Sure I have some preferred beers but they are all interchangeable in the big picture.
Such is progress - there is no more regional taste, only trend. Even the bottle conditioned beer you stand in line for on vacation - a bottle of Duvel will be reliably better and probably cheaper.
They’re pretty notable, arguably they started the craft beer movement
Peak craft beer implies that the trend is now on a downward trajectory. I don't know if that is the case, craft beer feels really ingrained in the culture at this point.
1. Is there a decrease in craft breweries being started, or total gallons of craft beer being produced?
2. Is there a decrease in beer brewing hobby supplies?
To #2, yes, at least in my area there are about half as many homebrew supply shops as there were ten years ago.
I'm definitely not saying no one is making good new beer anymore, just that the improvements from the ~80s-00s has slowed down.
The uproar is probably more among folks who follow the industry though. Most people have seen Anchor at a grocery store at some point. They were, I'm pretty sure, a natural niche craft brewery before those things were normal. In the same zone as places like Sam Adams or New Belgium or Sierra Nevada. You didn't have to really be "into beer" to know what they were and maybe enjoy buying a Christmas Ale from them every year as a seasonal thing.
To OP's point, there's less places like that now, but that's because I have 3 local breweries I'd be sad about if they closed, instead of 1-2 national breweries. I'd be sad if Trillium or Alchemist closed, but it's not as if I could buy them without traveling to the area, so it's more of a "aww, that's a bummer" and less of a change to my life.
I'm not sure either is better/worse though. We've just moved beyond the sort of craft beer monoculture. We don't just have 2-3 Christmas Ales we all drink, in the same way we don't all watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade or all talk about the new episode of ER every week.
I have never lived in California.
Weird, it's quite well-known even internationally. I certainly see it regularly in London, at the kind of places which sell imported American beers.
If you ever looked up the history of beer in the US or US beer styles you would know it. All the people in the craft beer industry certainly do. Maybe the craft beer drinkers in parts of the country don't know it but Steam/California Common is one of the few original US beer styles. And Anchor was one of the first in the modern craft beer revolution.
They are owned by Sapporo now, so there's that.
[1] Note that I said “might be better [quality]…” Without knowing the details of how Anchor beer is made specifically, corporate ownership can bring more resources and remove barriers, enabling “more, better” or it can exploit a trusted brand by using it to sell a lower quality product until consumers catch on. My bet would be that Sapporo is doing the former.
Can you tell that to Yuengling, I would really like to partake in their beer without having to fly to Philly
And is also now brewed in Fort Worth: https://fortworthbusiness.com/restaurants/fort-worth-brewed-...
https://www.yuengling.com/news/yuengling-begins-westward-exp...
Ain’t capitalism grand?
Half-assed personal boycotts don't present the kind of numbers needed to effect change.
Trump and his cohorts getting their asses locked up does. Burning everything to the ground that belongs to neonazis does. The BLM protests did far more damage and effected far more change than the combined power of everyone who boycotts Chik-Fil-A, Hobby Lobby, or Yuengling.
I think it's a worthwhile exercise to ask yourself before you make a purchase somewhere that you feel OK with the ethical implications of your purchase - and I say this as someone who does compromise on my ethical positions constantly for convenience. It still matters.
But that doesn't apply to boycotts?
All I said dude was that I don't believe in it and that I think what they were doing is stupid.
Other people can do what they want, even if its pointless. Because pretty much everyone does shit (like boycott) more because it makes them feel good ("look at me! I'm stickin it to the man!"), not because it is effective.
I suppose if everyone measured their activities on effectiveness it might create a hole in the space-time continuum, so many idiotic jobs and actions would be eliminated.
By, for instance, boycotting companies they disagree with?
Switchback is also pretty good. It's not a big name style but it's very well done for what it is. Most people don't know about it, though, it seems.