Red Hook makes some pretty decent beers, I wouldn't kick them out of my ice chest if they happened to show up there anyway
I find the associations of color and taste to be interesting (not totally unwarranted mind you but not absolute) and make a few beers that defy expectations one way or another. Its interesting to have people taste them with their eyes closed first
A lot of what people don't like about a lot of dark beers is a few of darker grain flavors primarily malt bitterness (which largely comes from grains in the mid-high end of darkness, although there are some that don't have it). The worst offender is "chocolate" malt; which while it may sound delicious has a flavor that can most charitably be described as bad diner coffee. A lot of what throws a lot of commercial beers off in this regard is they get cheap on the medium roast malts (which are more expensive than the base grains) and try to make up the color with a smaller amount of really dark malt. This ruins the body and leaves you with a thin, astringent and bitter (not in a good way like hops.. I love hops) beer. Also some people just don't like thicker bodied beers which are often associated with darker beers (but again there are exceptions you can have dark/light body and light/heavy body beers as well
).
Unsurprisingly a rather larger % of the "craft marketed" brews on the shelves are either wholly or partially owned by the majors so they are definitely reacting to market forces. Having said that the craft brewer market share is still tiny but growing:
- The craft brewing sales share in 2012 was 6.5% by volume and 10.2% by dollars.
More fun facts on that here:
http://www.brewersassociation.org/pages/business-tools/craft-brewing-statistics/facts
The craft brewing sales share in 2012 was 6.5% by volume and 10.2% by dollars.
A "short" list of craft breweries is also available from the brewers association:
http://ba.brewersassociation.org/memberlist/members.aspx?memtype=BREW
I can't decide if its a good or a bad thing how many I recognize from the first page
If you weren't aware Bud is now owned by InBev - although I guess they are calling it AB-inBev inbev basically bought AB so its mostly marketing to keep part of the AB name (sheesh 5 years ago, time flies!) - who own some amazingly large share of the market -
http://www.ab-inbev.com/pdf/AB_InBev_AR10_GuideToBusiness.pdf 48% US and 41% Canada. You can see most of their brands here:
http://www.ab-inbev.com/go/brands/brand_portfolio/local_brands.cfm
Rob, you should definitely take up homebrewing
Its actually a really good way to start learning the different flavor and how they come about and what you do/don't like in more specifics (also you end up with beer!). A few years back me and a couple of buddies brewed all 28 major styles in a single year (using mostly
http://www.amazon.com/Brewing-Classic-Styles-Winning-Recipes/dp/0937381926 and the bjcp guidelines
http://www.bjcp.org/stylecenter.php) which was highly educational about all of the different styles and how they end up. We've also done "style tasting classes"where people bring in several examples of a specific style and everyone compares it to the baseline - although I don't really brew always to specific styles - its still useful have a common vocabulary to try and figure out your own preferences and describe what you like.