan of juice bombs or any beer with a “fruit forward” profile, but so far it seems like every brewpub has at least one or two brews I like, possibly because I like most types of IPA and many porters.
How many breweries are within an hour’s drive of you?
That is a good point. Only 6 within a 60 minute drive, i believe, with 7 more between 60 and 90 minutes (mostly Missoula) away.
But 10 years ago that would have only 2 close and 4 medium distance, so we may be reaching the brewery attrition stage soon.
Very few American breweries make a good Czech style pils, the ones I mentioned do. Yup, they dot always travel well from the homeland but at the price they’re getting i buy more than one as an insurance policy.
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Well, I within an hour, I can probably belly up at 60. They all compete at getting cans on the shelves and drinkers through the doors. There’s not much that distinguishes one from another. One only does German styles and another (reviewed here) has a death metal theme. Everything else is pretty fungible.
If it’s a minority, I join you in it. This is why I don’t do flights anymore. Get 4 ozs of something fair, and the rest suck nuts. I conclude that they HAVE to make the tooty fruity, IPAs and vanilla stouts, among the myriad other attempts that scream “this place can’t make a decent lager!” They can’t compete with a basic Urquell, even weak ass Heineken, by any stretch, so they have to make all these “unsafe” but shitty beers. I’m convinced they come in big expensive cans because they know you won’t want a second one. Here’s a few of the greats they’re putting out there.
I’ve concluded that the best things beer is made from are : malt, hops, water, yeast.
Then, once you find a decent one, you realize that same beer, with much better flavor/ingredients comes from somewhere else for a bit cheaper. I love Scotch ale; and a smaller brewer by me makes a respectable one. Then , I try an old stand-by SA, Mcewan’s and it’s cheaper than the one made 2 hours away from me. Mind you the Mcewan’s bottle has nothing on the can from the more local one; but the beer is no-contest better than what is made here.
There is no gooseberry, goat scrotum, vanilla, etc. that can make up the difference between the nice malts they us in : Ireland, Scotland, Belgium, even Norway, among many , many others. I just had a Kirin Ichiban last night that puts 99% of beers in the US to absolute shame. BUT, it had no goat’s milk, 10x more hops than it needed, passion fruit nor pretty can: just brew.
One a positive not: they have the fancy can thing down in spades. Now, to fill those pretty latas with something decent.
Of the 10,000 stouts produced in the USA, not a one touches a hair on Guiness’s ass. Same with all the other “safe” styles. They have to make these freak beers because they can’t make the most basic beers to save their souls. I have a friend who is on the “I wanna start my own brewery” kick. He’s always nudging me to try his new sour, or shandy, or whatever. I remember when he was just starting and was so disappointed he couldn’t lager very well, nor master a basic brown ale, which is the first beer I’d recommend anyone make. So, pretend you’re more imaginative than those old safe beers. …and make a beer with a pretty name, in a cool can, that sucks.
Just for clarity, I live in WI and have more breweries than I can count pretty much anywhere in the state I go. Better off buying Blatz than most of the other crap.
278 breweries in WI, and maybe 5-7 make great beer. At least I can count on those couple of beacons.
Look at 'em all:
5-7 good ones. The rest couldn’t make a boring old stout/pilsner/Scotch ale/other safe beer, so they make the
I’ve seen this trend start with Jos Huber in WI try to emulate a boring German lager in the early 80’s. They’re still going. Then, Steve Sprecher got off the ground in Milwaukee. New Glarus has done a great job. I’ve noticed that most of the best brews in our state come in bottles.
The late Sierra stout was great as is Rasputin by Mendicino.
Kegs, please, whenever possible.
I used a Blichmann Engineering Beer Gun a lot to bottle small runs of wines. The BG is a very simple wand which fills bottles from the bottom using an inert gas siphon, and it can also sparge the bottles beforehand to minimize oxygen contact. Almost none of a beer’s natural carbonation is lost. If all bottled beer got this treatment, the world would be a better place.
A big problem is that many craft/micro brewers START with brewing freakish, trendy beers. There’s now-notorious brewery in Seattle that arrived with only Belgian farmhouse and sours, having never tried making any more traditional, wider-appeal beers.
I think there are parallels here with cooking and painting. How good can a chef or artist be who never learns–much less masters–what came before?
Quite wise. I do suppose they need to find a way to get on the map. All I get is a big, pretty can, and I learn, time after time, I don’t want THAT one again.
