/ck/ - Food & Cooking

>>10516145
>ooh variety
>ooh more variety!
>hmm, this shit's getting popular
>let's cash in!
>shit, now we gotta differentiate
>let's get crazy!
Now you've got outlandish shit at obscene prizes because hobbyists tried to get in the game and knew nothing about business.

>>10516145
>better flavor
>higher abv
What went wrong?

Nothing, people just have unrealistic expectations. We went from having a horrible beer scene to a pretty good beer scene over the course of 25 years or so. People went from thinking beer was gross to thinking beer was pretty good.

Some people assumed, wrongly, it wasn't going to plateau. That we were going to reach some sort of nirvana where beer would replace all other alcoholic beverages.

Perhaps you're one of those people. I invite you to investigate wine, you'll find it has a lot more to offer.

>>10516145
Nothing

Every craft beer brewery decided to make the exact same type of beer, and they relied on hops to differentiate their flavors instead of making different types of beer, also it took off in cities, since local breweries tend to be more economical in large urban areas with a lot of people to sustain the brand, and city people tend to be soymale faggots, breweries are marketing to said soy infused men, which to normal people, and or us, it makes the beer they make look cringy, regardless of how it tastes

>>10516152
Lol. Than dont buy the absurd shit. What kind of fucking loser complains that shit is being sold.?

>>10516155
I find wine really fucking boring. I've tried it time and time again from cheap to good tier wines. It just falls flat for me. I like most liquor and beer, but wine is just dull to me.

every single burnout thought they could become a master brewer, and no I'm not memeing.

>>10516164
This is what too much DIPA and Laphroaig does to your palate.

>>10516158
>brainlet economics
Don't quit your night job

>>10516145
numales

>>10516179
Dont drink much peated scotch or ipas. I appreciate subtle flavors, wine has this overwhelming aspect to it that kills most subtle characteristics to me.

>>10516216
>I judge wine by the price tag
Americans

>>10516162
what's with this overreaction? he made a valid observation. trends largely decide what gets put on shelves. if everyone does such and such then that's likely what you'll start to see. maybe people want it to go in a different direction?

>>10516239
That and region. Yeah.

>>10516246
This is why it's stupid for hipsters to get angry about big companies like InBev to be muscling their way into the craft beer scene

Some neckbeard solo brewery in Michigan doesn't have the market research skills nor the data analytics savvy to figure out what people really want and how to make everyone happy in every little niche, so what we end up with is yet another DIPA with an X rated cartoon of dragon rape and a bunch of swear words in "German" typeface all over the bottle, even though the market is saturated with that garbage

A huge company like InBev can hire multi million dollar marketers from London or New York to steal everyone's facebook data and figure out what kinds of mental shitposts are running through their empty heads all day, and adjust production accordingly. They also have the distribution capabilities to actually get those niche beers to the consumer.

>>10516145
So far, nothing. Competition and a free market produces variety and quality. Don't like IPAs? No problem, there are a ton of other styles. Don't like this brand's bland stout? No problem, try Sweet Baby Jesus, a chocolate peanut butter stout.

>>10516239
I told myself I would ask next time I saw a second-worlder in the wild. So here you are, and here I am. Why are you so obsessed with us? I don't know or care which country you're from, and I never post about other countries nearly as much as you post about us. I think this kind of obsession is at least a little strange. What causes it?

>>10516260
>Figure out what people want
Alright, this is never a good thing, because every time the majority decides something, it's shit. Up until like 5 years ago, 9/10 people would have said that "beer is beer" and that it all tastes the same, despite there being tons of different styles. The majority is retarded. Don't let them decide anything! Macrobreweries are horrible because they cater to this majority demographic that doesn't really know what it wants in the first place.

>>10516271
Have a (You)
>>10516278
>waah I can't have what I want
>people shouldn't get what they want
Found one of the hipsters, how angry are you right now that AB Inbev is going to sink its hooks into everything you pretend to hate (even though you love it and wouldn't have any real identity of your own without it)

>>10516145
Beer became a hobby to obsess over rather than a beverage to enjoy.

This dude is also correct >>10516167, after I graduated B-School my burnout fraternity brother got me to help him try to start a brewery, thank god that failed.

>>10516188
Where's the lie in what he said though? Over simplifying sure, but nothing he said is really wrong.

>>10516297
Large urban areas have higher costs of everything. Real estate, labor, usually taxes, usually regulations.

There's no reason to set up shop in the south bronx other than hipster cred. That's why the midwest and rural parts of new england have such a huge beer scene per capita, and new york barely has any.

Beer isn't milk, it ships pretty well.

>>10516308

There's a reason the breweries are within easy shipping/marketing travel distance of hipsters. The production is certainly suburban/exurban but the product is 100% designed for and marketed to urbanites.

>>10516342
>easy shipping distances
The english managed to ship beer to India before internal combustion
It’s not a problem to move it from a flyover state to a city anymore

>>10516286
>muh hipsters
Not an argument. Do you even have an identity outside of bud light culture?

>>10516164
Really good champagne has bizarre and fascinating tastes in it that you can tell could only have been created as products of a complex fermentation process. It's one of the more unique tastes I've ever tasted and it sticks with me in my memory now years after I tried just a few sips. This isn't even dom perigon-tier either, it was just 50$ a bottle french champagne.

Beer, sadly, is mostly forgettable. I can't remember even a single beer that sticks out heavily for me except for pic related purely because it celebrates the purity of its ingredients rather than trying to get fucking gay with it like 95% of craft beers do.

>>10516352

Shipping is one of those weird things that scales unevenly, shipping things in between a box and whole truck can be surprisingly expensive.

>>10516145
Caring about arbitrary things like parent company and size of market.

>>10516359
>>10516278
>everyone but me drinks bud light
>I found out about beer that isn’t bud light five years ago
Yeah on second thought you’re not a hipster you’re a shut-in who thinks he’s smart because he only interacts with 4chan and the retarded clerk at the local gas station

>>10516368
Luckily the giants like InBev have the capacity to handle niche distribution effectively and more economically than a one man shop who has to pay market rate

>>10516381
Hmm I keep looking for an argument but I'm not seeing one

>>10516390
I’m not here to change your mind, cleetus
Just have a cheap laugh while I drink my wine

Of course the 4chan demographic is too young to remember the desert days of only macros and skunked imports. Sure, babby's first craft beer has to be an IPA of 150 IBU but most craft brewers only keep 1 or 2 babby IPA's on rotation and are producing much more interesting product.

There's a brewery near my house that makes great cream ale, pale lager and brown ale. They have one light ipa. Not every place is the same. I'm in iowa btw

>>10516390
>>10516397
Jesus Christ fuck already

>>10516423
But I remember. Finding even Sam Adams at a bar was rare.

Literally nothing

>>10516397
Wine is a mediocre beverage, hardly worth paying attention to. Better than nothing, but just not worth putting effort into

>>10516158
>and city people tend to be soymale faggots
This is true.

>t. cityfag

>>10516239
>>I judge __(insert anything)__ by the price tag
>Americans

FTFY, friend.

>>10516659
the price tag on many things is correlated with quality

That correlation is really only lost on meme things like wine where none of it is particularly good so they have to market fake tiers

>>10516145
the taste mostly
but like anything else that trend seekers go after to make themselves stand out it's the fact that many people don't want to make the effort to create something of quality or they have no idea what qualifies as quality and they somehow develop a fanbase of other uneducated know-it-alls who support their mediocre product

just speculating as i've seen it happen in music, art etc

>>10516145
American breweries suffer from a compulsion to make to make everything biggger and louder than the euro recipes they’re products are based on. The obvious example is the outrageous level of hops in IPAs nowadays

>>10516862
Euros would have used more hops traditionally, they were just too expensive

Also, to say American craft beer is "based on" Euro beer is kind of misleading. Remember, America was born of Europeans, mostly from beer making regions. Almost the entire north was settled with a plurality of people from Germany. Americans have done a great job keeping alive, or reviving good styles of beer that the people left behind in Europe have forgotten and let die in favor of generic lagers

Plus, big beer is usually correlated with good beer. Sure a beer doesn't have to be strong to be good, but most lighter quality beers are even better if bumped up to a bit more reasonable of a level, many the very ingredients that lead to good flavor also bump up the ABV. Drinking watered down beer to prove how great you are at recognizing subtle watery flavors doesn't help any of us

I view craft beers like looking for funny shit on /b/. You have to sift through a ton of shit, but every now and then you'll find a nugget of pure gold.

The ipa obsession that has obliterated the market, you go fucking any where its the usual piss water, ninety fucking ipas, and Guinness. Maaaybe one regional shitty stout/porter if you are lucky. I just want my dark shit, take your "we mixed a billion types of hops into this shit beer" the Fuck outta here.

>went to a local brewer
>look at menu:
MENU
>1 porter
>1 blonde ale
>8 IPAs
>8 Ciders

it hurts bros. IPAs are fine but christ, where did the creativity go?

>>10516890
This is a surprisingly stupid post even by 4chan standards.

>>10516669
someone made a 2 million dollar car
all cars are the same

The only thing that went wrong was the focus on IPAs. Made the casual beer drinker not want to try out craft stuff.

>>10516145
While I'm glad the the beer market has expanded and diversified, the reality is that most pubs in the UK, for the past five or so years, have taken to stocking half a dozen over-hopped IPAs and acting like they are really clued up on beer.
i don't bother with most pubs any more for than reason.
i mean, it's an improvement on the endless piss-lagers that dominated our pubs for the best part of thirty years, but I'm not sure that having mouth like i've chewed a pine cone is much of an improvement

Why are IPAs so popular in America and pushed so hard by retailers?

Is it because there's so much production of hops in America over normal malts?

>>10516145
>imperial stouts are consistently crowned as the supreme beer
>they win all cross-style competitions
>snobs love how rich they taste
>hipsters love how outlandish stuff you can put in them and the over the top marketing
>people new to beer find their low hop high malt take agreeable
>alcoholics like the high abv
>can't get them anywhere, be it on tap or bottled
>not even in hipster places
>must order it or go to the rare beer tasting festivals
Explain yourself, soyboys. Why would the widely agreed crowd favourite not be made more accessible?

>>10516367
I love that stuff, it's just a nice beer, closer to classic German and British styles than gay tripplesuperultramegasour IPAs.

>>10519270

There was actually a shortage of hops a couple years ago. IPAs are just popular because they pack the most flavor out of any style without needing adjuncts; they're the purest style.

>>10519270
>Why are IPAs so popular in America and pushed so hard by retailers?
Because IPA is good, and American farmers have bred better types of hops that were not available traditionally.
Also, retailers aren't "pushing" IPA, people just really like IPA so they are carrying them. Retailers don't give a fuck what types of beer people want to drink, they stock what sells

>>10516367
holy shit bro i used to live in burlington and drank switchback in the 22 oz. bottles all the time... then i moved and forgot the name of it for a couple years
fuck man im gonna get some of this shit soon

>>10519501
This faggot is right.

>>10519274
Expensive style all around, and the higher abv makes them not appealing for a night out with the boiz when you want to have more than two 10 oz pours.
Funny enough, my friend who only drinks light beer drunkenly ordered a glass of Surly Darkness out of nowhere and ended up pouring it out since shes never had anything past michelob golden light.

>>10519274
>people new to beer find their low hop high malt take agreeable

Imperial Stouts, while good, are not beginner-friendly. They can have weird secondary and after tastes that turn off people that are not that into beer. Maybe regular stouts but once it gets that Imperial modifier breweries are putting too much stuff in for the casual drinker.

>>10516145

People with opinions started thinking their thoughts were facts.

>>10516145
>What went wrong?
The west coast (DUDE HOPS LMAO) and people being able to sell shitty craft beer because most of their customers don't know a damn thing about beer and assume that it's good because it's a macro lager. The vast majority of craft beers in the US are no better than "mediocre" but the cult of ignorance around them is suffocating the industry.

>full of exogenous estrogen from hops
>full of toxic ethanol
>inhibits testosterone via insulin response to carbage intake
Beer is a bioweapon. Always has been. It was integral for our domestication as a species. If it wasn't for beer, nomadic hunters wouldn't have flocked to (((cities))) in the first place. Beer was a mistake.

>>10522109
Elaborate.

>>10522473
>The west coast (DUDE HOPS LMAO)
I think IPAs are so popular because most people's introduction to craft beer is via pale ales and IPAs are a natural next step.

>people being able to sell shitty craft beer because most of their customers don't know a damn thing about beer and assume that it's good because it's a macro lager
Craft beer by definition can't produce macro lager though.

I understand where you're coming from but these things take time, most of the world hasn't been drinking much apart from lager for the last 100 years. It's hard to expect things to change so quickly that people will be drinking stouts and sours soon.

Beer will continue to get more and more specialised. Less and less people drink every year and those who do have constantly improving tastes. Even though the world of alcohol will be smaller in the coming years, it will also be much higher quality.

>>10522502
>I think IPAs are so popular because most people's introduction to craft beer is via pale ales and IPAs are a natural next step.
I believe it has more to do with IPAs being almost a cult.

>Craft beer by definition can't produce macro lager though.
That was a typo.

>I understand where you're coming from but these things take time, most of the world hasn't been drinking much apart from lager for the last 100 years.
German fucking shits.

>It's hard to expect things to change so quickly that people will be drinking stouts and sours soon.
I doubt that will ever happen, and that's fine.

>Beer will continue to get more and more specialised.
I doubt it in this industrialized era. When you can ship almost any ingredient you want anywhere in the world, anyone can make whatever beer they want.

>Less and less people drink every year
For now.

>and those who do have constantly improving tastes.
Ha.

>Even though the world of alcohol will be smaller in the coming years,
I doubt it.

>it will also be much higher quality.
Most people will keep drinking the common swill that's been the norm throughout most of history. Today it's Bud Light, yesteryear it was whatever the local alehouse had in the basement.

>>10522563
Maybe IPAs are a cult in America, but over here in Australia, while they're popular, people are generally open to drinking other things.

>I doubt it in this industrialized era. When you can ship almost any ingredient you want anywhere in the world, anyone can make whatever beer they want.
This isn't really what I meant. I more mean that alcohol is becoming more catered to people who enjoy different tastes rather than people just getting drunk.

Craft beer and craft alcohol in general are proof that the industry is taking a turn towards quality, however slow. I agree that they'll always be drinkers that don't care about taste, but things are changing.