Image a shelf crowded with cans of craft beer, the labels emblazoned with daring colours and graphics, a Liberace with a piano coated in nachos right here, a loss of life steel warrior skeleton there. Amid the noise, a strikingly easy yellow label that reads: “Postmodern Beer.”
This beer, Premium, from Stillwater Artisanal, defines what may certainly be described as “postmodernism” in beer. The can strips away the cartoon litter we’ve grow to be accustomed to on craft beer labels, vaguely nodding to the nostalgic lagers of yore but in addition presenting one thing new, stripped again. Noticeably absent are the main points of the brew, like fashion distinction (lager or IPA? Saison or blonde ale?) or the hops used. Its listed elements are need-to-know primary: “high quality malts, alternative hops and wild yeast.” Brewing for a beer taste profile with wild yeast extra related to funky Belgian types is rule-breaking sufficient. However then think about severing all ties with these stylistic reference factors in favor of merely providing the flavors customers can anticipate.
“Once I first began in 2010, and even earlier than that once I was homebrewing, I used to be attempting to pioneer new profiles in beer,” says Stillwater founder Brian Strumke. “Not essentially new types—I type of wished to take away fashion tips and create new works primarily based on conventional brewing methods, finding out the outdated world of beer and bringing it into the longer term.”
Whereas Strumke sees Stillwater’s complete portfolio as postmodern and the model predates more moderen examinations of the idea in beer, Stillwater beers seize all the pieces that makes craft beer in 2024 really feel postmodern. They’re a rejection of tight restrictions round classes, an argument that beer may be brewed in pursuit of taste targets fairly than fashion definitions. Subsequently, they’re labeled as such, poking holes within the elitist gatekeeping that craft beer has held pricey: No, you don’t have to grasp what number of IBUs an EBS has or what ester traits to search for in a saison with a purpose to drink and luxuriate in beer. Customers at present are pushed by taste, not class.
“If we’re going to save lots of beer, we have to re-market it,” says Strumke. “Numerous the youthful technology, they don’t know what a kölsch is. I don’t suppose they’re taking place the identical rabbit gap we did a decade in the past. … If you may get the youthful technology into beer, that’s cool, however they’re not going to go examine for his or her Cicerone [certification] after having their first ‘aha!’ second consuming it.”
“As craft beer’s punk spirit grew and formalized into a significant business, it created its personal guidelines, its personal modernist interval prompting at present’s contemporary dismantling.”
As it’s in some other area, postmodernism has been a little bit of a transferring goal in beer. There isn’t a postmodernism with out modernism to react to, in spite of everything, and what really defines beer’s fashionable interval? It might be argued that craft beer itself is an expression of postmodernism: The progressing applied sciences of modernism streamlined beer-brewing traditions right into a smooth American-light-lager machine, and craft beer dismantled all of that environment friendly homogeneity in pursuit of selection. Irreverent label designs have strengthened the postmodernist strategy, as have substyles that mock self-serious valuing of set fashion parameters, like pastry stouts, milkshake IPAs and smoothie sours. Trendy beer was all about restrictions to make sure consistency, however on the expense of creativity. Craft beer dared to query that modernism, and serve up the outcomes with irony-laced adjuncts and might artwork.
However as craft beer’s punk spirit grew and formalized into a significant business, it created its personal guidelines, its personal modernist interval prompting at present’s contemporary dismantling. As Dr. J. Nikol Jackson-Beckham, director of social influence for the Brewers Affiliation, explains in Lily Waite’s 2020 Good Beer Searching story on these ideas in beer, craft beer was constructed on most of the similar rules as modernist America, framing white males as business heroes and obsessing over “authenticity” and “purity.” Craft beer in 2024 is a postmodern rejection of all of this, and the proof is within the liquid: Now, in a transfer akin to Empirical’s in spirits, brewers intention for flavors, experiences and vibes to have interaction customers pushed by these issues.
Take the brand new sequence from Bend, Oregon’s 10 Barrel Brewing Co., known as Crush. They’re technically fruited kettle bitter ales, however they’re marketed much less as beer and extra as “a better option for summer time consuming,” in response to 10 Barrel’s press launch, which matches on to recommend Crush varieties are for while you’re thirsty on a sizzling day however seltzer is just too boring, kombucha is just too “hardy” and cocktails are too intense for the afternoon. Accordingly, holding the deal with taste fairly than beer-style particulars, Crush cans trace at nostalgia in a minimalist trend, stamping white cans merely with “Crush” and every selection’s taste in a coordinating colour: blue for huckleberry, peach for peach, inexperienced for cucumber.
The postmodern beer hallmarks, along with this taste emphasis, nearly all the time embody a lean towards lower-ABV types, from these session sours to gentle lagers or lager-inspired ales. Packaging tends to play on nostalgia round that “beer-flavored beer,” too—a tongue-in-cheek send-up of modernist beers. See additionally: Storage Beer, Sunday Beer, Homosexual Beer and Tennessee Sipper.
There’s additionally Carl, a flagship model for Austin, Texas’ St. Elmo Brewing Co., whose can seems to be so simple as that sounds: It’s labeled “Carl,” in a subtly up to date tackle all-American lager cans like Schlitz, Hamm’s and PBR. The beer is a kölsch, however all customers really want to know is that it’s a light-weight, crushable beer; it tastes good; and it’s a craft spin on a beer-flavored beer from a brewery they know, signaled by the branding. “There’s something steadfast and traditional about Carl whereas nonetheless feeling contemporary and related,” says Drew Genitempo, St. Elmo’s artistic director and director of brewing operations.
Emergency Ingesting Beer smacks of postmodernism, too, even when the intention of its brewery, Wild Heaven Beer in Atlanta, is simply to make an excellent beer. There’s irony within the title in addition to the can design, paying homage to one thing you would possibly discover on a midcentury grocery retailer shelf. It’s certainly extra beer-flavored beer, however with a twist, says Wild Heaven govt vice chairman and proprietor Sarah Younger. The twist, within the case of Emergency Ingesting Beer, is a “pils-style ale” brewed with lemongrass and sea salt that’s as gentle as a beer, however not truly lagered. On the label, it’s referred to easily as “All Goal Mix.”
Within the flavor-driven market rising throughout spirits and beer, we are able to anticipate to see extra brewers difficult strict types and conveying extra primarily what drinkers can anticipate in cans: “This tastes like a tropical fruit smoothie,” “That is good for the seaside,” “This can be a lager with retro vibes.” Promoting flavors, moods and events is extra accessible to a wider viewers than talking solely to those that know what Riwaka hops style like, or what precisely a saison even is. It additionally frees brewers up—in the event that they don’t must record a precise fashion with its attribute elements on the label, they don’t must brew it precisely in response to that blueprint, both. They will borrow completely different components from completely different types, add in their very own improvements and label cans with what the consequence tastes like.
“I used to be simply updating a label for considered one of my IPAs, Superhop,” Strumke says. “I initially had all of the hops listed, and I used to be it considering, ‘ what, that’s ineffective data to 99 p.c of people who find themselves going to return throughout this.’ I eliminated all of it and listed ‘terribly hopped, unfiltered West Coast IPA.” Much less is extra, he provides. Whether or not beer in 2024 is a response to craft beer’s pious worth of data round fashion tips or not, it’s refreshingly irreverent and will get proper to the purpose: what you may anticipate within the can.
