Craft Beer

[u/innsource]

So I run a liquor store which speciallizes in craft beer. #1 store in the state, to be more specific. I live and breath beer. If I'm not selling beers or ordering beers for the store, I'm buying beers, reading about beers, brewing beers, out with beer reps drinking beers. You get it.
Over the past few years I've been getting more and more disenfranchised with the what is being considered "craft" beer. This really hit hard with feedback from my last 3 batches.

Super crisp- clean, sessionable Lager: Too boring
Top tier West Coast IPA: Too bitter, not hazy or fruity enough
Marshamallow Dessert stout (I wasn't happy with sub-par quality) AMAZING!!!

Long story short, I want to brew more "Craft" beers. Does anybody have any recipes for a good New England Double Bourbon Barrel Aged Imperial Tropical Salted Caramel Double Dry Hopped Extra Oat Cream Vanilla Milkshake Chocolate Raspberry Icecream Sour White Stout Infused with Mint, Hibiscus and Truffle oil?

[u/[deleted]]

There has never been an easier time to access a huge variety of craft lagers than today and yet all you hear from beer snobs is “why are there so many IPAs? Why aren’t there more LAGER options???” It’s just the same shit you’d hear from beer snobs 25 years ago, except with the styles reversed.

I get it, you think the kids aren’t alright. You liked beer before it was cool. The good news is that there’s tons of beer for everyone. We’re spoiled for choice, I don’t get why we need to see this rant 20 times a day on beer reddit/Instagram/etc.

[u/HerrKarlMarco → u/[deleted]]

Absolutely correct. If you don't like the newer styles, don't buy them. But chances are, the brewery who makes your favorite Czech lager is making a pastry stout because it helps keep the doors open. Let the brewers make what the market wants, let the market buy what it wants.

[u/kelryngrey → u/HerrKarlMarco]

Yeah, there's a constant flow of whinging about places keeping the doors open. I hear it here in South Africa and we are absolutely not drowning in NEIPAs everywhere you look, but there are still people that are pissed that some exist. Don't like it? Don't drink it. Don't want to brew it? Close your business if it's the only thing keeping it open and you somehow can't stand to have a job.

You can brew all the old school Dortmunder Exports you want for fun, but a business lives and dies by selling product.

[u/[deleted] → u/kelryngrey]

Indeed so. When the going got tough, the tough brew lager. Look at Devil's Peak and Jack Black. While they're famous for what was once brilliant IPA, they are big because of lager.

Breweries that moan about not being able to keep the doors open in a market where craft is unpopular and all the beers are fringe recipes, clearly don't understand the concept of marketing a popular product and selling the less popular drinks on the side.

Let's take a burger joint. If they sell pizza, and people don't buy pizza from them, have they failed as a burger joint?

[u/kelryngrey → u/[deleted]]

I think the lager thing is a bit of a double-edge sword in South Africa. It can be a struggle to convince a not terribly craft savvy public to spend a lot more for a lager than they're used to paying for an SAB product. At least when you're making a funky wild hop bomb they can say, "I can't buy that at Checkers Liquor in the fridge for 30 Rand."

I think that's place where wine has an edge - people think novelty is worth money for wine everywhere. Beer has historically been sold and mass-marketed into an ultra common drink.

[u/TaiwaneseGoat → u/kelryngrey]

True true.... I understand that you have to keep the doors open but... making "craft" lagers in a market where you can buy Windhoek and Tafel (arguably one of the best traditional lagers money can buy) is not really adding to the variety out there and making beers the macro breweries can't make. But like you said... That is the problem with SA as a beer market, beer drinkers are just not into paying three times the price for a beer that they are not used to BUT they are also smart enough to not pay three times the price for a beer that is equal to or worse than the lager that is already in the fridge at the bottle store.

I remember walking into the Old Biscuit Mill market one morning many years ago (think it was around 2008) and seeing a small stand purporting to sell craft beer called Jack Black... They had a lager on tap... I asked them whether they had anything else to which they replied "not yet, we're starting with making a great lager to introduce the public to a better beer in a style that they already know. When they realize this is a better way we'll introduce different beers to them..." I was like oh-kay... I bought a pint and was thoroughly underwhelmed. Turns out, that lager is still the best thing they make and it's still not as good as the ones I mentioned above which costs half the price... So yeah...

Also, if you want any chance of getting different styles of craft beer, you can't leave Cape Town...