It is categorically NOT impossible for an American brewery to flourish, expand, and PAY PEOPLE, including the owners, and not sell out to some mega-corp or brewing conglomerate. It is NOT the inevitable end-game of being a successful business.
When something comes along that changes the paradigm of a culture or even a product class, like Deschutes Black Butte NA absolutely has done, the bar, the minimum requirement for quality moves in an almost visible way.
Whiskey Butte is, ho-hum, just another significant Achievement from a brewery that produces such New Classics as casually as Mozart wrote symphonies.
Jubelale’s immense popularity sets a tone that lets other brewers experiment with making winter seasonals that go beyond the high ABV warmers of our past and into styles that hold their interest year-round.
This adulation of frat-boy tastes ignores a major FACT of the Craft Beer Phenomenon: we all went All In on craft beer because we wanted flavors – and not the same three that were all BudMillerCoorsPabst had to offer.
Within 20 – 25 years, yes, there will still be guns. But there can also be fewer guns and a significant glimmer of hope for a safer, more rational, more mature culture. And we can do this…one by one.
From this day forth, what we now call “craft brewing” and “craft beer” will be called “INDIE Beer”, in The Pour Fool.
Old Southern joke: Jim Bob: “I’m gonna kick yore ass!” Joe Willy: “Better bring yore lunch pail, then, ’cause that’s Continue reading
The Pour Fool 