To be effective, critical coverage of “bad” beer needs to be well-considered and constructive, rather than incisive and extempore. There is a lot of anxiety about how a brewer or business owner will react to a negative opinion, and thus the negative opinions only exist in the anonymity of the internet or the comfort of a like-minded group. We, critics and drinkers alike, need to buck this trend and speak truth to the people behind the beer. How they react to considered and constructive criticism can be the defining factor in which breweries thrive and which wither in the coming years.
John M. Verive, “Do Beer Better”, Beer Paper (August 2017), 7.