A new(ish) style of beer has been gaining popularity as of late, and I'm not entirely sure I'm a fan. I know a lot of people can offer reasons as to why a "hazy" beer might be a good idea or a great beer, and I'm not discounting the ones that are. The brewers who mastered those recipes I would like to believe actually toiled with several different recipes and modifications before they got the right level of hazy.
What I don't want to continue on is the breweries in the craft beer market to just start creating a hazy beer because they know it will sell to the general public who simply sees a new and potentially innovative style! It becomes a "must have" style simply because it's a new style. The qualms I have with that are: 1) one of the main criterion for beer judging is clarity - in other words, how hazy a beer is NOT. This will be a negative influence to purposefully lower a beers quality in efforts to sell more beer. Which I get. But making great beer and selling large quantities of beer are not the same thing necessarily. 2) this fad is just that, a fad. Or so I hope. I understand it's a natural progression for most industries - innovate, create something new, becomes accepted in said industry, people are happy. Right? Then what happened to the rye beer movement? Or the session IPA movement? Yes, yes, those styles still exist, but not nearly in the same popularity they used to during their fad-period. I love a great rye beer that can incorporate that spice in with its malt profile or a session IPA that actually balances the hops to malts to drinkability well, but these are all far and few between from how many used to exist.
Just because the hazy movement is around doesn't mean everyone should jump on it because it's a "new" style. It's not new, it's an indication of a flaw in the brewing process that brewers put a lot of work into removing from their final product - so much so in fact, that virtually every beer judging competition around the world has it as a category to score on.
All of that being said, I do wish the best for the brewers who take their time and can make a decent hazy beer. I do love innovation and I don't want to sound so "established" in the rules of craft brewing, I just don't want popularity of flawed product to drive the market down in quality. Thoughts?