Ugh, the hype word...
Too often this just involves (over)doing what is popular. I think not participating in that ridiculousness is different than going stale.
Had a guy visit my basement a while back, mostly complimentary but just couldn't understand why I didn't want to oak age several of my beers. And why wasn't I doing "advanced" (his word) stuff with wild yeasts?? ...Tour over, ya know?
Post on HBT couple weeks back said everything was underwhelming and he was just mixing all his beers with bourbon, which was much better. Mkay.
I guess I'm saying the hype trains have historically included too many like those two guys. I appreciate subtlety. I appreciate clean beer, lack of batch variability, and freshness. If I had a brewery, and lost some previous "hype" over some wax dipped "rare" monstrosity, I'd say Good Riddance... Maybe then I could make what I fricking want.
/rant
Cheers--
--Michael
Totally agree. Craft breweries frantically searching out the next "thing" instead of focusing on the quality and consistency of their flagship beers is what will ultimately be the doom of craft brewing, and the consumer is driving the train here. I refuse to participate, possibly to my detriment. To be clear, I sell out of all my flagships constantly and have a hard time keeping up with demand but it drives me CRAZY to see the hype "beer aficianados" give to really poorly executed high gravity beer styles. And FTR I think SNPA is a far better "session IPA" than any of the other hyped up garbage session IPAs out there.
I do plenty of fun things and love to experiment, so don't get me wrong. Our 3rd anniversary beer was a black Belgian ale with black and white pepper, vanilla bean and orange peel and it was awesome. 5th Anniversary was a smoked saison with orange peel. I have a Rye Imperial Stout recipe that has caused some women to swoon over me. I am about to launch a "hop lager" as a hopeful 4th flagship. Our most popular beer is a belgian wheat beer made with lime leaves and ginger as opposed to traditional Wit spices (which has now been copied by two other south east breweries). But I am still old school and I want the flavor of the beer to come over first and any other ingredients need to be in the very background. Just because you can make a beer with bold flavors that wows someone who can only drink 4 ounces of it doesn't mean you have made a great beer.