Do Amber Ales Have a Branding Problem?
I have turned my attention to amber ales for an upcoming article in Craft Beer & Brewing, and it has me thinking. The humble amber was a staple of the early craft beer era. Never a style so much as a slot—something to fill out a chromatic range that ran from golden ales to porters, it was an easy-drinking beer for those who found pales too hoppy. Even at the time, they seemed overly sweet to me and fairly insipid—but they were really popular. Their simplicity became a liability as palates became more sophisticated, however, and by the new century, they were getting rarer and rarer. Today that kind of beer is almost unthinkable.
It remains a beer with possibilities, though—perhaps because it’s almost a blank canvas people can paint with their own expectations. We’ve been having a nice chat about it on Twitter (update: the site still exists), and a few things seem to be emerging. One group of loyalists recall the old days and have a warm impression of the style. They recall it as a non-confrontational, pleasant little beer one could sip without a lot of fuss. Because those kinds of beers have been absent from the scene for the better part of two decades, there’s a whole generation of new drinkers who don’t think "weird old-school caramel-bomb” when they see it on the menu. They don’t think anything at all, and are thus receptive. Finally, many brewers see amber ales as great base beers for experimentation with other ingredients.
On the one hand, that means it’s a fun little squishy space in an increasingly rigid world of styles, an opportunity to reach new drinkers. Yet because it lacks definition—or means different things to different people—it’s not the easiest beer to position. A pretty little malty beer, though—it really has potential, if only brewers could figure out how to sell it.
Ambers are such a nebulous style that they’re often lumped in with another vague color-ale, the red ale. Also dating back to the 1980s, the American red sort of halfty took it’s inspiration from Irish red ale, itself a recent and invented category--and just because "red" seems attractive. For a time it seemed that brewers designated stronger, hoppier beers red ales, while their entry-level 5.2% pub ales they called amber—but there are many, many exceptions.
The distance between the old-school ambers and the kinds of beers young drinkers want is actually not a long walk. Over time, we evolve along with our beers. To use a style-appropriate example, I remember a story Full Sail’s Jamie Emmerson told me about their own Amber. It was one of the founding craft beers in Oregon, and for fifteen years you could find it in almost every pub and restaurant in Oregon. Jamie’s version was a little hoppier than most ambers of the day, and people who started drinking it in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s were shocked by it’s zingy citrus snap. By around 2000, though, people’s tastes were changing. Now they knew what hops tasted like and when they went back Amber, they found it tame. “People always come up to me and tell me they used to like it a lot more before we changed the recipe,” he told me (I’m paraphrasing). Of course, they hadn’t changed the recipe. The drinkers had changed.
Listening to the brewers talk about the amber ales they’re making today, they seem like the kinds of beers that might be popular. Brewers have let them evolve into something older drinkers would probably peg as traditional, even though they’re not really the same. They no longer feature massive crystal malt loads, old-timey hops, and heavy, treacly bodies. They’re lightly hoppy, with a sweeter, fuller malty palate, but clean and balanced—what modern drinkers, even those who were drinking beer in the ‘80s, prefer. Meanwhile, when younger drinkers encounter these beers for the first time, they find them perfectly pleasant little sippers with a bit of body and sweetness. They are pleasant and don’t track as dinosaurs, so they like them, too.
For whatever reason, however, they don’t sell well. A few breweries make them, but far fewer than you might imagine. When John Holl was in town in September, I sat in on a podcast recording of “Drink Beer, Think Beer” at Von Ebert Brewing. I described amber ales as a deceased style, or something disparaging, and brewers Sam and Jason rallied to defend the humble amber ale. Later, though, when John asked if Von Ebert would brew an amber, one of them said, and I believe this is a direct quote, “Oh God, no.” It was a perfect moment in the life of amber ales: admired, but only at a distance.
I wonder if “amber ale” is part of the problem. One of the great virtues of the color scheme approach of the ‘80s was in giving people a quick and easy way to understand this newfangled “microbrew” they didn’t understand. But now people know about styles, and amber seems dangerously vague. It’s also pretty boring. Writers have no way to create a new style or name out of whole cloth (would that we could!), but perhaps I can encourage someone out there to try. “Cold IPA” worked for Kevin Davey. “Cream ale” was a fantastic if wildly misleading marketing gimmick that also took off. So I don’t know, velvet ale? Or maybe satin or velveteen ale, for the slightly mysterious touch? Kansas prairie ale? (Bogus regionalism kills!) Caramel macchiato? Someone out there may have a great name, and who knows—it might launch the next hot style!