We're back, and we want to hear what you think is going to be big in 2023! Hit us up below. You can also influence what we make this year by filling in our annual survey right HERE: forms.gle/ycVU7BPvD5qpkzTq6
It’s the thing I like about how Three Hills label their beer, all of the malts are listed along with the hops and yeast on all of the beers they produce. Hope to see more of this from other breweries.
Good call my friend. I love seeing the ingredients. It's not easy to clone a beer with just the ingredients listed if that's what some breweries are worried about
Coming up to a bottle shop near you: “Mission to Saaz”, “Less slaps in my face”, “Trendy Maltsters”, “Loud Alcohol”, and “Death of the DIPA (I’ve met your mum)”.
Lol. I’d be tempted to try a bottle of beer called ‘I’ve Met Your Mum’ - but would possibly avoid one called ‘Smells Like Your Mum’s Moisturizer’ or indeed ‘I Haven’t Been Sniffin’ Your Mum’s… (Moisturizer)’.
Guys, believe it or not dark milds are a bit of the rage here in western ny. I can go to my local craft beer store (brewed and bottled) and pick up 3 or 4 different ones. Now I’ll continue with the video and comment as I go. Cheers fellow beer freaks!👍🏻🍻
I wanted to say HAPPY NEW YEAR and THANK YOU for doing what you do. I've only been following you guys for about a year, but you have forced me to educate myself even more in craft beers
Thanks guys! All the best for 2023! I am brewing an ESB, all Crisp including Chevalier as base today. Quite excited to taste Chevalier after learning of it on your channel.
So far what I've seen through December in the US is a rekindled love of west coast IPAs and I couldn't be more thrilled. Here's to hoping the hazy IPA and double hazy IPA trend cools off. Not saying they have to go away; but a scaling back would be nice. I've also been seeing more rice and corn lagers lately which maybe could be a bridge point between macro light lagers and craft pilsner/helles. Oh and I'm seeing more brands creating N/A craft beers, including IPAs and Stouts.
Agree with your opener, hope the same happens in the UK. I'd include NEIPA's, they and HIPA and DHIPA have become a bit mad for me and I love a good west coast IPA!
I think you may be right about the barley trend! My brewery and several breweries around me are starting to experiment with newly regrown ancient varietals of barley and other grains.
I'm hoping to see the rise of the British hops. I really enjoyed the series Buxton did combining American and UK hops. I'm hoping to have a play with a few in my own brews this year as well. From a business point of view it makes sense for British Brewers to use British hops especially with how much value the pound has dropped and the increase in costs of everything
Thanks for sharing the effect of Climate And Farming have on the production of our Beers 🍻! Once again the Ingredients Are Very Important plus Good Water 💦. Tucson Arizona Desert 🏜️. ✌️😎😁
Totally onboard with these predictions. Now IPA was amazing, and at a sessionable ABV it was a big surprise, as well as being home-grown. Prices for punters to pay out for 6%+ beers in the pub are unsustainable, so if they can keep costs down for themselves as brewers and us as punters it'll keep people going to the pub and bottleshop this year.
In the states, even in winter in Michigan you're lucky to find even one or two taps of malty beer (brown/porter/red/bock/anything dark and/or malty) among 20 IPAs and lagers.
Platform Beer Company out of Cleveland, Ohio used to put every single hop strain, yeast strain, type of malt and adjunct on the side of the can. Idk why they stopped but they r one of the breweries that got me heavily into craft beer, and being able to see all the ingredients on the side played a big role in my interest. My point is I hope breweries do normalize being transparent about what malts they use.
Here in Australia there is a groundswell of "middies", that is, mid strength beers. I just threw a bit of a keg party, had 6 beers on tap on the most popular was a 3.8% raspberry sour and a 3.8% SIPA that I (finally) nailed the recipe on. Everyone was commenting on how much happier they are drinking a mid-strength beer that has more body and flavour then the typical macro swill they drink that tastes like beer-flavoured water. There is a real appetite for slamming beers that don't give you a slamming headache!
I think 2023 will be test for craft beer in the UK. A lot of breweries are struggling to stay afloat. I hope this isn’t the case but when you have had the likes of Wild Beer Co go into administration it does make you think is this only the start. I also work at a label company that supplies a lot of breweries with their labels and I can tell you first hand things aren’t looking too good for some and will only be a test of time. So start supporting your local establishments whether that’s your local ale house, pub, brewery etc. But I also know that’s easier said than done with cost of living going up for everyone. This could also be a huge factor in breweries etc staying afloat
Due to having the big C I was advised pre and post op to limit my alcohol content to a minimum. The same applied during chemo. I've since found out the figures for alcohol vs returning cancer and I've decided to keep the alco units to a minimum. So its nice to see you giving a no/lo beer a shout. Since viewing your blind taste video on low alcohol beers I've given a few Mash Gang beers a go. Very nice they are too. Northern Monk, for me at least, do a very good range of no/lo beers at a decent price point. Cheers 🍻
Hey Tony - great to hear the video helped you find some more great LA beer, and glad you recovered from the big C. We'll be covering more LA stuff during the year as well so stay tuned!
Would love to see you do something up here in Scotland about the barley trend. Maybe talking to Sir Geoff Palmer, who discovered the barley abrasion process that's been massive in the brewing and distilling worlds, and set up the brewing and distilling courses at Heriot Watt uni, where a bunch of brewers working across the UK trained. And the work that breweries like Newbarns and Swannay up here are doing with barley is great.
Great introduction to the year, appreciate you mentioning people spending less and how that should affect 22:51 breweries’ output and experimentation decisions ✊
Absolutely correct on that saaz point. I have increased my Czech Pilsner, but I am getting way less saaz. I have to add Tettnanger for bittering to stretch my saaz in my hop contract.
Just cracked the jolly pumpkin fruited saison I mentioned called “kiviuq”. Blackberry, key lime, oak barrel aged and can conditioned. Freaking amazing beer. You guys would cream your jeans over this one. No Sickening fruit purree bullshit. Just a beautiful sour beer. Another great video guys. Cheers!👍🏻🍻
I’ve certainly upped my Cask drinking, but mainly thanks to my amazing local with 9 cask lines. So when I go to a taproom it’s a bit of a let down that it’s all Keg. Nice… but Cask is just so much nicer. For 2023 - we need to support cask, support local pubs and support local breweries.
Look out for Holy Goat brewing and Dog Falls brewing from Scotland. Holy goat makes great mixed ferm beers, while Dog Falls brewing makes mainly easy drinking hoppy beers which remind me of the original NEIPAs of Hill Farmstead, The Alchemist and Bissell Brothers
A very happy new year CBC. Do you think you have a big enough data set to be able to show a year on year trend for what beer style was big in the following year and how long the trend lasted (if it was longer than a year)? Be interested to see if certain beer styles stretch out over a number of years vs flash in the pan vs which come in and out of style. All the best in 2023, onward and upward.
Love your super positivity guys. It would've been so easy to dwell on brewery closures and the cost of living crisis, but you nailed it. For me the rise & improvement of LA beers is a big one. I'm not a LA consumer but my son is, and I've been researching on his behalf. Following the consumption of some really good beers from Drop Bear (the Tropical IPA is brilliant, and lager & stout are great) I'm really keen to try more out. From the video the Mash Gang stuff looks great, nice full head so hopefully, body and mouthfeel are on their way up. Would love to see an increase in British Hops. I think overall, as you alluded to, a big trend is going to reining it in by lower ABVS, driven by the consumer spending less and the lower-than-normal availability of raw materials, their cost and that of energy.
Haha. That looked like a pretty challenging shoot Jonny, with Brad's self love and gang initiation shenanigans! Fair play to you though. You completely broadsided him in return with "I've been sniffing your mum's..." 😆 Here's to another great year for you guys. 👍🍺
in France we have at least 1 or 2 years behind the UK so i'd say pastry sour will be popular this year. Mixed fermentation still has one or two year of growth. local ingredients (hops and malt) have a good path ahead. You need to make an episode about "terroir" of hops, because the climate and soil have a huge impact on the taste. For example, Cascade is grown all over the US, Europe and NZ, and has a widely different end result, like in wine the same grape variety varies from region to region
Been seeing a lot of interest in beers utilizing thiols, either from Phantasm Powder, focusing on basic 2-Row, mash hopping with Saaz, and naturally with Omega's line, especially Lunar Crush Lager and Helio Gazer. This is mainly on the homebrewing level, but I know a few local breweries are starting to experiment more with thiols in general around here (Florida). Same can be said of making faux lagers with Kveik strains like Voss or Lutra.
Might not be for everyone but I want to see more breweries focus on a quality flagship beer (like Sonoma, Steady, Happy etc.) complimented by a solid core, semi-regular and seasonal range with a couple of new/experimental releases per month rather than seeing 3 brand new beers per week as its impossible to keep up with and ends up putting me off a brewery totally as I get lost in what to buy. Also would quite like you to be correct about the reighing in of the DIPA where maybe we only see the big names like Putty and Crystallography return occasionally.
THe issue with core is you have to find volume for it, and there isn't much space for that on the bar thanks to the beer tie and actions of a few of the macros.
I will add that, with it being a recession happening, we are going leaner and more focused on just staying afloat. So I will be focused on brewing the best beers I can, without doing crazy expensive things (what that looks like is reducing hopping rates and fruit percentages), and also trying to get more pop out of the yeasts instead.
Remember 10 years ago when we all drank lovely 6-7% West Coast IPAs that had a slight haze to them? I would welcome that again. Also, I've been wondering for years why British hops can't find their way into a UK craft brewers beer. I'm here for it! Cheers!
Unfortunately pastry sours are still big here in western New York but you can get still get some beautiful fruited sours from the likes of jolly pumpkin from Michigan. I currently have a wild fruited saison with blackberry and lime in my beer fridge
Please please please visit The Kernel this year. Aside from their pale ales, you should look at their dark beers. Take a look at Dr Sam’s Christmas present to herself which includes an 1890 Export Stout and an Imperial Brown Stout from 1856 but also an Export India Porter using Taiheke hops and an India Double Porter with Mosaic, Nelson Sauvin and Sabro. If that’s not old meeting new, I don’t know what is. Happy New Year to you and the Brad x
On this trend, what new hops do you think we will see more of this year (outside an uplift in modern UK hops)? I personally think Nectaron and Peacherine will infiltrate more beers, but would love to hear your opinions. Any episode on the latest hops to hit the market would be awesome to watch as well. I think Citra and Mosaic have some challengers nipping at their toes.
Well I have heard a lot of brewers and drinkers excited about Nectaron but availability of it is pretty low so watch out for it next year. This year I think we won't see much of a change as brewers know the hops thay work and sell in these trying times. UK hops should be OK as they are a lot cheaper!
Great video, gents! I mentioned this on Twitter but I've started to see more New Zealand Pales floating about. They're nothing particularly groundbreaking but pack a nice citrusy hit with lots of haze.
@@TheCraftBeerChannel Love that barley/MALT is going to be a big one, its been a focus of mine in home brewing for a while and I specially go looking for the heritage malts :) Brewing a kolsch now with Crisp's Hana malt. My English special bitters were THE Marris otter too. All need to be imported this side of the world in South Africa.
maris otter is actually easy and cheap barley variety, it matures easily and is easier to malt because the skins are thin, also fertiliser usage is low - it's taken forward because it's good for production. malting companies that mainly use maris otter will say it's low yield but they will compare it to animal feed barley varieties, which are much harder to malt because irregular size, thicker skins. it's also controlled under patent like golden promise, but t'hey are both a very economically rewarding and easy to handle malt.
Really hope the resurgence of classic British styles continues into this year and beyond. I've only come into craft beer in the last year or two but I've already come to realise that a lot of the modern styles, juicy IPAs, sours, sweeter and adjuncted beers etc just aren't for me. Would be great to see more red, amber and brown ales coming out of craft breweries. On a side note, have almost finished reading Beer School after getting the book for Christmas, really enjoying it! Ideal for someone like myself who's becoming familiar with the terms and processes surrounding beer making but is still a little uneducated on the finer details. All the best for 2023 chaps 🍻
Gents, one of your best videos, I think. Loved the comedy, and Brad's enthusiastic intro. Happy 2023. (But please god, don't let Saturated in Nelson be a casualty of the DIPA cull)
Dare I say Cold IPA?! Adjunct IPAs initially got some shade but Cold IPA is everywhere here in Denver, CO and I'm sure it's on the way to you guys soon. Cheers guys!
We see a few of them, but I think the style is a little too confusing to drinkers. I think we'll simply see more westies that cut drier, brighter and crisper but are still marketed as westies.
I agree with your observations but also think traditional English styles will also come through to the fore. Interestingly I think English hop beers, low ABV and malt forward beers will all do well this year due to their invariably lower cost. High ABV, heavily american hopped beers are expensive and with people feeling the cost of living crisis I think these will go down too.
Unfortuntely malt prices tripled this year, so while I'd definitely be inclined to agree I think the malt forward beers will be bigger, more exciting releases and classic English session styles might struggle.
If I had to add one further prediction… a necessary migration by a growing number of craft beer consumers towards lower ABV pale ales, if only to offset or avoid the upward brewing costs (energy and ingredients), which will push some of the stronger IPAs beyond what they’re prepared to pay or able to afford alongside other inflationary pressures on their cost of living.
Great to see Mash Gang in this year's trends. Apart from the collabs, they use Fierce's equipment I think. Stoop and Chug are absolutely banging core range beers.
porters got huge here in washington state, id say theres usually at least one on most tap lists, even have also seen some brown ales and other similar styles pop up more this year.
I buy Maris Otter in bulk 25kg sacks for my homebrew, I wonder what prices are going to be like now with the energy crisis. I stocked up right when things in the world started to escalate.
Another great episode, thanks guys! I hope your predictions come true, and I'd personally love to see a return to British styles and cask. Happy new year!
Barleywine is my favorite style. Most of the ones available in Maryland are barrel-aged. I must not be the only one because they sell out so fast. I can't imagine DIPAs going away unless it is to give way to more TIPAs. Locally I am seeing some decline in fruited sours. Diabetes drinks that I am not sure qualify as beers. I enjoy them on occasion, but I have noticed they aren't flying off the shelves as usual. One of the famous local breweries required you to pick them up directly from the brewery, but now I have seen their stuff sitting in bottleshops.
Think we'll start seeing the quality of low cost craft beers improve to a point more expensive companies will be scrambling to get their beer into discount stores, thornbridge getting Jaipur and Green Mountain into home bargains currently feels like this kind of step
Already noticing the pastry sours appearing and more West Coast styles on offer. We had quite a lot of rice larger appearing not sure if its going to stay. (based in NYC)
I hope you're right about malts becoming a shining light. My fear is that with the rising cost of malt that breweries will start to reconsider how much they use Maris otter rather than best ale malt for example.
Did anyone else is the US (or rest of the world for that matter) get absolutely exhausted by the countless 10%+ abv stouts breweries pushed this year?? It got to the point where I was walking into taprooms and there wasn’t a single dark beer under 10%. It’s wild and annoying
It's certainly something we've seen when travelling as well. Outside the UK and Germany/ Czechia dark beer always seems to be brewed stronger, which is a real shame as richer malts really help lower abv beer!
For someone that only likes stouts and porters anything dark .. predictions ain't good. But in saying that I haven't struggled to find good stuff this year so. Roast dark chocolate caramel nut coconut even stuff that's vanilla especially tonka etc oak aged too. Not into pale stuff at all
I hope I'm wrong about this but due to economic uncertainty in the world I think 2023 will see many craft breweries selling out to big beer. And the biggest one among them will be northern monk I don't know why I just feel it in the air
I doubt we will see many sales - the macros are struggling too and will likely only hoover up bargains. Closures will be brutal though. They were awful in 2022
Great predictions, all of which I hope come true. I love a DIPA, but find the volume of them at my bottleshop overwhelming. Hopefully they can settle into a bit of a niche.
I love a good sticky piney DIPA. It'll be sad to see them dwindle but I fully appreciate why. I think (hope) the cask prediction from last year will emerge this year, but more specifically darker beers. Personally I'm getting a bit worn out by the 11+% stouts packed with sugars and adjuncts when all I really want is some traditional roasty malty goodness. There was a surge of milds in the past couple of years that I didn't expect but none of them really made it outside the festival scene. Don't get me wrong I like bourbon barrel aged imperial pastry stout like the next person but I sometimes just want a plain old stout.
As a brewer down under i like to follow the uk and usa socials as you guys are 6 months ahead of us. I think over here lager is going to carry on its trend and sadly i think a hazy/juicy lager will probably be tbe hypest beer here in 23 In australia we are going to see alot more hybrid lagers coming forward too in the shape of "draught", lager style malt and hopping but fermd with ale yeasts to pump production time up The hazy train will carry on its craft beer destruction path ruining styles by juicyfying them into weak versions of there former self. The winter imperial stout here is going to be barrels whos got the best. Sours i see carrying on in that fruited range and moving away from that wild type sadly. sours are taking the cider market and are the female non beer drinker gateway drink when they stop in on a wine tour etc. Seltzers will continue to grow and i think the pastry seltzers will see a head pop up.
I’ve seen a bigger push for tastier /better quality NA/near-beers in the US. I’d say we see a push for that this year . I’m starting to see NA beers being available in a lot of local breweries . I’d love to see a breakdown of how they are made and what qualifies as one !
I think there's going to be more bitters and traditional ales made this year, people seem to be a bit saturated with NEIPAs and DDHs etc at the minute, and cost of living problems will push people towards the cheaper beers, and breweries will be idiotic if they don't get on the cheaper-made traditional ales.
Nice one fellas. My prediction is that there will be an uptick in modified, new school, west coast IPAs. Still a clear-ish beer but using the new trendier hops like strata, sabro, New Zealand varieties and using new hopping methods like cryo, Lupomax, and incognito but with the bitterness within reason. Not like the early 2010’s with the bitterness wars. I’m starting to see more and more of these types of IPAs showing up on shelves and breweries. I also predict Centennial hops will get a little bit of spike in popularity again. I feel like I’m starting to see it pop up more than they used to.
Absolutely! We predicted that 2 years ago and it's taken longer than expected but the fusion of the two main IPA styles with the addition of new hops and tech is definitely the way IPA is going to go
My favorite video of the year. Agree with pretty much all of your predictions. I will say, though, yes to lower ABV IPA but I bet it will be cold IPAs specifically that reign supreme. We will see!
Mash Gang seems super hyped this year! who are these folks stirring so much excitement? could you do an interview? Also great to hear that we get now all the modern styles in a low alcohol version - wonder how you do super sweet pastry stouts as low alcohol without being even sweeter… just wanna say: super interesting!
HNY guys. Swannay of the Orkney isles are doing great things with heritage barley - esp the 'Viking grain' Bere, which they do a speciality grain Scapa and an ESB. So distinct, bready and delicious; such unique aromas. Also of note: Little Ox from my home town in Witney, W. Oxfordshire had a lovely heritage grained, Opus-hopped bitter called 'Pitchfork' last week; very nice liquid bread. I also agree - we may see a negative space appear where the classic DIPA sat - but *above* that I think they'll be a space for a range of 9 to 11% TIPs that'll appear for folk to gravitate to for a single-event, special occasion beer, irrespective of price. Well, I hope anyway.
Not so much what will be drunk as where - with the huge cost pressures on pubs and breweries, I hope that making the effort and paying a bit more to drink in pubs rather than buying in beer from supermarkets is a conscious trend for beer drinkers in 2023…
If you have a little time to spare, check out the Brew Jersey campaign. It, along with a collab beer with the same name, is making a push against the irrational regulations the state of New Jersey has imposed on breweries. (Including but not limited to a ban on food sales or food trucks, limited events such as showing a live sporting event, required tours for all customers, etc.)
On the subject of charity beer in 2022, there were a lot of beers getting involved in charities following the war of Ukraine so a small win there but I do take your point onboard
The craft scene in the States is flourishing in large part, I think, because we Americans are sick of macro. When you say "traditional American," people think of macro-brewed lagers and pilsners. Anything that sounds like "traditional American" just makes American beer geeks think of the exact mainstream they're hoping to subvert. Perhaps there is some traditional small-scale American styles of brewing that could pique the interest of beer geeks, but it would need a "homemade" "mom-and-pop" small-scale vibe to the marketing in order to be successful here.
Not quite sure where or what you're drinking to say £8 is the average price of a pint in London but the Gen Z point is a huge issue for the brewing world. Both macro and micro breweries need to figure out where they fit in a world where around a quarter of people either don't drink or don't drink regularly. No idea how that will shake out.
