Creativity

The obvious choice for me of a brewery that is constantly experimenting is Jackie O's. Yes, they have some "regular" lineup beers, but Brad has earned his reputation through his experimental offerings. The interesting thing about them is that they are working on expanding right now and have purchased a canning line. With the upcoming expansion, it seems like Brad has re-shifted his focus a bit towards improving the consistent quality of his regular offerings. The best part about it? It's definitely working for him! The most recent batch of Mystic Mama (flagship IPA/pale) was outstanding! I look forward to the day when I'm able to buy some Jackie O's CANS

 

I feel like those models are strongly tied to distribution reach. I think the greater your reach, the more consistent/predictable you have to be. This is necessary to establish brand identity with your products. If people do not identify with the brewery itself (most people further away from the brewery IMO do not), they are going to indentify with the beer they produce. If said brewery continually produces "new faces" on a frequent basis, no relationship with the brand is ever established. However, on the alternate side of that, locals who identify with the brewery itself see the brand from a different perspective. These people establish relationships not with the product, but with the producer lending more room to innovate and test the boundaries of you products an a more frequent basis.

 

Mastering a particular beer & style with consistency is more difficult, in my opinion. This is especially so with traditional styles, and it's also why there's so (relatively) few amazing domestic competitors to the original European greats. I'm especially thinking of Belgian & German styles.

 

What's more difficult? I dunno but maybe it depends on the brewer. I.e. it seems like Mikkeller has no shortage of new creative ideas, and probably finds it difficult to just sit and perfect a few beers (which I wish he would do a little more of). On the other hand, Orval, as you say, may take pride in doing one thing and doing it exceptionally. (However I'm not sure using any of the Trappist breweries is a great example, because by definition isn't their first priority to serve their monastery and not the brewery? Just speculating.)

On another hand, I get the sense Jim Koch takes pride in his ability to provide a quality, dependable SABL in just about every corner of this country. But he's also embraced creativity more and more in recent years.

 

I believe you need to be able to master the art of creating consistently great beers in order to reach into your creative box. I can think of several breweries that do this, making those great beers that they know will sell well in order to take risks and get creative with other beers. Dogfish Head talked about this in their series and I know Boulevard does the same.
It seems that many of the larger and more well-known craft breweries take have or still are taking this approach as the results have been proven successful.

 

I much prefer someone turning out the same things that are good to a brewery that makes failure after expensive failure. Then again, I'm much more partial to a good IPA or stout than some fancy-ass strawberry-mocha-vanilla-gorilla-sweat belgian triple pale ale. I'd have to look, but I don't think I've ever had a great beer from Jackie O's, for instance. And most of the Cigar City/Bruery experimental stuff ends up being awful.

But it doesn't have to be either/or. Look at Russian River.

 

It's easy for classy, consistent brewers to get forgotten and lost in the ruckus. When was the last time somebody brought a bottle of Orval to a tasting?

That said, I have a lot of respect for a brewer that can turn out a product like Orval or Cantillion Classic or Roquefort 10 or SNPA with such consistent quality. It's impressive and delightful. I would rather buy more of the classicly awesome instead of experimental but most of the classic awesome I like isn't super available these days. I buy more Jolly Pumpkin and JW Less than any others just because I know its awesome and I'm done blowing cash on crappy experiments that brewers should have never let out the door.

 

Freetail down in San Antonio is constantly coming up with new ideas. They have their staple beers but every time I go there is something new on tap I have not tried and most of the time turn out to be pretty good. I believe if you are turning out good beers then be as creative as you want, just don't neglect want got you there in the first place.

 

Agree. On the other hand, why, as a U.S. craft brewer, would you want to invest the time and energy required to truly master a traditional, more difficult style when your experiments inevitably land at the top of "best beers of the world" lists, garner far more hype, and sell out in a matter of hours? Whereas when you brew a Schlenkerla Maerzen you don't even make the "beers of fame list." You'd think that our standards of what constitutes truly world-class beer would be higher, but you'd be wrong.

 

Marketing-wise, I think is where the question of "Is it more difficult" really comes into play. Do you spend all of your R&D on new product or do you really devote the time and effort into making that flagship beer shine? Right now, I think it's the same with any hot/buzzworthy field. People are looking for the "This is awesome! What else do you have? What else are you working on?" It's great to put out a consistent product (SABL or Sierra Nevada's Pale Ale,) but to be in the news (or at the top of Beer Advocate forum) consistency doesn't get the clicks. When is the last time there was a thread that said, "Sierra Nevada's Pale Ale - Still as good as it was 15 years ago!" A good brewery can do one or the other, but a great brewery will do both (which I think SN does quite well with Torpedo, Ruthless Rye... and whatever's coming next.)

 

It's harder to master a few beers then put out a new beer every other week. Not only just in skill but mentally as well. It can get boring brewing the same thing day in and day out.

 

If a brewery can't consistently turn out a solid basic product, then it makes me question if I even want to try anything experimental from them.

 

Wow. All of these posts and no mention of Dogfish Head. They seem to be constantly producing experimental beers with all sorts of flavors, etc. If you go to Sierra Nevada's website, they have quite a few beers that are brewery only and which may or may not make it into production and distribution. Troeg's is another brewery that seems to be experimenting more since they moved into a larger facility. Experimentation is what craft beer is all about - after all most craft brewers were home brewers and even though I'm not a home brewer myself I have friends who are and they tell me they are constantly tweaking their recipies. The consistent beers that many craft breweries are now producing are the glorious results of prior experimentation. It's the macro breweries that produce the same consistant [boring] product year after year and cannot experiment lest they upset their consumer base.

 

“What I'm wondering is, which is more difficult: to master a handful of good/great beers and make them consistently year after year, or to continually try new things, innovate, and grow even if many or most of your beers might be less than what you had hoped?”

The two do not have to be mutually exclusive. Take Sierra Nevada Brewery for example. They are capable of consistently making their flagship beers year after year: from Sierra Nevada Pale Ale ‘up to’ Bigfoot.

Sierra Nevada also is ‘innovative’ in many ways. They recently starting making Kellerweisse which is a traditional beer in the European sense. A very tasty hefeweizen. They also make interesting seasonal wet/fresh hopped beers. Within the past year they started brewing Abbey beers with their Ovila line of beers. Another traditional beer that they make is a seasonal of Summerfest (a German style Pilsner).

So, a US craft brewery can produce consistent year round product, make traditional beers in the European sense, and produce ‘innovative’ beers as well (e.g., wet/fresh hopped ales, Ruthless IPA, specialty beers available at their pub, etc.).

Cheers!

 

TO me its a no brainer, its much harder to develop an unique (4 ingredient) beer, or make a style the best in its class, and do it consistently over time. Anyone can (and many seem to) just throw recipes together willy nilly, hope for the best and live with the resulting mediocrity - because in the period of an increasing demand market it is easy to sell.

I much prefer to drink beers that offer consistent quality.

 

Dogfish Head and SN are two examples of how it should be done. Even with the experimentation both seem to do, the vast majority of their output is dominated by just a few consistently excellent beers. Deschutes is another brewery that follows this model. They use their brewpubs systems to experiment and use their big production facility to keep producing the proven favorites.

tl;dr - there is a happy medium.

 

Agreed. I haven't tried enough Mikkeller to judge them fully, but they seem to have a constantly changing vision. My next Mikkeller is going to be the beer geek brunch weasel and I'm pretty pumped for that.

Another thing I like about Jim Koch is the Longshot series. A great way to expand what they put out under their name while also incorporating home brewers. Win win