Do 60% of Craft Beers Suck? (No.)
Last week, an interview with Jon Taffer created a bit of a stir when he offered his thoughts on craft beer.
I'd like to take it in a slightly different direction. It's possible Taffer has located a stratum of badly-executed brewpubs that I'm just not aware of, but I don't think so. My experience is exactly the opposite. I have been hugely impressed with the quality of new breweries. There have been a couple of twin developments that have helped this along. For one, brewing is now much more professional than it was a decade ago and earlier. There are thousands of trained brewers in the country, and a high percentage of them have studied brewing in school. That really raises the floor on bad beer. A professionally-trained brewer may not make exciting or innovative beer, but s/he's going to make competent beer. Brewers know the science, and they know what off-flavors taste like and where they come from.
Customers are also far more educated. They may not know the technical term ethyl acetate, but they know what a sharp, chemical flavor is and that it shouldn't be in a beer. A city of any size will have several breweries, and customers can tell which ones make the good beer. For 60% of the beer to suck, most of the customers would have to be ignorant of what good beer is, and they're not.
There are bad breweries out there. Good breweries make an occasional bad beer. And there are quite a lot of average breweries out there making beer you wouldn't describe as spectacular, but which is by no means bad. It was enlightening to travel around the country this year a little bit and get out of my Portland bubble so I could see what the real America was like. What I found is that there isn't really a Portland bubble anymore. The country has caught up with the West Coast. In fact, the consistency of American breweries is now every bit the equal of the UK, Belgium, the Czech Republic, and Germany. (Even in those countries, about 20% of the breweries "suck"--about the same as in the US.)
The US beer market has a number of challenges confronting it. Bad beer isn't one of them.
I think that about 60% of craft beer basically sucks. I’ve been to a lot of the facilities. They’re not exactly clean. They’re rookie-run. The problem is that people are now looking at craft beer as an investment opportunity. They’re getting into it to make money. Many people don’t get into it for the love of making beer.Everyone has an opinion on where the market's headed, and comments like "60% of craft beer sucks" and "half of craft breweries are going to disappear" are sure to get clicks. They can also lead to useless semantic debates that boil down to what the meaning of "sucks" is.
That’s why I think there’s going to be a wash out in craft beer over the next two years. Half of the craft breweries are going to disappear.
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| A random brewery in Portland you've probably never heard of; it makes excellent beer. |
Customers are also far more educated. They may not know the technical term ethyl acetate, but they know what a sharp, chemical flavor is and that it shouldn't be in a beer. A city of any size will have several breweries, and customers can tell which ones make the good beer. For 60% of the beer to suck, most of the customers would have to be ignorant of what good beer is, and they're not.
There are bad breweries out there. Good breweries make an occasional bad beer. And there are quite a lot of average breweries out there making beer you wouldn't describe as spectacular, but which is by no means bad. It was enlightening to travel around the country this year a little bit and get out of my Portland bubble so I could see what the real America was like. What I found is that there isn't really a Portland bubble anymore. The country has caught up with the West Coast. In fact, the consistency of American breweries is now every bit the equal of the UK, Belgium, the Czech Republic, and Germany. (Even in those countries, about 20% of the breweries "suck"--about the same as in the US.)
The US beer market has a number of challenges confronting it. Bad beer isn't one of them.