The Quality of Beer Today: Why our Children will be Lucky

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bobbrews

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I was just thinking about our little community here, and how most of our children will probably grow up to appreciate their parents' passion for good craft beer and homebrew way before beers they delve into crappy selections like Bud Light and Corona. That's awesome. I'm kind of jealous.

I remember my college years, and how I found it such a chore to chug down Keystone Lights at a party just to get a buzz from a flavor I absolutely loathed. I didn't even enjoy beer until one day when I was about 24, I manned up and forced myself to delve outside my comfort zone to try some intimidating Tripels, Sours, IIPA's, and Imperial Stouts.

Have any of your children of age taken a liking to quality beer yet; or even the hobby in general? I'm still without children, but I find it inevitable with all the beer I brew, that someday my son and I will share a homebrew.
 
My oldest is 20 (will be 21 in a couple months) he samples the stuff I make and enjoys it. I don't know what he drinks when he is out with his friends in college....then again...i don't really want to know.
 
The problem is most college kids aren't drinking to appreciate beer......they are drinking to get drunk. They want the most bang for the buck in most cases.
 
My one son is in his early 30's. Since I started brewing craft beer,he's gone whole hog on trying different ones,& taking brewery tours. He only drinks craft beer now. Including mine on holidays & bbq's.
 
I'm hoping my kid will pick up a general appreciation of experiencing new things, not just when it comes to beer. She's only seven months old, so we have plenty of time to work on that.
 
The problem is most college kids aren't drinking to appreciate beer......they are drinking to get drunk. They want the most bang for the buck in most cases.

True. But I am not talking about college kids in general. I am talking about the kids of passionate craft beer appreciator parents and especially those who are avid homebrewers. There's always a good beer on tap and something new to try.
 
The problem is most college kids aren't drinking to appreciate beer......they are drinking to get drunk. They want the most bang for the buck in most cases.

I don't see this as a problem. It's a Rite of Passage. :D

E
 
Not only our kids are lucky but the entire future beer drinking public is lucky. We're one of the driving forces behind the general improvement of beer available to the general public. When today's kids grow up the selection of beer is going to be light years better than when we (I'm 35) grew up.

The future is bright.
 
Phunhog said:
The problem is most college kids aren't drinking to appreciate beer......they are drinking to get drunk. They want the most bang for the buck in most cases.

As I college student I absolutely disagree. While a freshman, yea, I admit I abided by that philosophy. But now most of my colleagues enjoy good quality beer and its actually grown a lot. Most people look down on exclusive BMC drinkers.
 
Neither one of my kids like beer very much. My son likes my oatmeal stout but not much else, and my daughter doesn't care for any of my beers. She LOVES my hard lemonade, and I kegged some for her son's birthday party a couple of years ago and she liked that alot. Neither one drink much of my wine, either, as they both like sweeter wines than I tend to make.

I think it's age- I think liking bitter things comes with some "palate maturity", as well as liking dry wines instead of sweet ones.
 
Two of my three children have a beer palet. The middle child in med school, 26, loves a good porter and stout. Youngest, 22, helps me brew sometimes and likes good beer.
 
Being a recent college graduate and receiving my masters I have seen an evolution in beer drinking by my friends and frat brothers. As a freshman, in '04 there was only bang for your buck drinkers, as the years went on I found myself trying new and better craft brews. I found that by my senior year I had started a mini beer revolution by only buying craft brews. My fraternity brothers and friends were following the trend.

It's easy to start a beer revolution, buy a beer for your buddy he'll drink for the night, buy a six pack of craft brew for your buddy he'll drink we'll for a lifetime.
 
As a relatively young guy (at the ripe age of 26), I can tell you that my beer experience has been a little different then the scenarios you old guys (hehe, couldn't help myself) are talking about.

Personally, my curiosity about beer and drinking in general really started to come about when I was 17. Being the youngest in my family, I was restricted to sitting and listening as my brother (who had just turned 19) and my father (now excited to have a new drinking buddy) explored the world of beer together. Now that I look back, I admit that my father and brother didn't know all that much about beer and in fact had pretty unadventurous tastes. At the time though, they seemed like beer gurus to me. They would pick up about 12 pairs of imported beers twice a month, usually German or Polish lagers, and drink and discuss them. And I would listen.

After about 2 years of drinking just about every imported lager the LCBO had to offer, the fun in discussing the same beers over and over wore off and they began discussing other things that I would come to understand in time. By the time that I turned 19 my father and brother began to buy the BMC stand-byes again.

Now don't get me wrong, they were happy to have another drinking buddy, and my first few years of legal beer drinking were a lot of fun. However, after drinking the Blue, Bud, Miller, and Coors, that we often had around the house, I never could pick out the flavors that my father and brother had discussed years before. So I started going out and started buying imports. WOW, what a difference!

They were awesome! I began to bring home the brands that my father and brother had drank before, but I soon found out that Carlsberg was my favorite, and that would end up being the beer I would drink almost exclusively in college. However, every now and then my Dad would pick up one of the old imports and drink it with me and I would try to restart the old conversations that remember him and my brother having back when I was 17. They never lasted long. The subject matter was stale, and I didn't really feel like replaying a broken record.

And truthfully, after moving towns for school, drinking Carlsberg for 2 years in college got to be pretty boring for me too. Still fueled by my, now solo, interest in beer however; I was able to pursue my own tastes, my own curiosities, and by the time I was 23 I was into all sorts of beers. Bocks, Dunkles, Pale Ales, and Stouts, and I was more-or-less loving them all. Sometimes you need to drink a few duds so that you can really appreciate a good beer when you find one.

My family's tastes in beer still haven't changed that much, and I don't mind it either. Beer has kind of become my thing, and that's the way I like it. In a lot of ways, that is why I got into homebrewing. I already had a good grasp of the different types of styles after drinking them for a while, but in order to further my understanding of beer I found that I needed to get deeper, I needed to learn more about the ingredients, the different yeasts and grains etc.

And that's where I am now. Got me a SWMBO who supports my hobby and got a many an all grain batch under my belt. So far I must say I have really enjoyed the journey.

In closing, getting back to the OP, I would say that for most people craft beer is a cyclic thing. The fad comes and goes about once every 5-7 years. Right now, we are in the thick of it; and in fact, the craft beer market is beginning to get saturated. Unless the whole world stops buying BMC, it will soon become impossible to support every micro-brewery that is popping up. Not that I mind the variety, I think its great. But even I am feeling the pangs of guilt when I buy one craft beer over another at the LCBO with out having the finances to buy both.
 
I think it's age- I think liking bitter things comes with some "palate maturity", as well as liking dry wines instead of sweet ones.

This. If I'd tried an IPA 10 years ago (32 now), I'd likely have hated it. Now it's one of my favorite styles.
 
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