Embrace The Funk

This week marks 10 years since I left my job in television to work on the Embrace The Funk program full-time. From 2012, when Linus and I teamed up to 2015, the program was growing at a pace too quickly for me to manage part-time. Looking back over the past 10 years of full time work I had a few thoughts to write down. Are things in the beer world great? I think we know the answer, but I believe we are back closer to where we started, which could be a good thing.

When brewers were laying the groundwork for sour and wild beer in the U.S., it was very much a brewer-driven movement. It was experimental, collaborative, and fueled by a mix of reverence for tradition (Belgian lambic, Trappist styles, saison) and a desire to see what American ingredients and microbes could do. The culture was about discovery, building communities of drinkers who wanted to geek out on the nuances of mixed fermentation, and sharing bottles in a way that felt almost underground.

The explosive growth of craft beer, especially post-2010, brought in a very different type of brewery founder. Some were business-minded entrepreneurs who saw opportunity in a booming market, not necessarily people with a deep personal passion for brewing. That isn’t inherently bad; good business sense keeps breweries alive. You definitely need practical business knowledge,  but many times it seemed like:

Recipes were developed for marketability rather than artistic expression.

Chasing trends (hazy IPA, pastry stout, smoothie sour) instead of long-term exploration.

Prioritizing taproom aesthetics, social media, and branding over fermentation and ingredient nuance.

The community type culture shifted from brewers and drinkers hanging out, learning, and trading, to “customers consuming a lifestyle product.

When growth slowed and the beer market contracted (accelerated by the pandemic, inflation, and distributor consolidation, just to name a few reasons), the breweries with less “heart and soul” in their foundation were hit the hardest. If the only hook was chasing the hype styles of the moment, it was hard to maintain relevance when hype cycles got shorter and competition fiercer. I’ve noticed the breweries that remain strong often have:

A clear brewing identity. It’s pretty obvious what they stand for: local ingredients, clean flawless lagers, historical styles…

Deep roots and are active in their local community.

Brewers who never stopped caring about the beer first.

The “soul” of beer hasn’t disappeared, but it has become smaller and more niche again, closer to where at least in my world wild and farmhouse beer in the USA started. Passionate communities still exist, but they are fragmented across farmhouse producers, lager lovers, spontaneous fermentation, and even hyper-local breweries.

In some ways, we’ve gone full circle: the mainstream wave crested and has almost receded, leaving behind those who were in it because they simply couldn’t NOT brew. It’s the reality of their soul.

These are just some quick thoughts and observations in what I hope comes across as a general view. Just the whole as I’ve seen. PART 2 NEXT WEEK.