How Do Microbrews Change For The Worse When Production Is Scaled Up.

[Ash in Perth]

Going to a bigger brewery with taller fermentors (for example) certainly changes fermentation profile somewhat given the exact same grain bill.

Commercial savings as posts above are more likely the culprits though imo.

I remember reading about this after a large brewery expanded and bought a set of tall lager style fermenters for brewing ales. They ended up only half filling them to get the same fermentation profile for one or more of their beers. Keeping the height/diameter ratio the same is very important for yeast focused beers like Belgians, Wheats, etc. Probably less important for lagers and cleaner ales but its worth thinking about for sure..

The accountants get control and its all over!

Not if they are a decent accountant... The raw ingredient costs in brewing (especially hops) are only one of the few costs, along with machinery maintenance, energy, land, logistics, marketing, TAX, TAX, TAX, TAX and some more TAX. Reducing hopping slightly and trying to fool the drinkers will make no real profit increase. This point would only be applicable for the MASSIVE volume beers that most of us would not drink.

 

[Nick JD]

I don't agree with this, if the drinker does not continue to buy the beer the shareholder will be the looser. Therefore I believe the drinker is the primary customer, he may not be drinking brews that we would welcome but he's the dude handing over the cash.

There's a reason almost all megaswill beer is also cheap to make.

Tail's wagging the dog. People drink it because they are hammered with advertising saying it's a beer they can relate to. It's for a hard earned thirst (blue collar, VB) or it's for the white collar set (gold foil, Crown).

These beers are differentiated not by their recipe, but by their marketing. Apart from XXXX, virtually all Aussie megaswill is in essence the same recipe.

Megaswill companies want to maximise profit for shareholders - if the consumer can be convinced that a beer made with the bare minimum of ingredients is good (low carb comes to mind), then the shareholder is happy.

Australians don't buy megaswill because they like the taste. They buy it because they are told to, in adverts, and because their mates buy it.

Replacing grain with sugar until it's just above the threshold of tasting actually bad is a classic example. VB would be ALL SUGAR if they could get away with it.

 

[Lord Raja Goomba I]

The marketing is a huge thing.

It has people identify themselves with a beer, the same as car people identify themselves with a car brand "I'm a Ford man" or a "Holden man" - you can never be both.

And the identity has no reasonable or quantifiable link to the quality of the cars. It's just the internal locus of identity manifesting itself in a piece of machinery.

Beer has the same locus of identity issue, because the machismo aspect of it (as with cars), is less about the quality or ability and more about the perception created as an outward demonstration of their internal self-identification.

Marketing appeals to those self-identifications as a larger sub-set of society (as Nick said - white collar, blue collar, cashed up bogan). Most people still haven't figured out after 10 years that Heineken and Becks are BUL - they drink it because it is "European" and perceived as "sophisticated".

The self-identification issue is classless, so the marketing can't be. It creates pre-defined (by the marketers) class based identities that a person can slot themselves into. It's similar in the Eastern States to rugby union vs league supporters (not all, but some) pre-defining themselves (and others) by class (rah-rah's vs mungoes). It's irrelevant in the global context, but again, comes back to, not which sport is better (because that is subjective), but the way people identify themselves, and therefore what they watch.

Eventually, the shift will come from Euro and Corona to micro/craft beer and those who drink it will self-identify in that manner (much the same as city-hippies identify with organic food, wine-snobs with their wine brand)). I hope not, but I seriously think that time will come.

 

[pk.sax]

Beer is a drink for after some effort.... VB can be drunk on the couch, in front of the telly, McDonald's burger in the other hand, just imagine how bland and tasteless a burger from McDonald's would taste if consumed with a tasty IPA or even a humble pale ale. VB might even make McD's taste good. The same way eating a sweet cake with lacklustre tea will suddenly make the tea taste stronger.

Do we need to say more about why people drink this bland piss?!

 

[///]

So, going by the fact that big breweries are all eveil, with a brewery as big as Lion Nathans' or Fosters, how does one account for a beer like Sierra Nevada?

The last time I check SN employed accountants and marketers ....

 

[pk.sax]

So, going by the fact that big breweries are all eveil, with a brewery as big as Lion Nathans' or Fosters, how does one account for a beer like Sierra Nevada?

The last time I check SN employed accountants and marketers ....

They pay those accountant monkeys with peanuts to lower their audit drive. Gentle application of brew helps to control the optimisation urges.

 

[Brisfox]

All the K&K boys I know love that stuff.

 

[Batz]

 

[Brewman_]

Apart from XXXX, virtually all Aussie megaswill is in essence the same recipe.

May I ask why XXXX is an exception?



Fear_n_Loath

 

[Brewman_]

2 Posts in a row, can't help myself.

I do agree that many of the nice beers of the past have fallen to mediocrity. Sometimes I wonder whether my taste has changed, and I know it has, rather than the beer, but this post is assurance its not me but the beers have changed.

My take on things is like this, I think we, that like a beer with some malt & Hop character are by far and away the exception in the market, so the mega swill brews don't meet our niche. Things are chaning, there is no doubt about that, and I think things are changing faster than ever.

I especially think that the younger generation will be much more demanding in the types of beer they choose to drink than previous generations. Bring it on!

Fear_n_Loath

 

[DJR]

Case in point about a year ago had a JS pils - very nice. (should've noted the bottle code) - good saaz flavour and a well rounded malty palate.

Had one the other day - not so good. Bottle code 142 - Swan Brewery bottling line #2.

The stuff was much better at Camperdown. Rob down there said a few years back they were going to do it with WLP800 and a good whack of Saaz. I think the grainbill is pretty simple 95% JW Pils and 5% JW Munich.

Huge fermenters definitely do change the profile as does head pressure in the fermenter if the larger brewery is using it as does high gravity/higher temperature fermentation which is used extensively in the megas - as it turns over more product, faster. Under pressure (the pressure means less CO2 required at the end but also controls yeast characteristics) at 16-18C in a big fermenter (a few storeys high) at about 1064 OG and then cut back with de-oxygenated water at the end. Yum.

 

[Tim]

I read somewhere, probably on here that when Lion Nathan moved the JS Amber Ale and the Golden Ale to production down the road to the big brewery that they started to use the house lager yeast instead of the ale yeast used at the Malt Shovel.

I think this accounts for a lot of the changes in flavour. I also found that when they moved production the beers were a lot dryer and had a more grainy taste, which could be from trying to squeeze more extract efficiency from the lauter than at the Malt Shovel.

 

[Lord Raja Goomba I]

May I ask why XXXX is an exception?



Fear_n_Loath

Cluster instead of POR.

 

[stux]

Beer is a drink for after some effort.... VB can be drunk on the couch, in front of the telly, McDonald's burger in the other hand, just imagine how bland and tasteless a burger from McDonald's would taste if consumed with a tasty IPA or even a humble pale ale. VB might even make McD's taste good. The same way eating a sweet cake with lacklustre tea will suddenly make the tea taste stronger.

Do we need to say more about why people drink this bland piss?!

In Belgium, they sell Jupiler Pils at McDonalds

Mind you this is just about the most boring Belgian beer there is

The most boring is Stella

I remember getting a delightful drunken lecture from an old Belgian guy over a few trappistenbiers about how Stella was crap now as they were continually changing the recipe, dumbing it down, putting more sugar in it etc

Sound familiar

I bet Stella was a great beer once, would love to have known it then