Craft Beer, I say No No No No.

I don’t like Craft Beer. What’s more it doesn’t like me. I find the taste of all these IPAs, wheat beers, stouts, porters, ales, dark ales etc. etc. not to my liking. And when I have had more than say, one schooner, I feel fuzzy in the head, bloated in the guts and achy in the joints. I don’t know if it is the hops or the yeast or what. But I don’t like craft beer and it doesn’t like me.

I know what you are thinking. He’s just got on it and he has a hangover but it feels completely different. Beside even if it didn’t make me feel like I had a low grade flu, I still don’t like Craft Beer.

Which would be fine but of course craft beers are the biggest thing since well mass produced bottled beer. At bars, restaurants, parties and mate’s houses it is getting harder and harder to find either a serving of or respect for the stuff that has been around for decades even hundreds of years.

Call me boring but I love good old lager beers. Classics like Heineken, Stella Artois, and Becks etc. Probably my favourite is Japanese beer; man that Asahi goes down a treat.

But I grew up in a country where each state drank its own state based brew. The rivalry between XXXX and Tooheys along the QLD and NSW state border was as big as Holden and Ford.

Those days are long gone of course and Australia is different place now but I still love Tooheys New and if I am feeling adventurous even Tooheys Old.

VB, Melbourne Bitter, Carton Draught and of course the beer of my ancestors, XXXX, are all my preferences ahead of the latest organic rice beer infused with who knows what with a name like The Emupluckers Dustpan Ale or The Old Rectors Crypt Stout.

I remember first trying Coopers Pale Ale on the way to a surf comp presentation night with a couple of well-known surfers. One of them now well known as one of the industry’s real eccentrics had a six pack with him. I couldn’t believe that there was crap floating in the bottom inch of the beer in the stubby. I didn’t have another one. Given that by craft beer standards Coopers Pale Ale is pretty mainstream you can see why I might be having trouble.

Now I know that some of the brewery brands and the beer names are pretty funny, and plenty of people are being employed and some creative folk are really getting some recognition for their thing. All of which is fine and dandy and that would have never happened when everyone was just making his or her own home brew.

The trouble I have is that to me when it was called home brew you could tell your mate it tasted like shite but seeing it is 2.00am and we are still thirsty and there is no good beer left we will have to drink it.

But now with all those lovely steel tanks and pipes and big rents and tasting trays and descriptions like the back of wine bottles such comments are a bit harder to take.

The last time I went to one of these establishments out of the six of us, four couldn’t even finish the small samples of the varieties on tap that night and instead ending up drinking a schooner of their [rather good] cider before pissing off to a good old fashioned pub for some bottles of the stuff made by the many kilolitres daily.

Still each to their own but I would say that like a lot of things feel that you are sticking it to the man by being alternative and different it doesn’t take long for the man to fight back. So of course the leading Craft Breweries who have really made the bucks in the last decade or so are now selling to the big multinationals and their brands slowly but surely will be like all the rest.

So sorry craft beer industry, I am trying to be fair here but I am really leaning towards a call of overhyped bullshit.

If you want to check out some of the great and not so great beer names do a search on Google. There is even a site that will help you come up with your own name. But you're wasting your time, you can't beat XXXX.