Jim Koch, the founder and beer-Yoda of Sam Adams, isn't humble about Infinium, which hit stores late last year. In interviews he bragged that entirely new brewing techniques had been developed, then cast aside in favor of even newer techniques. At an Infinium launch event he called it a "watershed moment" in American brewing, the creation of a new, champagne-style beer "with some of the dryness, the freshness, the crispness, the effervescence and acidity of champagne, but the texture and mouthfeel and structure of a beer." The result was dry, light on the palate, but also high in alcohol. Sounds great, right?

Infinium, ladies and gentlemen, bombed. Not only did it fail to make any top-ten lists, but many reviewers considered it one of the worst releases of the year. While it has its partisans, negative comments on Beer Advocate ran into the hundreds: "A drain pour." "The taste/yeast flavor completely through [sic] me off." "Infinium: Latin for disappointing?" Most took a shot at the price tag—$20 for a 750-milliliter bottle, well above a typical high-end craft beer. "Seems if I want champagne, I'd get a bottle of Korbel Natural ... not a Beer poser at twice the $," wrote one.

Infinium is no doubt a well-made beer; the finished product is neither traditional American nor German, nor even French or Belgian, but sui generis, unlike anything I've ever tried before. It just doesn't taste very good. It's effervescent, like champagne, but not sweet; it tastes flinty and bitter. It opens with some apple and persimmon, but those drop off quickly, leaving behind yeast and malt as the dominant flavors. It may be a technical achievement, but so was Frankenstein's monster—and he wasn't winning any beauty pageants.

So let this be a cautionary tale for craft brewers: You can do a lot of cool stuff with beer, and you may produce some technically wondrous brews, but if the customers don't like it, you've failed. Or, as one commenter put it, "Two world class brewers made a beer for themselves ... we the consumers were not part of their equation."