Quote:
Originally Posted by YB2009
A question. I do notice that most people are listing dark beers. Sorry if this was already addressed, but are they generally considered to be of higher quality?
No. I think you could make the argument that many darker beers, ales specifically, have more room for complexity and also to hide flaws. Light (colored) lagers are more about precision and subtlety of taste. So if you wanted to kind of back door it and say darker beers are generally of lower quality, I wouldn't necessarily agree but I could follow along.
Craft beer right now is trending bigger and more complex, what with all the imperial versions of standard styles and barrel aging and bugs and whatnot, so a lot of the beers people like to talk about are big, dark, complex ales.
Personally, I'm finding a lot of satisfaction right now in trying to discover really spot on, lower alcohol lagers, and trying to make them myself. I think there's room out there for breweries that focus on making an awesome Munich helles, a wonderful British mild, a beautiful Czech pils, and then do big, imperial-type stuff as one-off batches, but that just doesn't seem to be what anyone is doing right now.
The pendulum always swings back, though.