I’m not sure what your definition of “substantial” is but we have 3 craft beer bars, 2 micro breweries, 5 bottle shops and 2 Getränkemarkts with a large craft section in Cologne, which really isn’t too bad by German standards.
Of these one bottle shop will close down early next year (ironically the best one), one Getränkemarkt has completely stopped stocking craft beer and the other one has significantly cut down the craft beer selection. Every owner of these places that I’ve talked to has told me that craft beer is just not selling very well. The two big bars are in a really touristy area and only seem to do well over the weekends, total ghost towns during the week for the most part.
I think it also has to do with tradition. When you can get a good local beer for 10 euro/liter, you are not even bothered to try something else. It takes time to change centuries-long-habits
Well I can compare it with Zagreb, which is a bit smaller in city limits (750k to 1.1M) and way smaller in metro limits (1.1M to 3.5M). We have half a dozen micro breweries you can visit and four 10+ taps craft beer bars. Besides that bunch of other places serving craft beer. Saying all that I don’t consider Zagreb to have substantial beer scene looking from EU perspective. And yes, some venues have taken a step back, but some have improved so I think the scene overall has improved.
As for the shops I’d say big factor are online retailers. In Germany you can get beer from various online shops quite cheap. But also @rauchbierlover makes a good point. I’m no expert on German beer market but from chat with Greg Koch earlier this year I understood Germans are embracing craft beer very slowly.
Reading all this, I keep expecting “millennials” to pop up somewhere. It doesn’t and that may help the argument a little, but as @blipp and @77ships have said, a lot of your point above @joet can be seen from a rather different perspective. But I do find some of them rather refreshing, as they are linked to the problems industrial brewers are to small scale breweries.
I see your point, but I don’t see the problem. While I regard a lot of what’s going on in the world of adjunct brewing as a little weird, down to downright disgusting or just senseless (throw a lot of ingredients into a beer, get a rather normal style example out of it), is this really such a problem? Sure, breweries like Omnipollo are dedicated to this, but we should be concerned with a few measurements here: scale, impact and lifespan. And while I do agree, from nothing more than personal observation, that they do have some impact, I think their scale is minimal and the lifespan of their impact is as short as the next beer release cometh.
This will change as craft brewers venture into the world of lager. It already does, and haze has done its part. Lagers such als Pilseners may not be regarded well in the typical haze bro world, but any quality oriented beer lover will have a different opinion. Once you’ve had a good, high quality, flavourful lager, everything changes a little. For me, that first overreaction against Lagers is clearly a reaction to big beer butchering the styles on an impressive scale.
And Rauchbier is acquired taste. I might be too young to have seen it any other way, but there’s that. Big difference of course to places like Franconia or parts of the Czech Republic, where traditional Lager and Smoked styles are still present in a high quality that puts all others to shame.
Apart from how this ruins the Lambic market, I feel like this is fairly US-centric, and as others have pointed out it would be time for RateBeer to check its commitments.
I feel like you’re mixing up a whole lot to make the emotional point of “Is this why we got into beers in the first place?” Fair point, but it only shows that beer is a highly commercialized product as well. Maybe it’s the other side of the medal when you mix international craft & specialties beer and homebrewing with eCommerce […] brand experience, and exploration.
And yes, these are words from the ZX homepage.
Print is dying, and it’s all our fault - from readers to publishers to online media. I hate for good magazines to fold, but this is not a beer specific problem. It does harm the feeling of community and I’ll give you that, it might be toxic for “the craft beer scene”. But: can it be counterbalanced with good online journalism?
Another big problem, and we should never forget which role big beer plays here. From patents on crops to buy-outs and skewed competitive landscapes. All these worries should be taken into account. There’s been a lot of concern down to anxiety regarding this when RB has sold a stake to ABI. https://youtu.be/dRTqjjPTdSE?t=4
This mixes a lot of things together. But let’s dig in.
Yes, a booming scene will also see its fair share of not so great beer. Is that bad? Well, at the time you’re drinking it. Then: never drink it again. We even have the unfair position of sharing our reviews openly, making a one time problem with fermentation a lasting PR-problem for small scale brewers. We should rather be thinking about giving second chances more often.
Availability of okay beers locally is never a bad thing. I’m alright with not getting Sierra Nevada, but a decent local Pale Ale from tap. I can get Sierra Nevada when I want to. From a beer judges view, this might make work harder. From the beer lovers view, this just adds diversity.
But we could reformulate this: When a scene is expanding as rapidly as the craft beer scene, a lot of mediocre examples will get thrown onto the market and quality can suffer. This point I get, but I also doubt that all now highly regarded breweries have started out with high quality and great consistency in said quality. Maybe this could be seen as a plea to newer brewers to work on refined recipes again and again, and when they think they’re ready to enter a competition, to wait and refine again?
Appreciate your efforts but @joet reply shows how RB interacts with valued and active members. Mock them snd ignore them. This is why this site is on let down, no progress visible, only steps back. Communication with your target group are fine bit communication with those who build a base for your target group shouldn’t be neglected
Talk to us, we only want the best for RB!
I talk to people every day, handling all feedback from the web and mobile directly, monitoring social media and talking to people who interact with the site. Less than 0.1% of our daily users post to the site. Even fewer are a part of an active group of posters who have never or rarely responded positively to site updates. I have an active policy of doing what’s best for the site and our community which includes seeking out those who offer more informed and constructive feedback, and ignoring those whose questions or comments offer less positive value or potential value.
I do want to encourage better feedback and also explain why I’m choosing to engage some replies over others.
I’ve grown to like the hazy IPA trend this year. We did see quite a lot of pressure and some closings of older breweries that haven’t kept the same support levels. But there have continued to be new exciting breweries as well. If I compared things now to 12 years ago, it is way, way better. My first craft beer was probably 1995, and there was almost no craft beer. So I’ll take 2018!
I get it. I’m sorry if it felt like I was being detrimental, but I really do believe that, in some cases, RB needs to check how it magnifies certain trends, as well as it need to own up to being linked to ABI. I just see no way around it. There still are legitimate concerns, and not discussing one or two other points in a normal way because we criticize the involvement of RB and its partners regarding other points, that’s childish. Nothing of my point above was against you, even if critical. I’m sorry you can not see this. I would have liked to discuss this. Have a nice day.
You hit the nail on the head, Joe. I don’t post here very often anymore, but I thought I’d stick my head in and see if there were any threads about this exact subject, and here it is. I think you pretty much said everything I would say. Craft beer has sold out, and I am not even talking about things like ABInBev. More like what you mentioned in points 1 and 4. I hate to say this but I really hope it’s popularity with the mainstream dies, and the d-bags go back to sports.
Hmmm. 10 years ago in Orlando didn’t have very many brewpubs, but there was always Redlight Redlight, Knightly Spirits, and a handful of other pretty good beer stores. It definitely wasn’t a nightmare, esp given that I moved here from Wichita KS and that was a nightmare! But you’re right, it is significantly more interesting now
