An important and overlooked point.

As to the list of best selling beers. I got a little windy, so made it a separate post.

Yes. I suppose the only reason people might feel differently is that those who enter reviews and engage in discussions on the big beer websites (BA and Ratebeer, principally) tend to focus on the extreme beers. And why not, I suppose. I guess they’re easier to talk about.

I’ve begun to think people are getting their knickers in a twist for nothing with this whole extreme v. session beer thing, me included. Maybe it’s just a big non-issue.

I’d be interested to know what the top ten selling American craft beers are? Does anyone have that info?

To be sure, there are very few big-ass Japanese craft beers. But there certainly are some. Even the biggest and baddest are also probably toned down from the biggest and baddest US beers, but otherwise the general character is similar.

And when you try to generalize about the respective industries overall, I think that what the author is calling “subtlety” in Japanese craft beer could just as easily be referred to as “blandness”. The article states there are about 280 craft breweries. Sure, but there probably less than 20 of those have any real reputation as consistent producers of really good beer. Amongst the rest there is a whole swag of breweries producing technically competent but remarkably unremarkable beers — subtle? Yes, perhaps, or just well-made beers following closely (at best) in the footsteps of the original style (alt, koelsch, pils, weizen, apa, ipa, etc). Nothing to make you grab your notebook and start writing feverishly. And then there are the dogs, which unfortunately still exist at far too high a level for the industry’s good.

Also, just as an aside, the guy in the photo, Aoki-san, is one hell of a good guy and a great champion of craft beer. He was the catalyst for a craft beer festival on September 30 which was basically a consortium of the cream of Japanese craft breweries directly putting on a festival for the consumers without any middlemen. While planned long before MJ’s untimely passing, it coincided with the national toast in the US and we were able to put on a nice tribute with large posters of MJ hung over the stage. Beer writer Bryan Harrell (Brews News) made a great speech in Japanese in honor of MJ and we even managed to hold a minute’s silence … yes, in the middle of a beer festival! That was a special moment.

This is hard to defend on any level. Even here in Beervana, which is surely the most criticized for steroidal beer, the charge doesn’t hold water. Best-selling beers: BridgePort IPA, Deschutes Mirror Pond and Black Butte Porter, Widmer Hef. The big beers may get the most attention, but they don’t sell well, nor do they constitute anything like “most” of any brewery’s stable.

It’s a silly, sloppy comment.

I expect better from the Times.

The info about Japanese beer is interesting though.

I’m just tired of people trying to compare brewing cultures – yes Garrett included – instead of celebrating them.

On the other hand you might not like my headline. So I’ll simply note that if the reporter said some instead most that would have been fair.