How home brewing gave me more appreciation for macro beer

[larkinnm1]

I know what your thinking....how could anyone grab a labbatt over a fresh homebrew? Macro beer is trying to squeeze out micro brews. But in reality, macro beers have an astonishing process and level of repeatability. We all have tried a second go of a recipe we loved and found minor to vastly different results. What didn't I control? Whether we used a different brand of grain or changed mash ph or fermentation temps. Its through this frustration I found a new respect for macro beers consistency. Their understanding and control of minor details is remarkable. Sure, they have massive automated breweries and practically a monopoly on ingredients, but even with those tools available to us, most couldn't repeat like they do. Now as far as buying micro brews up, it's a total business decision that will frankly benefit us. Ab is losing market share to a craft market and sees value in having the dollars come their way, and so should we. Bringing more money, equipment, and knowledge will only improve their subsidiaries quality and repeatability. Now more than ever will that goose island ipa taste like the last one. And it's not like ab will quit with all the small batch brews, they're a cash cow. Now alot of us like small batch variability of exclusive beers, myself included, but the brew masters will still experiment and pump out great beers year after year. I almost cringe when I see a hate article about ab buying up breweries, but the fact is we will get the same beers with a new level of consistency. I understand distribution markets are being largely influenced by macros but more beers should be available in places it never was. This is why when at a bar, sometimes I will get a labbatt and appreciate it's lack of off flavors and consistency, and I owe that appreciation to home brewing my own recipes second and third times with mixed results. Just a rant I have been thinking about the past few days and wanted to express. Cheers!!

 

[Qhrumphf]

I think the important thing is to draw a distinction between macro beer and macro beer companies. Is your critique of the BEER, or of the COMPANY?

Arguments (and valid ones) can be made for both. But anyone who says that Bud Light, Miller Lite, Coors Light, are bad, poor quality beer, doesn't know anything about brewing. They're BORING and BLAND, but like you said, incredibly consistent and very well brewed. They know what they're doing, and most brewers I know who know what they're doing (pro or homebrewer) envy the skill and QC that these brewers have, even if the end product is boring as piss.

The BAD beer (the off-flavors, the poor consistency, etc), falls firmly on the shoulders of the multitudes of craft startups who were not ready to go pro.

The way I look at it, there's a time and a place for bland and boring (BBQs, floating down a river, etc). There's no time or place for poor quality, and that falls on our side.

 

[cilestiok]

TLDR but I feel this is a good place to leave this.

I love me some natty light in the summertimes.

 

[schematix]

cliche, but true.

 

[itsnotrequired]

i could drink pbr if my hair was on fire. same for a fine barleywine or belgian quad. what i'm trying to say here is i like beer...

 

[brewcat]

I'm drinking a Coors right now. Quite good. It seems some fall into thinking these beers should be something they aren't intended to be.

Kind of off topic: Coors brewed a beer for their Christmas parties and apparently changed it every year. It would be awesome if they experimented selling something like that. They could do it through their archive brewing which Batch 19 is under.

There probably isn't room for beer snobbery in the homebrewing world.

 

[tagz]

Your process would be precise and repeatable too if you had robots to brew your beer.

 

[cilestiok]

Your process would be precise and repeatable too if you had robots to brew your beer.

Have you looked at some of the people's rigs on here?

 

[Brewernaut51]

Eh, just rather spend money on the little guys who make the good stuff and aren't strong-arming the competition with their massive wealth. You won't catch me saying macros are bad but you're just as unlikely to catch me actually spending money on the stuff.

 

[madscientist451]

Back in high school, I didn't care what beer tasted like, I just wanted to get wasted.
Then I turned to imports and taste became more important. The first craft brew wave came along, and I pretty much ditched the imports. Along the way I dabbled in homebrewing and then realized where the different flavors were coming from.
At this point I don't "appreciate" industrial beer any more than other industrial food and beverage products. Big business can make "repeatable" hot dogs, potato chips, salsa, white bread and too many other foods to count.
I appreciate things that aren't repeatable, that change with the ebb and flow of the seasons. Hops aren't the same year after year, neither are apples or grapes.
So why should we expect beer, cider and wine to be exactly the same?
So if anything, my homebrewing and development of taste awareness has me made LESS "appreciative" of industrial beer and other industrial food/beverage products.

 

[bobeer]

Your process would be precise and repeatable too if you had robots to brew your beer.

This is what I'm thinking. Automation technology has changed the brewing game for sure. All this stuff is available for anyone who wants to put the money into it.

The only thing, I can think of anyway, that would make repeating a beer difficult is if you couldn't use the exact same bands of grains, hops, and yeast. Although hops are an imperfect product, because even the same strain changes slightly from harvest to harvest, you still have computers figuring out how to adjust for the differences. You just have to plug in the information it needs.

While what macros do is impressive to me, just based on the scale and size of their operation, I'd still rather give my money to the guy brewing 15 gallon batches down the street. My work, a mega project analysis firm, has Coors as a customer and it's pretty cool to overhear the stuff we benchmark for them and how big their scale is. And I hear they have taps in their conference rooms!