why does commercial beer just seem subpar when i brew?

[monty67]

Just curious if anyone besides myself runs into this. just started brewing again after a long break and i'm still waiting to bottle the most recent bottle so i need something in the mean time. Went to the store for a few bottles. Out of two or three mixed sixers I think i've found one beer that i enjoyed and all the others just seemed... meh, nothing to write home about. I've tried premium and not so premium, micro and not micro, and some new and some old favorites.

I don't know if it's because when i'm homebrewing I'm paying minimum 7 dollars (when they're on sale) for a sixer and it just pisses me off. I don't know, maybe I'm just cheap.

This happended when i started making my own wine. suddenly going and paying 25 bucks made me feel like i was out of my mind for a bottle. going to 16 or 17 felt a little better but honestly, unless it's a special occaision I had no problem with spending the money. I wonder if doing it yourself just takes a lot of the mystery out of it and suddenly you realize that is a huge part of the price you've been paying for, the illusion that the marketing creates. ehh just rambling....

 

[steakandale]

There are many reasons.
I'm cheap.
The price of beer has gone up - 7$ for Bud?.
I just tried DHF and it was 11$ a six pack AFTER my club card discount.
When you're brewing, your beer is one you're interested in. Its fresher, not skunked by a hot warehouse or truck for who knows how long.
I can go to my closest store, and theres an entire cooler isle of beer, but it is just filled with BMC and their derivatves and micro-impersonators. Ehh

 

[KozHops]

I too have this problem.

I am cheap, like my homebrew, and am moving away from buying commercialy sold beer all together.

I can never justify paying $8 for a sixer when I can buy 4 oz of hops at the LHBS for the same price.

 

[Hammy71]

A lot of commercial beer has lost appeal for me. Especially when I think/know some of mine taste better. Like a chef, overtime I've learned what the ingredients taste like and how I think they should be used. Home brewing has ruined me for most commercial beer. It's hard to sit at a bar and not taste a beer and start to dissect it in my head. Case in point. I used to love Harpoon's Irish offering (now called Celtic Red or something). Couldn't wait to get it this year. Bought a sixer couple of weeks ago and I've drank one. To me it's horrible this year, especially when I go to the keezer and take a pull of my Irish Red. I'm not 'cheap'. I still stop by the bottle store about once a month and drop some cash, but my expectations are lower. I still love finding that needle in the haystack though. Because there is still a lot of great commercial brews out there.

 

[Ernst-Haeckel]

Not sure when the transition occurred, but at some point I just started liking my homebrew more than anything I could buy. Now I get bummed out when I run out of homebrew and have to buy beer; not just because of the price, but I would just rather have my homebrew!

 

[jiggs_casey]

Same... At $8.00 a sixer, the cost of drinking good beer gets expensive, real quick. I'm piecing together an all-electric 10g setup in the basement that hopefully will allow me to keep a pipeline going. I like my beer! I would honestly rather drink it than anything I buy commercially.

All things taken into consideration, I can brew a batch of cream ale for about $3.50 a sixer. The difference between buying that much beer at $8.00 a sixer is $80!

 

[veritas524]

Man, I wish good beer was $8 a sixer out here.. I pay $14.99 for a six pack of rogue.

 

[broadbill]

Just curious if anyone besides myself runs into this. just started brewing again after a long break and i'm still waiting to bottle the most recent bottle so i need something in the mean time. Went to the store for a few bottles. Out of two or three mixed sixers I think i've found one beer that i enjoyed and all the others just seemed... meh, nothing to write home about. I've tried premium and not so premium, micro and not micro, and some new and some old favorites.

I don't know if it's because when i'm homebrewing I'm paying minimum 7 dollars (when they're on sale) for a sixer and it just pisses me off. I don't know, maybe I'm just cheap.

This happended when i started making my own wine. suddenly going and paying 25 bucks made me feel like i was out of my mind for a bottle. going to 16 or 17 felt a little better but honestly, unless it's a special occaision I had no problem with spending the money. I wonder if doing it yourself just takes a lot of the mystery out of it and suddenly you realize that is a huge part of the price you've been paying for, the illusion that the marketing creates. ehh just rambling....

I don't get it...you scoff at $7 for a sixer of beer, but don't mind shelling 16-18 (maybe even up to $25) for a bottle of wine?

Solution is simple...spend more on beer, less on wine!

 

[Yooper]

That's what I'm going through right now. I only could bring two kegs with me to Texas, so we've been going through a LOT of commercial beer. I buy a sixer every day for the two of us.

We've been drinking some good beers, but I like my homebrew better much of the time.

I wondered why- I mean I'm no great brewer. But Bob and I were talking about it, and I brew to OUR tastes. So, my hopped up amber was made for Bob, after he tried a Bell's Amber and said, "I like this, but I wish it was both a bit sweeter in the finish and I wish it was hoppier". It's like a custom-made amber just built for us. My IPA is the same way- I like amarillo and simcoe hops a lot. So, that's what I used.

The Sam Adams IPA, something Latitude, is good enough. But not great. The Stone IPA is very good- but at $11 a sixer, not something I will down everyday. Ranger IPA is $8 a sixer, so I'm drinking a lot of that. DFH is more, so I'm not buying much of it.

Still, I miss my OWN brew. I guess I can never stop brewing since I've become so narrow in my "good beer" thoughts.

Brewing has made my drinking sort of cyclic- at first, I didn't like many beer styles, but as I brewed more and more I tried more styles and found that I loved more styles than ever did before. Then, I started brewing fewer styles simply because I like APAs and IPAs better. I will still make an occasional stout or cream ale, or steam beer, etc, but I find that my tastes are again narrowing. I rarely buy a sixer of porter or cream ales, for example, and I rarely brew them.

 

[glenn514]

I don't dislike the more commercial brewers [I just put some Point Special in the fridge downstairs], but I do like my own beer better than the vast majority out there. I think a part of it is that I truly enjoy the process of making and bottling beer that my wife and I and our family and friends will enjoy. I've invested a portion of myself into that beer, and that, alone, makes it better. The fact that it may be fresher, or the ingredients are better...or whatever other differences...are there too, but the personal investment is what makes it for me.

glenn514

 

[jiggs_casey]

I've invested a portion of myself into that beer, and that, alone, makes it better.

Nicely put!

 

[Hanson]

That's what I'm going through right now. I only could bring two kegs with me to Texas, so we've been going through a LOT of commercial beer. I buy a sixer every day for the two of us.

We've been drinking some good beers, but I like my homebrew better much of the time.

I wondered why- I mean I'm no great brewer. But Bob and I were talking about it, and I brew to OUR tastes. So, my hopped up amber was made for Bob, after he tried a Bell's Amber and said, "I like this, but I wish it was both a bit sweeter in the finish and I wish it was hoppier". It's like a custom-made amber just built for us. My IPA is the same way- I like amarillo and simcoe hops a lot. So, that's what I used.

The Sam Adams IPA, something Latitude, is good enough. But not great. The Stone IPA is very good- but at $11 a sixer, not something I will down everyday. Ranger IPA is $8 a sixer, so I'm drinking a lot of that. DFH is more, so I'm not buying much of it.

Still, I miss my OWN brew. I guess I can never stop brewing since I've become so narrow in my "good beer" thoughts.

Brewing has made my drinking sort of cyclic- at first, I didn't like many beer styles, but as I brewed more and more I tried more styles and found that I loved more styles than ever did before. Then, I started brewing fewer styles simply because I like APAs and IPAs better. I will still make an occasional stout or cream ale, or steam beer, etc, but I find that my tastes are again narrowing. I rarely buy a sixer of porter or cream ales, for example, and I rarely brew them.[/ I also like my homebrews way better than any commercial stuff. Just had a couple of Coopers IPA's with chinook hops and it is quite delicious. Yooper, I tried one of those Ranger IPA's the other night and almost threw up. lol. I guess some folks like that really heavy hoppy stuff.

 

[monty67]

Well, I reread what i wrote and i meant to say i DO have a problem paying that kind of money for a bottle of wine now. But I did get way into wine for a number of years and at the time i didn't have a problem with it at the time.

Got a kid now and am a bit more frugal and yeah, if it was a special occaision i would probably still drop that money on the wine, and i'll still scoff at the rising prices of beer. What can you do. That's part of why i started brewing again too. Cheers.

 

[johnnyboy1965]

Interesting post. Heres my story...
Id always drank either premium lagers or Guinness in bars, until I got into HB. I then started to drink different types of real ale and traditional English beers, but none of them came even close to the quality of my brews, this is not being biased or big-headed its just the truth.
My wife and I recently went to a "real ale" pub (good selection of 20 beers) and I asked the owner which one he thought was the best. I ordered a pint of his recommendation (a porter @ £3.10 a pint). It was very average/poor. I drove home and got a bottle of my porter and drove back to the pub. We did a blind taste test with 8 people in the bar and everyone, yes everyone said mine was by far the better drink.
Then I dropped the bombshell that mine only cost £0.29 a pint (ingredients and labour not included).
The owner even admitte mine was better and jokingly asked me if I could supply 50 bottles a week.

 

[Pick]

I like Yeugling and sometimes I will buy a pony keg of that in a homebrew dry spell. It's about 30 cents a 12 oz. glass cheaper that way, plus no bottles or cans to deal with.

 

[Revvy]

For me, some is, some isn't it depends on the beer, the brewery, my recipes, etc, a lot of variables. SOme beers I'll never come close to, some I'll never even try to brew and just enjoy the original.
BUT, I've done blind taste testing of a couple of my clones against the original, and usually my version prevails. The biggest one was yooper's dead guy clone against the original. It would win hands down, while my bell's amber clone would do about 50-50.

I think in a well made homebrew (either Extract OR Ag, btw, both clones were extract w/grains,) FRESHNESS is the issue that wins out. Homebrew just has a fresher taste than something that's travelled.

It may not ACTUALLY be better, but to the taster it is perceived as such. In fact one person said that my DG Clone tasted like they thought Dead Guy SHOULD taste like. Which I think was that it just was fresher and less travelled than the store bought version

That might be why, living in Michigan and pretty close to bell's, why going against a bell's product I only win half the time, Bell's doesn't travel far and has a higher turnover in metro detroit then Rogue does.

I've noticed the same thing in regional wines versus wines that travel a distance to get to us. Wines from local wineries just have a brightness, and freshness, that is missing with wines that may be made for.