Stop putting shit in my goddamn beer.

Stop it. Stop putting pumpkin, cherries, berries, seeds, vegetables, lemons, cinnamon, nutmeg, umbrellas, etc in beer. Many have come before you and most if not all have failed. The trails of creative fermentation are well trod and thousands of years old. You are not going to be the one who finally finds the one ingredient when added to beer makes it better without making it much worse so stop kidding yourself. The last successful modification was the addition of hop flowers so let's leave it at that. The Germans know this, that's why they made the Reinheitsgebot.

I see the need to innovate as largely an American compulsion, novelty as commodity. We haven't yet learned that some things are perfect the way they are and that crafting within well established guidelines to achieve categorical excellence is an art form and should be celebrated. We're not comfortable with operating within standards so we create our own, thereby bypassing the mechanisms of proper evaluation. The end result: beer coolers filled with expensive niche beers that I feel obligated to try despite my better judgment. Some brewers can lay claim to 20+ oddball varieties of libation, but of those, how many are drinkable? Of those drinkable ones, how many are actually excellent? My advice to the brewer: drop the weirdo ingredients and focus on the art and craft of creating highly desirable, repeatable beverages, even if that means having a small selection of beers.

Dogfish Head Black & Blue*
This beer sucks unless you savor a mouthful of unripened berry puree. Though I can barely taste it, I get the impression that the base ale used as delivery vector for mouth puckering novelty is actually quite good, but of course they ruined it by dumping crap into it. I won't list the ABV or IBU's because it doesn't matter, you won't drink enough of it to worry or care. Just pass on this one, folks.


*I took a picture of the bottle, but I just don't care enough to upload it.