The beer styles all countries should be brewing right now
What are the upcoming beer styles brewers should consider producing next if they want to hit the trends head on? db finds out.
A selection of beer experts divulged where they felt the potential lay for brewers looking to make a success of their next release. But which styles are worth investigating further? Here’s a clue, it isn’t IPA. In truth, the answer lies more in refreshment replacing bitterness.
Speaking to the drinks business, author and award judge Adrian Tierney Jones said: “I think Belgian-styled witbiers are something that brewers would be wise to look at, especially in the warmer weather.”
Despite the beer style presenting well, with its soft head of foam, its clove and banana bread aromas and refreshing citrus-like finish, Tierney Jones explained how it would need to be supported by its own glassware style and marketed well to fly off the bar.
“It’s a beer style that no one goes up to a bar and asks for, so I think it needs to be marketed as a beer that is refreshing and maybe with different glassware like Hoegaarden did back in the nineties,” Tierney Jones told db, and added: “Good glassware makes a beer like that more appealing and makes people want to sit there with their attractive glass.”
Beer awards judge and brewery consultant Bill Simmons agreed and said that, at present, brewers all over the world are recreating Belgian styled beer and they’re not always based in Belgium, which he said shows how brewing skill is advancing across all markets.
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Simmons explained: “Other countries are making good Belgian beers, rather than those beers just being from Belgium now. In fact, they’re getting better and better and the quality is definitely improving.”
As well as Belgian styles, other beer that have potential to turn heads right now are dark lagers which, according to Jules Gray, the owner of Hop Hideout beer shop, as well as the founder of Sheffield Beer Week, have risen in popularity as more people are open to darker beers since the rise of Guinness.
Gray noted that there is a lot of potential for “dark lager” and pointed out that this is because “there is a bit of a European sort of thing coming back a bit”.
Gray explained how there are currently “a lot of people really pushing for it too and the Czech Beer Alliance is doing quite a lot of groundwork at the moment for different lager styles”.
“I’ve had quite a few like Czech-style Pilsners, other Czech lagers and dark lagers in lately,” said Gray and revealed that out of all of the styles she is selling right now “dark lagers I have had really good customer feedback. I feel like it’s having a bit of a moment again”.
She added: “I think maybe it’s because of Guinness and how that has been doing well in the background, which means that now I’ve got a lot more people coming in who are asking for dark beers all year round and it’s not a seasonal thing for people anymore, which is positive. I’ve also found that if I’ve got a dark lager on tap then people go ‘Ooooh’ and everyone knows that if it’s done well then you get both the best of both worlds – a dark beer as well as a different side of lager.”
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