The perils of uniformity...

[cdh]

All commercial breweries seem to strive to consistently create a lineup of beers that don't change from one production run to the next. If you've tasted one good example of a particular beer, there's nothing to be gained by trying it again except the same pleasure you got the first time around. I've tasted Orval and know I don't like it, and if I taste another I'll probably have the same reaction.

I think that this property of most beers might be doing them some harm... Look at wine: every year the raw materials are markedly different. Tasting a 2001 German Riesling is a very different experience than tasting a 2002 or 2003 from the same vineyard. This wide variety of experience also sparks a wide variety of conversations and press about wine. It is always a moving target, and moving targets draw press attention. Any press is good press, after all.

So the few beers that do change annually, like Anchor's christmas beer, do get some coverage as to what's new about it this time... wouldn't it be a good thing if producers allowed something to vary from batch to batch, if for nothing but the press attention it would get? The lineup of stable unchanging beers should be smaller than it is... and until a real classic emerges, the recipes of a lot of the beers out there should always be in flux in hopes of running across the next classic.

I'm sure that there are regulatory reasons that nobody is doing this, but it does sound like a neat idea, no?

Whaddya think?

[beergirl]

Wow, you ask great questions that require some thought.

I'm not sure comparing beer and wine this way really works. As you noted, wine producers are at the mercy of nature (i.e., the main raw material, grapes, can vary greatly from harvest to harvest.) That really isn't the case with most of the ingredients in beer. Yes, hops and grain will vary some but not quite like wine. So, once a recipe is designed it tends to be static. I think if you change a variable (hop variety, grain bill, etc.) what you have is a new beer.

There are some small brewers who brew beers under the same label but knowingly make changes each brew. A couple of examples are Fantome (Belgium - practically every beer Dany Prignon brews ) and Dogfish Head (Delaware - World Wide Stout).

Another way that brewers do something like you suggest is to create a "one-off" beer based on a standard recipe. These are most often draft only (limited market). But, even in those cases they come up with a new name.

Additionally, beer is a food stuff. The shelf life of the average beer really isn't that long. It's brewed to be served and gone - not much time to create a buzz that has folks looking for more. And, generally, beer doesn't travel well. There is a lot of truth in the phrase often seen in breweries, "Think globally, drink locally."

As to regulatory reasons, there are a lot of strange rules for labelling alcohol. I wouldn't be surprised that if you start showing ingredients (which you would want to if you're trying to create interest by varying them) you have to reprint labels and go through the approval process once again which can be incredibly frustrating. Most small breweries could not afford to do that for every batch of beer brewed.

Well, those are my thoughts.

BTW, give Orval another try or three. It tends to grow on you.

[cdh]

Well... my question came after looking at the pretty constant chatter over on the egullet wine board, and comparing it to the hushed quiet we see on the beer board. My theory is that since wine is always changing, it always has that magic media buzz that keeps it fresh in mind.

Beer, on the other hand, seems to suffer from its uniformity, insofar as one or two good reviews of a beer really do pretty much do it justice, and will continue to do so for years to come. Anybody with a Michael Jackson book printed in the last decade or so knows what to expect from any beer MJ has covered, and what's the point of telling people stuff they already know or could look up. New releases are interesting... but they happen so infrequently...

Are beer drinkers really such an inherently conservative bunch that there is a real market demand for uniformity and stability over innovation and improvement? Wine is a much more madcap, rolling-the-dicekind of experience, where you really don't know what is in the bottle until you open it... you can make educated guesses based on geography of origin and grape type, but you never know for sure unless you've found a review of that particular wine from that particular year... which aren't available for most wines. The wines most like beers are the NV champagnes from the big houses, which are blended with an eye toward uniformity of style... and even they change somewhat over time.

Keeping beer fresh in the minds of consumers with media buzz can't be a bad thing, but the uniformity stifles that very buzz... A beer makes news when it wins an award... but that only happens so many times a year, and because there isn't regular beer coverage in the media, the story either gets buried or not picked up at all. It is sad...

Edited May 21, 2004 by cdh (log)

[beergirl]

Well... my question came after looking at the pretty constant chatter over on the egullet wine board, and comparing it to the hushed quiet we see on the beer board.  My theory is that since wine is always changing, it always has that magic media buzz that keeps it fresh in mind.

I suspect that beer discussions on this board aren't necessarily indicative of the average beer enthusiast's discussions. The focus of this board is food. The wine industry has done a bang-up job of getting folks to think of wine and food together. The idea of beer and food pairings is really in it's infancy in the US (and I suspect the make-up of this forum is largely US). I hesitate to point to other forums in this type of discussion, but you may want to check out some of the "beer focused" forums out on the web:

Beer Advocate

Burgundian Babble Belt

Rate Beer

[Alekeep]

The focus of this board is food.

Just an observation... In your eGullet profile under demographics you have these choices: Culinary Professional, Restaurant Owner, Other Food Related Profession, Food Journalist, and Food Lover.