I first thought it might be true a few months ago, when I wandered into the Flying Pig Taphouse on Central Avenue out of lazy weekend half-curiosity and more than a bit of thirst. Cool, clean and modern, the place was nice enough, but it didn’t really feel like a brewpub. It didn’t feel… indie. It felt like a really, really well-done franchise.
I was sure it was true a couple of weeks ago, when we were working on The Drinking Issue. Somebody mentioned that there were more than 20 craft-brew places, either open or within months of it, in the Tampa Bay area alone. That couldn’t be right, could it?
Yep.
Last weekend’s unmitigated ass-hattery at Cigar City Brewing’s annual Hunahpu’s Day tradition (the last one, as it turns out) only confirms it:
We’ve reached Peak Craft Beer.
Craft beer isn’t “over,” of course. It won’t be for a few years yet. Locally, however, it’s in the process of breaking through to an audience exponentially wider than the one that initially nurtured it. Craft beer is the grunge, the t-shirts-over-dress-shirts, the sun-dried tomatoes, the superhero movies of the mid-20teens. Its original fanbase has already noticed the saturation; now, those aficionados have to put up with a seemingly endless period of mispronunciation and misinformation as everyone rushes to exploit the latest cool thing.