
US Craft Beer: The Sky is Falling/No, It’s Not
A staunchly adolescent business category, one that existed in a sort of arrested-development haze for two+ decades, has begun to grow up.
A staunchly adolescent business category, one that existed in a sort of arrested-development haze for two+ decades, has begun to grow up.
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.
This shocking IPA over-delivers on hops-derived fruit flavors and body. It is Delicious. DE-licious. It is Pure Pleasure to drink.
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.