Where is the Craft in Craft Beer?

I’ve been a beer aficionado ever since my first taste of Yuengling Porter at Penn State in the early 1990s. Now, I know what you’re thinking — Yuengling isn’t craft beer. Bear with me. It was pretty early in the renaissance of brewing in America at that point. We were happy to be drinking something that wasn’t piss yellow with the word “ice” in it’s name.

I got formally introduced to the world of beer at a little pub named Zeno’s in State College, PA. At the time, they had perhaps 6 taps and somewhere around 300 or 400 bottles. It was a treasure-trove of different varieties. I explored them with abandon and filled my Around the World in 80 beers in about 2 years — I would have done it quicker, but I graduated 6 months after I started and was only back to Dear Old State on occasional weekends between 94 and 96.

Nonetheless, I had beers from all over the world in this little underground smoke-filled room and I loved every minute of it. Beers like Theakston’s Old Peculiar, Watneys Red Barrel, Lindemans Labmic Frambois, Franskaner Heffewiesen, Samuel Smiths Taddy Porter, and Anchor Christmas Ale among a few. With the exception of a few local Pennsylvania varieties, like Neuweiler, Stegmier 1857, Penn Pilsner, and of course Yuengling, there weren’t many readily available American beers that weren’t made by the big three.

Brooklyn Brewery was a notable exception, and I do love their Brown Ale and Lager. Wild Goose, out of Cambridge, MD made a good run of it before getting consumed by Frederick Brewing — which became Flying Dog and is now famous for an awful concoction of a yellow lager with Old Bay in it.

Something happened between 1999 and 2007, “Craft Brewing” exploded in America. At first it was awesome, there were lots of styles to choose from. Porters, Stouts, Lagers, Pale Ales, and the occasional India Pale Ale—which had a pronounced hop character, but still clocked in under 6.5% ABV.

All that seems to have changed in the past few years.

American Brewers have become overly dependent on a single ingredient — Hops. More specifically they’ve become overly interested in out-hopping the competition. This has resulted in the beer case at my local store being full of nothing but American IPAs. With this we’ve seen the rise of the Imperial’s — and with it a huge spike in the ABV of the beer.

It’s sad really.

Now, I don’t dislike a good American IPA, or even a really good Imperial IPA, but I’m finding myself wanting more.

I’ve just come back from a business trip to the UK, where there is a genuine craft brewing scene. I had Real Ales — out of casks. I had Stouts. I had Lagers. I had Pale Ales. And do you know what distinguished each of these different varieties? It wasn’t hops — the hops was barely pronounced — it was the different malts.

Since I’ve been home, I’ve been looking for more variety in my beer choices at the local store. And, I can’t find it. Everything is geared toward the hop head. Everything is geared toward inflated ABV.

Where is the craft in that?