I’m happy to report that craft beer is back. I experienced the happy dilemma lately of having to choose between several styles and brands of lagers and ales. The truth is that craft beer never left, but it sure took a nosedive in the late 1990s after an explosion earlier in the decade of lagers and ales, breweries and brewpubs.
On my last trip to visit the shelves of malt and hops, I decided to buy the latest summer beer by Jacob Leinenkugel of Wisconsin, Summer Shandy, a wheat beer flavored with lemon, an old European summer tradition. I was faced with a quartet of Leinenkugel summer brews that included Sunset Wheat, a superb Belgian wheat, soft, rich and smooth; Honey Weiss (weiss, pronounced “vice,” is German for wheat); and Berry Weiss, which to me far surpasses those so-called “wine coolers” that contain no wine but rather are made from syrup-laden, deflavored, decolored beer.
The surprise was the price of Leinenkugel, which until recently offered many superb craft beers at relatively low prices, $4.99 or so a six-pack. This year, however, Leinenkugel is up there with other craft beers, around $7.50. I suspect some of the increase was caused by fuel prices, which are elevating everything but paychecks. The other source of the increase is a hops shortage. “All About Beer” earlier this year reported that hops couldn’t be bought “for love or money,” and beer prices were sure to rise. AAB was right.
I first discovered quality beer in the 1980s after drinking mass-produced light beers for several years, at Geisen Haus in North Canton, which sold a few dozen beers from much of Europe. Back then I had to drink European brands if I wanted lusty, hoppy beer. But in the 1990s I noticed three beers on the shelves of IGA, and all three caught my attention because their labels were elegant tributes to beer’s place in early American history: Samuel Adams Boston Lager, Samuel Adams Boston Lightship, and Pete’s Wicked Ale. Boston Lager featured an unsmiling, youthful Sam Adams, who was a brewer in his younger pre-Revolution days, and was made by Boston Brewing Co. Boston Lightship, I later learned, was also made by Boston Brewing and was its light beer, although its marked hop and malt flavor ran counter to the expectations of light beer as being a less flavorful version of the standard style. Its label showed a small sailing ship with lanterns atop the masts. Pete’s was an English brown ale with a compass rose on the label that suited the historical style of the ale.
Pete’s and BBC led the craft beer boom of the 1990s, regularly releasing new styles, many dark, chewy and challenging, such as Samuel Adams Scotch Ale, or hoppy and heady, such as Pete’s Summer Ale, a lemon-tinted pale ale. Following their lead were scores of microbreweries and brewpubs, and every payday I found a new beer to try, leading to the pleasing biweekly predicament of whether to buy a new style or an old favorite, leading to one or two years’ time between drinking the same beer.
So I was mystified when the bottom fell out of the craft beer barrel. As a friend in beer asked, what happened to the people who had been drinking craft beer? Was beer just another fad for them, like the unfortunate pairing for a time of cigars and microbrews? The beers began disappearing in the late ’90s. Microbreweries closed, the more adventurous styles disappeared, and choices at the stores became more limited. By that time Sam Adams had gone from stern to smiling, Boston Lightship was discontinued, to be replaced several years later by Samuel Adams Light, which does taste like light beer, and BBC, along with many other brewers, jumped on the marketing fad of showing on its carton a bottle of its beer fresh from the cooler, covered with drops of water and tilted as if about to be poured.
The selection at the store nearest me is limited compared to 15 years ago, but some stores once again feature a staggering array of craft and overseas beers, making me stand in the aisle in confusion, unclear as to where to begin. When I have time, I enjoy that time of confusion and absorption, assimilating the rows of labels and names, which I can later digest and research. The brewery census in this country still doesn’t approach that of the early 1990s nor come close to pre-Prohibition, when nearly every small town was home to a brewery, along with all the other little businesses that disappeared, leaving former commercial centers mere residential crossroads, but craft beer has returned, and I think this time it will stay.