I hope this isn’t a mistake. The debate about whether “extreme beers” are good, bad or something between has been rehashed enough here and elsewhere. And when Pete Brown asked for reader input and suggested he might use those comments in a story he caught a certain amount of grief in the beer blogosphere.
But I can use your help. I’m working on a business story about “extreme beers” and their value (or lack thereof) to breweries. I’ll talk to brewers and brewery representatives about that. What I’d like to know is if the term “extreme beer” means something specific to real live beer drinkers. I’ve never heard a customer at a bar say, “I’d like an extreme beer, please.”
Certainly the term has become part of our beer vocabulary — check out Daniel Bradford’s post about the Extreme Beer Festival.
I decided to ask you because the discussion last week about beer prices turned out to be so interesting. I’d particularly like to hear from casual readers who haven’t necessarily joined the “extreme” discussion here or elsewhere. Leave a comment, or if you are feeling shy please use email.
The question, just to be clear, is what does the term “extreme beer” tell you about what’s in your glass?
To me, it simply means beer that can’t be drank in any sort of quantity (over 10oz) and that’s made by someone who has no comprehension for subtlety and peddles their wares to the lowest common denominator. There are beers that are big and beers that are bitter but things have gotten out of control. Its funny that breweries continue to make Über IPA types but still can’t make a simple pale ale thats worth drinking. I heard a great analogy the other day. If a chef said to you, ‘There is so much salt in that soup you will hardly be able to drink it…really, no one has every put that much salt in a soup!!!’ Would you really want to eat it!?
“Extreme beer” means nothing to me. “Extreme” as an adjective has a persistence with beer that has not been the case in other parts of pop culture. When used in relation to music or sports or or energy drinks or anything else, “x-treme” is more joke than informative. It also seems to mean strong and/or hoppy. Extremely yeasty, malty or watery beers don’t get the label. Really really black roasted beers are just unbalanced and sour beers were really sour before anyone called anything “x-tr-m.” It also seems to connote “neato + black t-shirt”. Having been a 14 year old punk in 1977, “extreme beer” hardly seems to deserve the traction it gets in this respect compared to other claims to the jarring perhaps prophetic imposition of authentic essence.
This speaks in no way to any of the beers which are labeled as extreme – which also goes some way to point out the uselessness of the term.
Seems I’ll be the first to defend “extreme” beer.
The label “extreme” is one of those terms that was chosen to identify a new wave of brewing that people couldn’t previously categorize. Think of the term “techno” applied to electronic music. “Extreme” and “techno” do nothing in the way of being descriptive and should be abandoned if it weren’t for the uninformed public holding tight to their use.
As far as the beers that fall under this umbrella, I don’t think Kristen’s comparison is fair. The brewers that set this wave in motion did so with quality beers. There are a good amount of salty soups out there, but they only act to remind us how well crafted the leaders of the pack truly are.
Extreme brewing simply means beer that challenges the tradition. This is a good thing, otherwise we’d be drinking unfiltered, unhopped fermented barley tea out of clay pots with reed straws.
I totally disagree that extreme beer = progress. I see it as just a marketing term which appeals to the machismo of a certain group of drinkers.
Extreme beer means a beer with more alcohol than I’d expect and/or more stuff in it than I’d expect. Someone in the US tries to brew a dubbel or tripel or doppelbock? Not an extreme beer. They brew a barleywine to U.S. standards of the past decade or so? Not an extreme beer. They push alcohol, or load up on flavor hops, or add stuff to sour or funk, or add coffee and chocolate and molasses and Mexican cone sugar and spruce tips, or age it in a sherry barrel, or cook hot dogs in the wort… extreme beer. Many of which are good, many of which aren’t. The term doesn’t connote anything to me yet in terms of positive or negative. It just tells me I should prep for something more than I’d otherwise expect.
As a homebrewer, I occasionally make what could be categorized as extreme beers. To me this means beer that is either exceedingly hoppy or high in alcohol or both. When I buy extreme beer, I expect these characteristics, I expect the beer to be good, and I expect I’ll pay way more than it it really worth. By their very nature, extreme beers tend to be way out of balance. Some of these beers are pretty good, but really, most seem to be made more for marketing purposes or experimental reasons rather than for strong sales. They draw attention to a particular brewery, which helps drive sales of their other offerings more so than the extreme beer itself. Of course, this is just my opinion, I don’t have any numbers to back this up.
Beer that goes bungejumping.
Extreme beers are “extreme” because they are on the fringes of what we consider “beer” to be. The more interesting those beers become, and the more certain extreme beers become mainstream, the further those fringes are pushed. That’s the function of these beers, to expand the horizons of what beer can be. It’s about inspiration and creativity, experimentation with what is possible in beer.
There is something to be said for doing one thing and doing it well. We all want to have beers around that are just plain good. But if you stick to perfecting a certain style or recipe you end up with Germany. Well made, clean, nice, and the same every time. But at that point you’re in stasis. Where are you going from there?
I won’t argue that all extreme beers taste good. But whether it tastes good or bad is irrelevant to whether you learned something about beer by drinking it. They are ‘good’ in the sense that their existence expands our experience of beer. I’ve had (and made!) many beers where after the first sip I’ve said “Hmmm. Interesting. Not quite what I expected from a Chile Chocolate Lemon Walnut Braggot. But on the other hand pretty much exactly what I expected…” and poured it out. But once in a while you get an extreme beer that both pushes the boundaries “and” tastes good. And from there the boundaries expand.
Forty years ago wouldn’t an IPA have been “extreme”?
Forty years from now who’s to say we won’t consider Chile Chocolate Lemon Walnut Braggot ordinary?
In the sweep of beer history, lagers were once extreme.
With no gruet on shelves, would it not be now,,extreme beer? Historical marketing plan too? American gothic bungee jumping yarrow pale ale?
In our experience, “Extreme Beer” is more of everything – it’s ingredients x2, x3, x4, what ever it is, it’s pushing the boundries of what beer is and what beer can be. It is also a bigger ABV, and much more intense flavor. It’s true, I’ve never gone into a bar and asked for an “extreme beer” but I have asked the bartender what their “bigger” beers are.
Beer America TV makes a good point — I’ve never met anybody who asked for an extreme beer. Really, the term exists as a shorthand for talking about the newer bigger beers and experimental beers, and I’d bet it’s used more by journalists and bloggers and beersites than by people in bars or stores.
To me it just means a big beer, high abv, perhaps experimental, probably one I’d like to try because it may not come around again, but probably irritatingly expensive.
From the brewer’s side, I have no idea whether the beers make any economic sense, but that’s probably not the idea. The idea is probably honest experimentation with more than a soupcon of oneupmanship.
To me the whole Imperial Whatever is getting a little screwy, but then we get back to category arguments. And if in the end the answer is always in the glass, I certainly enjoy some of those Imperial Whatevertheyares anyway.
I don’t want to be experimented on by brewers. I want to drink good beer.
Germany in stasis? Not at all. Just changed in a different way and at a different pace to the US.
We’ve recently introduced an ‘extreme’ range at our brewery in Australia, where this category of beer has been slow in emerging. The market has only really embraced craft brewing in the past 5 years, and it has been an uphill battle to get beer drinkers to try a bitter rather than something called a “Victoria Bitter” that is actually a sweetish lager. A whopping $40/l alcohol excise tax hasn’t helped matters either…
So we hope the ‘extreme’ tag acts as both a warning and an enticement. A warning to those for whom a stock-standard IPA would be a stark divergence from their tasteless lagers, and an enticement for those willing to push their boundaries a bit further.
when i hear Extreme Beer it brings an image of double/triple IPA. Some exprimental high-octane american ale. Somehow never belgian, maybe because those are all pretty much experimantal and unique 🙂
Extreme is an adjective, used also in sports: Heli-skiing is an extreme sport. Bunny slopes are green (akin to a sessionable bitter), IPAs are black diamonds, perhaps. And heli-skiing is an amped up beer that may take a bolder, more adventurous drinker (and one willing to pay the higher price of admission). I expect “extreme beers” to be bigger and better, and if I’m forking out more cash, I expect it to be worth the price of the lift ticket.
This’ll be a special occasion beer, most likely, and I’ll share it with good friends and family. If I showed up at a dinner party with a $20 bottle of wine, would anybody look at me funny? Paying $17 for a bottle of La Folie is my sipped and shared on a special day $20 bottle of wine. Since there’s a higher cost involved, I’ll ask that my brewer factually brew a kick-ass beer, in whatever “extreme” style it may be. And in sizing up my opinion, I’ll try to remember the difference between a defect and my personal preference. In choosing what to buy, I, personally, won’t be nearly as intrigued by the words “Imperial Red” as I would something else. But maybe “Imperial Flanders Red”:-)
It’s quite true that big beers are nothing new. And I do like big beers sometimes.
To me the term “extreme beer” has lately become practically a consumer warning.
To brewers, (mainly the current wave of amateurs gone professional) it seems to have evolved into an excuse for ramping up the alcohol, covering up flavor defects with an overload of roasted character and hop bitterness, and selling it under the guise of being “craft”. So often, they are also made and packaged without the long aging from which bigger beers always benefit.
I agree with the assessment that it has become a marketing gimmick. Some of the “extreme” beers out there do manage to be at least interesting, occasionally innovative, and sometimes even good…but on the other side of the coin, so many of them resemble badly failed homebrew.
I don’t know that I have a whole lot to add (not that that’s stopping me, obviously), but “extreme” does seem to be a media category, not a beer category. The phenomenon seems to have happened when the national media caught wind of high-gravity beers and gave them that name. I don’t know that it’s a term being used by brewers or beer writers (or fans)–certainly not here in Oregon.
I like how some of the commenters here have offered their visions of “extreme” beer in different contexts. Given that American craft brewing is heavily skewed toward stronger beers (anything below five percent, except where they’re mandated by states, is something of a rarity), I think the most extreme beers are bitters and milds. My new hobby is seeking out the wee beers with bold taste. To be able to deliver a tour de force of flavor at four percent–that’s extreme brewing. In the sense of skill and knowledge, anyway. But the New York Times won’t be calling it “extreme” anytime soon.
My two cents is to bascially agree with Jeff. It’s just a marketing tool. It’s interesting to try Dogfish Head’s Midas Touch, but it’s not something I want again. I’m not a beer expert, but I like what I like. I can handle the imperial IPA’s, porters, stouts, but I don’t derive any pleasure from a barleywine. For me, that’s an extreme.
Too bad “extreme beers” doesn’t mean something as simple as a collection, in small batches, of every dang beer in Stephen Harrod Buhner’s book called, “Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers”. To taste one of each would be truely,,,extreme,,,just because,,, you can.
Imagine a brewery that only brews extreme “one offs”. Collector heaven or hell,,,who’s ever done it? Brewer heaven or hell?….What an experience option….to the extreme!
Extreme=”out of the norm,,,and a bit farther”.
…you mean like Mikkeller?
Skit! Förlåt mej, Mikkeller!
I meant Bogedal…those are the one off’ers.
Kristen, those sound great! I’ve never seen those near me,,are they an option in the SW market ?
I guess I was thinking that some of the common historical “beer/ales” may now be considered “extreme” for more than the few reasons like ABV, IBU, etc.. that are now considered”extreme”. More marketing options but brewer torture?
What’s new for “extreme beers” now? What’s the new edge of the envelope? What is “out of the box” now?
Extreme Beer = No Fear
I’m a bit late, but still want to share my thoughts.
To me, many of those extreme beers can be divided in two groups:
– Pissing contest between brewers
– And something like those super muscle cars some automakers present every now and again (or used to). They know hardly anyone will buy them, but those cars make it to the cover of specialised magazines, etc and get people talking about the brand. Therefore, as it’s been mentioned before, it’s just marketing.
Maybe “Extreme Beer” is just a foul thing you try because you hope it sounds good,,but it’s not,,,but at least you tried.
I now know I will never ever buy another Buffalo Bill’s Brewery’s “Orange Blossom Cream Ale”,,but I had to buy it to know it.
I’m not sure if I feel stupid or extreme,,but I just switched to tea.