For eighteen months, I got to travel across this state, visit breweries, and talk with some of Michigan’s best brewers and people in related industries. My conclusion: we’re so lucky to live here.
Michigan is in a new golden age of beer today because the state’s craft beer industry was established by people who invested passion and creativity into an organic movement. They did it for the right reason. They did it because they love beer.
In fewer than thirty years, craft brewing has gone from a grassroots movement of people who love beer to a mature industry. The pioneer brewers have recently been joined by others whose motivations are less pure. And now with so many breweries in the state, there are signs that trouble is brewing.
First, there are indications that craft beer could be reaching the limits of its growth. There soon may be so many Michigan breweries producing so much beer that the market could become saturated. Brewers are already expressing concern that the fight over shelf space in grocery stories and markets will get intense. But the bigger fear is that competition will lead brewers to prioritize profit margin over quality, which will lead them to cheapen their product in order to compete.
That prospect really concerns Bill Wamby, a former brewer at Redwood Steakhouse and Brewery in Flint who is now a consultant to the beer industry. Wamby, one of the state’s most honored brewers, senses that some Michigan brewers don’t feel they need to make great beer because they can make an adequate profit with merely good beer.
At one time, Wamby says, brewers had to make beers that were outstanding for two reasons. First, the beer had to be great to lure drinkers away from the mainstream. Second, the beer had to be great to satisfy their own standards. Now, Wamby believes, newer brewers are allowing those standards to slip because they don’t need to make great beer for profit and they don’t require it of themselves, either.
Every brewer, Wamby says, should be striving to be better every day. Every brewer should live, breathe, eat, and sleep beer because the level of commitment is reflected in the product.
The second concern for the future of Michigan beer is succession. What happens when Michigan’s brewing pioneers decide it’s time to retire? You might wonder what harm could result when a longtime, respected owner sells the brewery and retires to a place with good beer, more sunshine than Michigan, and maybe another challenge. The fear is that a brewery will lose its identity, values, creativity, and cachet by selling to another company, particularly if it’s a global brewing conglomerate. Larry Bell has already taken steps to make sure his brewery stays in the family, but what happens to Short’s when Joe and Leah decide they’ve had enough? Do they sell out or issue stock and become anonymous corporations themselves? What would Short’s be without Joe’s personality there to guide it and represent it to the public?
Finally, with so many breweries opening, longtime brewers are sensing that the tight bond among Michigan brewers is starting to fray. That bond, brewers say, helped to drive their continual improvement and inspired them to be better in a collegial attempt to outdo one another.
“I pride myself on knowing what’s going on in the craft beer world. I used to be able to know every head brewer by name, all the brewery owners by name,” says Jason Spaulding of Brewery Vivant in Grand Rapids. “I’ve given up now. I can’t keep track. I don’t know where the market is going anymore. It’s beyond what I can comprehend.”
Travis Fritts, brewer at Old Nation Brewing Company in Williamston, agrees that things are changing. “What beer was back then was a community of disciplined people. You had to do it because you couldn’t do anything else because you got that bug. There’s still passion and soul, but it’s not the kind that it was back in the day.”
Nevertheless, passion for Michigan beer continues to grow among consumers, but it’s generally expressed passively through the choices we make in taprooms and stores. But we consumers, imbibers, enthusiasts, geeks, and connoisseurs should be more active in our passion. We should adopt the philosophy of the state’s most ardent brewers and dedicate ourselves to improving our beer knowledge. Brewers in general love their customers, but they are also quietly disdainful of the guy who drinks nothing but IPAs and thinks he’s superior to the guy who drinks only pilsners.
There’s an entire spectrum of beers being made in Michigan, and brewers want their customers to grow by trying new beers and different styles. If brewers could, they would encourage that IPA snob to explore the range of IPAs from several different breweries to discover how different recipes and hops impact flavor. If they could, they would encourage drinkers to change their choices with the seasons. Summer is a great time to experiment with pilsners, German helles and hefeweizens, Belgian wits, saisons, sours, and beers flavored with blueberries or peaches. Fall is a good time for stouts and porters, ambers, märzens, dunkles, and beers made from freshly harvested, unprocessed hops. Winter, of course, offers spiced Christmas beers, but it also offers winter whites and strong ales. Spring is a great time to try bocks and dopplebocks—the Lenten beers often referred to as liquid bread. Take notes on paper or on your smartphone app if you must, but don’t ever become so serious that you forget to have fun.
The challenge to learn and grow should lead you to a higher appreciation for beer in general. You may not care for the blandness of an American-style pilsner, but you have to respect Budweiser and Miller for their consistent quality.
Of course, as was demonstrated in Peter Blum’s book Brewed in Detroit, nothing lasts forever. Brewing is an industry that is constantly in flux because tastes change over time. Besides, any organic movement that is perceived as new, different, and hip is eventually co-opted and dragged into the mainstream. That’s where we are with craft beer today.
But craft beer is also in a healthy place because the seeds have been sown for the future. There may currently be people in Michigan jumping into the industry for the wrong reasons, but the first generation of craft brewers—the people who founded and built the industry because they couldn’t imagine doing anything else with their lives—has set the standard. And sitting in a Michigan taproom somewhere today are young people who are going to be the next Ben Edwards, Ted Badgerow, Larry Bell, Eric and Bret Kuhnhenn, Bill Wamby, or Stacey Roth.
I look forward to visiting their taprooms soon. Cheers!