Faux Micros piss me off..

I'm not sure what to think about these "we don't mash/we don't mash or ferment" guys that keep popping up. I went to Granite City and took the tour to find they don't mash one piece of grain. They hold green beer through the remainder of the fementation process, carb, and serve.

Then just now I walked into a new micro in Wichita at Rock n Kellogg to grab a couple growlers to sample later to find they cannot sell anything out the door because their beer comes from Texas allready finished. WTF!

I'm glad BMC is loosing marketshare to them but it still smells like eight day old fish to me.

Your thoughts?

Is it good beer? If so, who cares if it's made on site?

I didn't have time to try it.. I do accept that it may be my prejudice. IDK, I was wanting to see what others thought. Free State is served in Salina and I'm glad for the bars that serve it and us consumers. It just doesn't feel like it's accurately portrayed in my mind's eye.

If a place claims to be somehow in the brewing business, they should brew.

And if it's brewed in one place, and that's their place, and they ship it out to their other places, okay, fine, but say so.

And if it's brewed on contract by another brewery, say so.

Agreed. A "brewery" is not the same as a "brew house" but it's pretty misleading to claim a beer as your own if you just let a dude in Texas and a few billion yeas cells do all the lifting.

Well, Granite City beers are mediocre anyways. Sometimes hit and miss and always inconsistent between batches. Regardless, it's nice to go to one of these places and see new/different beers on tap and not just some BMC plus the big local micro being available.

Gordon Biersch here in KC and OP only brews at the KC location. Doesn't mean the OP location is a faux micro.

Although, maybe I should not consider people "homebrewers" who team up and brew at a friend's houses where they keep the equipment. Besides, if he didn't brew it on site or at his home, doesn't count. Just another way to look at it.

GC claims on their site to brew their beers, they just make the wort centrally. So I would say they technically still brew their beer, just at multiple locations. I think their beer is pretty crappy, as is their food, which is the bigger complaint to me.

Everyone is jumping on the bandwagon at this point, I remember at my first GABF 3 years ago, about 25% of what I tried was simply not good...oxidized beers, diacetyl beers, beers so out of balance they hardly tasted like beer.

I'm a cigar junkie, it was the same way with gars 10 years ago. But it will self balance. I think today cigars are the best they've ever been.