Beer Trends: Love ’em or Leave ’em

Let’s look at the brief history of beer in this nation.

Once upon a time, beer was only available in bars. If you wanted some to take home, you needed a bucket. Then beer became available in cans, bottles and kegs. Then came prohibition, and many breweries were slain. Prohibition came to an end, and beer slowly climbed back into American life, but only a scant few breweries survived. Those that did survive fought bitterly to claim the mountain. Soon only a few breweries were left alive, and they ruled from on high.

For many years, craft beer was an unknown. Occasionally foreign beers would drift across the border with the promise of variety, but even these were fought bitterly by the local breweries. Then came the revolution, and craft beer began sweeping the nation as people yearned for flavor, texture, complexity, and less severe hangovers. Now there are more breweries, brewpubs and beer bars than we could ever have hoped for. Life is good. Or … is it?!

One has to wonder if it’s going too far. Normally I’d be perfectly fine with all of this, but there’s been a disturbing trend for the last few years — namely, all the disturbing trends.

I was on board with the Black IPA trend a few years ago, but that was small, simple and rather well done. Lately we’ve had this white ale trend, and since I don’t care for white ales, I’ve sort of written this trend off. Now, though, the newest trend, or perhaps just the most explosive one to date, is shandies. I’ve never liked the idea of shandies, as regular readers will know. I don’t mind throwing some lemon rind into a nice batch of hefeweizen, but flat-out adding lemonade to beer feels like cheating. I suppose I can understand there’s a variety of kinds of lemonade to use, you need to get the right beer to balance the bitter citrus flavor, and it’s reminiscent of those cool refreshing glasses that kept you hydrated when you were young and the heat of summer was blistering you on the playground. Of course Kool-Aid did the same thing, but I don’t see anyone in a rush to put Hawaiian Punch in their pilsner.

I was wary of bourbon barrel-aged beers as well, and the first one I tried was a horrible, sickly sweet monstrosity with no distinction or complexity. Thankfully, this proved the exception, not the rule, and bourbon-barrel aging seems to have really created some amazing brews.

A few years ago pomegranate was really big, for about 20 seconds. Then it vanished, never to be seen again.

Coffee pops up now and again, like that ridiculously, ludicrously explosive Autocrat Stout that Narragansett and Sean Larkin made. That was an amazing brew, and even they didn’t expect its popularity to soar. Sometimes trends work out, other times they fizzle and vanish. After all, West Coast IPAs were a trend once, and they became so powerful they almost dwarfed all other kinds. Yet, there has been no fallout from their explosion, no backlash. So perhaps these trends are just a sort of natural selection event, allowing new beers to evolve and new beer styles to thrive. Maybe once this shandy movement has run its course, we’ll have a truly remarkable standout that defines the species and raises the bar for others. Or we’ll have lemonade poured into whatever extra brew they had in stock at the Miller-Coors plant. Time will tell, but let’s all, myself especially, try to keep an open mind.