Nom de Bier – Beer Reviews as Told by Your Favorite Authors

One of my favorite exercises during grad school was to write essays that emulated the style of a specific author. My advisor (and all around amazing person and writer), Cathy Alter, had us read a nonfiction memoir and then, to the best of our ability, recreate that writer’s voice and style using our own words and topics.

It started off rough; trying to understand and then properly execute a writer’s style is like trying to guess the ingredients of an Iron Chef dish by only tasting a small portion during dinner. There are so many elements to work with, and a nebulous je ne sais quoi unique to each writer that makes 3D printing their prose a labor in dedicated and careful study, not just casual keyboard jockery.

But after some practice, I got better, and found that by analyzing other writers at a deep, intimate level, my own writing improved. It had the added bonus of teaching me to respect a large range of styles, and understand there is no one best way to present your story.

I’m nearly two years removed from grad school, and I miss those little exercises.

The obvious conclusion, “why not bring them back on the blog?”

Which of course lead to, “how do I emulate another writer’s style but also include beer?”

Enter: Nom de Bier – where iconic authors review beers!

Or, um, I try to recreate their styles and write a beer review in homage to said writer.

Originally, I had planned to do it on my own; randomly pick ten or so of my favorite authors and imagine how they’d review a beer. But one of the best parts about the grad school exercise was that I was forced to read new, different authors, outside of my comfort genres and usual literary wheelhouse.

So I made it social:

If you retweet this, I will, before the year is out, write a beer review in the style of your favorite author. #beer #beerwriting

— Oliver Gray (@OliverJGray) August 17, 2015

I did not expect 27 retweets. I’m fantastically excited that people seemed interested in this idea, and even more excited that I’ve now got an extensive, Twitter-friend built reading list. My Kindle is about to get abused in the best possible way.

When trying to emulate an author, there are three major aspects to capture:

1. Voice (this is the hardest part, and requires a bit of biographical research to know when and where the writer came from)
2. Syntax and sentence structure (this one feeds into voice: Hemingway, for example, penned his novels using a very specific syntactical method that many now recognize as part of his style)
3. Literary themes (easy enough to pick up on; much harder to execute)

Below is the list of requesters and their favorite authors (if I missed you, shoot me a tweet or email). Given that I have a lot of reading to do to truly understand these writers, I may do them out of order as I play catch up on some I’ve read less (or none) of. I may also warm up with some of my favorites, too, just to get into the swing of things before tackling some of the crazier ones on this list.

• Keith Mathias ‏@KWMathias – Cormac McCarthy
• Josh Christie @jchristie – Mary Roach
• Aaron O – BottleFarm ‏@theBottleFarm – Hunter S. Thompson
• Raising the Barstool ‏@RTBarstool – Sun Tzu
• Leslie Patiño ‏@lpatinoauthor – Harper Lee
• I think about beer ‏@ithinkaboutbeer – Mikhaíl Bulgakov
• Andrew ‏@DasAleHaus – R.L. Stine
• michaelstump ‏@_stump – William S. Burroughs
• The Beermonger ‏@The_Beermonger – Michael Chabon
• Tony ‏@DrinksTheThings – Arthur Conan Doyle
• Douglas Smiley ‏@BmoreBistroBeer – Douglas Adams
• Liz Murphy ‏@naptownpint – Christopher Buckley
• Jeff Pillet-Shore ‏@allagashjeff – Neil Gaiman
• Suvi Seikkula ‏@seikkulansuvi – Edgar Alan Poe
• cassie ‏@lastxfantasy – Johnathan L. Howard
• Xtian Paula ‏@drowningn00b – Haruki Murakami
• ‘rissa ‏@ScoginsBitch – Irvine Welsh
• Fayettebrew ‏@fayettebrew – Chuck Palahniuk
• J. R. Shirt ‏@Beeronmyshirt – John Steinbeck
• Sara ‏@DoWhat_YOU_Like – Robert Heinlein
• Nicola Chamberlain ‏@nchamberlain – Kurt Vonnegut
• Michael P. Williams ‏@theunfakempw – Lewis Carroll
• Heather Hedy F ‏@Hedytf – Stephen King
• Robert record ‏@Reach4therail – Richard Wright
• Melba ‏@melba_dnu – Harlequin Romance Style

I’m not going to hold myself to any particular schedule, as I’ve found out that doesn’t work well for me. Or my job. Or my social life. Or my brewing plans.

If you missed the original tweet and want to add your favorite author to the list, shoot me an email at literatureandlibation@gmail.com, or tweet me at @OliverJGray. Assuming I don’t spontaneously combust, or you don’t offer some very obscure, highly niche writer, I’ll get to your request eventually!

(And yes, I am still writing “December, 1919,” and working actively on Homegrew. Posts regarding both coming soon)

Dunbar’s Brewery – How Many Beers Can You Fit Into Your Brain?

Quick: do you know the full name of the person who delivers your mail? How about that dude at Dunkin Donuts who makes your greasy sausage and croissant heart-stoppers? What about your neighbor, four houses down?

No? Don’t feel bad. It’s not your fault.

As postulated by anthropologist Robin Dunbar, our brains literally cannot hold onto so many relationships at once. Turns out we’re socially crippled by anatomy. After much research on primates, primitive social groups, and modern culture, Dunbar came to the conclusion that the size of our neocortex limits how many concurrent relationships we can maintain.

The maximum number of relationships is called “Dunbar’s Number,” and the average clocks in right around 150.

That’s right, even with 1000 Facebook friends and 2000 Twitter followers, you really only have about 150 meaningful, reciprocating relationships in your entire life. The Dunbar Number quantifies your varying levels of caring, and explains why we think more of our mother than some other random woman, even if they’re both good human beings.

David Wong (of Cracked.com fame) dug deeper, dubbing your ~150 relationships your “monkeysphere;” an invisible domain of other monkey-brains you keep close, who mean more to you, who you interact and associate with regularly. The inner most sphere is made up of your direct family, the next layer your close friends, the next your coworkers and neighbors, etc. As you move towards the edge of the sphere, the less you know about the people, and the weaker the relationships become.

Outside the sphere reside those we cognitively acknowledge are living on our planet, but can’t, because of sheer number, take the time to get to know. Of course we know these people exist, but they’re on the periphery of reality for us, in that shadowy realm of “people” made up of passersby and citizens of far off countries that, given their proximity to our daily lives, might as well be other planets.

Some extraordinary folk might be able to stretch how many people they can know, but generally, we’re doomed to a finite, insular core of relationships due to our basic biology.

“What the hell does this have to do with beer?” You might ask.

“Everything.” I might answer

The popular conversation surrounding the growth of craft beer (we were at 3418 breweries in the US in 2014 in case you hadn’t heard that stat in the past 10 minutes) focuses on economics and sustainability, questioning bubbles and boundaries, examining whether demand will continue to stay ahead of supply, and if so, for how long.

This is a great conversation, and it should be had long into the night over many pints. But I worry that it won’t matter if the average consumer cannot hold the concept of so many breweries (and beers) in her head in any meaningful way.

Thus the truth revealed by applying Dunbar’s Number to contemporary beer: the rampant growth of the brewing industry is outpacing our brain’s ability to create relationships with beer.

Even as a beer nerd, I’ve reached the point where I skim over the announcement of a new brewery, not because I’m inherently jaded, but because I’ve reached near-critical mass for how many breweries I can care about. I want to love the next new startup, but at some point, my connection to and understanding of said brewery is going to be cursory, if even that, unless I sacrifice some other relationship to build a new one.

For example: In my area, a decent, but hardly ridiculous beer scene (I’m looking at you, both Portlands), I have Heavy Seas, Evolution, Oliver Ales, Jailbreak, DuClaw, Union Brewing, Brewer’s Art, Flying Dog, Port City, Full Tilt, Ellicott City Brewing, DC Brau, BlueJacket, and several more. If we’re being conservative and saying each of these breweries has 5 flagship beers and 5 more seasonal/limited releases, that’s thirteen breweries and one hundred and thirty beers (130!) at my libatious disposal just within the confines of my own geographic comfort zone.

That’s not including nationally distributed brands like Lagunitas, Stone, Anchor, Sierra Nevada, and Sam Adams, and doesn’t even mention the suffocating ubiquity of macro beers or a growing selection of imports. If you add those in, and drop them all in a store with enough room to flaunt them (hello, Total Wine) you’re looking at three hundred plus beers available to me at any give time.

Because of their overwhelming numbers, most beers are relegated to an area outside of the sphere where we can form relationships; bottle shops promote craft promiscuity, encouraging drinkers to have one-night stands with single, sexy bottles. Our brains can recall about ~1500 human faces (and probably a similar amount of beer labels), but recall doesn’t involve anything beyond a simple connection to a tiny fragment of longterm memory. We’re tasting like ships passing in the night, twelve ounces slipping by lips without sign or context, isolated, clinical experiences measured in acronyms and percentages.

Modern drinkers often aren’t taking the time to get to know the beer, to court the beer, to woo the beer.

And can we blame them?

If I took the time to experience every beer in my area, I’d be (using averages) plus 19,500 calories and minus $258.70.

Every beer in the country? I’d be dangerously diabetic and in student-loan levels of debt.

We’ve developed tools to help us track the sprawl, databases to bring order to the chaos, let us think we have control over what my basic math says are ~35,000 beers being actively* brewed across the US. But tools only help catalog data for dissection, doing next to nothing to help us establish and maintain relationships with breweries. A goal, I’d surmise, nearly every member of the Brewers Association holds dear.

Drink local because your brain says you have to

Enter the concept of the beer monkeysphere, or the “beerosphere,” if you will: a geographic and sociologic area that you associate with “your” beer either by physical location in relation to your home or some kind of shared history.

Much argument about the “local” aspect of craft beer grows from hipster roots; feel good warm and fuzzies about supporting local economies and being a good member of the community. It has some merit, but I argue it’s much less deliberate, much more primal.

We associate with local breweries because they are the nearest and most comfortable; the inner circle of family in our inebriated appropriation of Dunbar’s Number. It makes sense that we can more easily form relationships with the breweries and brewers we can actually visit, making “drink local” a function of cognitive effluence more than an active sociological trend.

We drink local because distant breweries, even the great ones, exist outside of our beerosphere. We cannot care about all the breweries at once, so we default to those we’re proximate to, those with who we can tangibly interact, and most importantly, form a real, significant relationship with. A distant brewery is like the garbage man; we know he’s there and does an important thing, but we just can’t find the room to care about him personally.

It may seem extreme to think of consumers creating social (or even romantic) relationships with breweries or beers, but it’s the crux of all marketing and dollar decision making. There’s a reason you buy Cinnamon Toast Crunch over the store brand or another cereal entirely, and it has very little to do with quality. At some point you developed a connection with the “taste that you can see,” and now you’re partial because fundamentally you care about the cereal.

The same goes for beer. You’re being guided by your brain to find meaning in all of your choices, which means piling layers of experiences together to make a delicious relational sandwich. We won’t be psychologically satisfied with anything less.

Continued growth means geographically distant breweries have to find a way to become and remain relevant in a remote beer drinker’s life. For a while, the quality and execution of the beer was enough, but now, with your hometown brewery offering both good beer and good psychological validation, their job is much harder.

Some breweries, like Oskar Blues, New Belgium, and Sierra Nevada are opening secondary facilities. This is obviously a smart logistics move, but also a powerful marketing gambit, too; when the brewery is actually closer, drinkers can more easily lump it into their personal beerosphere, and start to consider it within their select, familial circle.

Ultimately, once quality and consistency become status quo, the war for consumer dollar might be fought over who can develop the best and longest lasting relationship with its drinkers. The onus could shift from brewing to storytelling, from quality assurance to marketing messaging, as breweries fight as hard for brain space as they do for shelf space.

*I say actively, because I know there are thousands upon thousands of legacy beers. A note from Greg Avola on the Untappd message boards in 2012 said that they have 175,000 beers in the database, a number that has surely grown since (but does include one-offs and homebrews, too).

Additional reading that also act as crude citations:

• Humans use Compression Heuristics to Improve the Recall of Social Networks – Matthew E. Brashears: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3604710/
• What is the Monkeysphere – David Wong: http://www.cracked.com/article_14990_what-monkeysphere_p1.html
• Don’t Believe Facebook; You Only Have 150 Friends – NPR Staff: http://www.npr.org/2011/06/04/136723316/dont-believe-facebook-you-only-have-150-friends
• The Dunbar Number, From the Guru of Social Networks – Drake Bennet :http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2013-01-10/the-dunbar-number-from-the-guru-of-social-networks

The Antagony of Anheuser-Busch

Every story needs an antagonist.

Harry’s horcruxing wouldn’t have been nearly as exciting without Voldemort’s noseless threat, and Frodo’s plucky resilience wouldn’t have been as impressive without the Great Eye stalking his every step. Any cursory examination of myth and human storytelling will show that we’re hardwired to need adversity. It’s literature echoing a universal truth of life. Can’t have darkness without light, can’t have good without evil.

The concept transcends literature too, sneaking into other aspects of our lives like a 14 year-old into a R-rated film. We build conflict where there need not be any – rival sports teams, preference for a certain brand of electronics – because having an enemy gives us a cause to unite against. The antagonist exists to be overcome, to give the hero’s struggle and journey meaning and purpose.

The story of “craft” beer is no different.

Joseph Campbell argued that the role of the monomyth was to further the “maturation of the individual.” We’re seeing that unfold live, as Americans undergo a series of gustatory revelations. People are using beer as a cultural vehicle to ween themselves off the dependency of traditions, to strike out into brave new worlds of their own design, to develop unique identities. They are, in a way, trying to mature through beer, an irony not at all lost on me.

But for the mission to succeed, for beer to descend into the underworld and emerge anew, it needs a clear and obvious nemesis.

Want to know why people argue fruitlessly over the definition of the word “craft?”

Hint: it’s not because it defines its fans and gives us societal validation. It’s the exact opposite. “Craft” creates a context of what we are not, and as a result, identifies our story’s main antagonist.

It’s all very archetypal so far: under the freshly drawn line in the sand we see phrases like “independent,” “quality,” and “flavor” – superlatives to keep our hero’s motives pure. On the mirror side of the line, we see phrases like “adjunct,” “mass produced,” and “corporate” – pejoratives we toss around to keep our enemy alien and faceless.

This beerish tale was born from the desire for change, and we built our monsters from those who refused (or, those we convinced ourselves refused). We picked the most obvious target possible, the one who appeared to be counter to all our values and beliefs. It doesn’t help that Budweiser rocks the “King” moniker, further feeding the idea of a repressed citizenry overthrowing a cruel monarchy.

But I have met the enemy, and he is us.

There is a Star Wars fan theory that the Empire was not building a massive fleet of planet-destroying weapons for the purposes of galactic oppression, but instead to defend the entire galaxy from a coming invasion. When you flip perspectives, you see that our protagonist – you know, the one we paint as fair and just and wholesome – is actually a bad guy (or in the case of the Rebel Alliance, a terrorist group). It’s entirely possible smaller breweries used the underlying negativity towards corporations in this country as a tool to further their own agenda. Sam Adams and Sierra Nevada may be moving towards the building of their own economic Death Stars. Without all the cards on the table, that line between good and evil in this story is surprisingly blurry.

I don’t mean to get sympathetic, nor apologetic. A brand that makes $22.3 billion a year doesn’t need defending. But I saw Anheuser-Busch this weekend, for the first time, as people. In my mind they had always been the archetypal shadow-self of good beer, a soulless machine hell bent on money and efficiency. Confirmation bias in the echo-chamber of craft beer kept them monolithic, inhuman.

I drank the craft Kool-aid, and forgot my Joseph Campbell.

My bad. No really, my bad. I aim to remain far more objective than I have been.

Ultimately, the story relies on AB (and MC and the others) to have any credence or purpose. Without “adjunct pale lager” to rail against and hold up as a point of negative comparison, how could we have established baselines for what new, fresh, “good” beer should taste like? From whence would IPA have risen if not from the flavor void of legion similar tasting lagers?

It’s important to stay your knee-jerk bias. As much as we like to take swings at them, without them, our cause would not exist.

I think the key is to keep perspective; the best world of American brewing exists somewhere between macro and micro. The two live a delicate life of culture and conflict, sometimes symbiotic, sometimes parasitic, but always reliant upon each other for existential validation.

The beer myth isn’t finished yet, but I do know one thing: while Budweiser may not be the beer craft drinkers want, Anheuser-Busch is the antagonist they need.

The Real Threat to IPA Market Share: Consumer Health

(Warning, this post contains some dietary SCIENCE! I’ll also note that I’m not a doctor or a scientist, so any doctors or scientists who read this can feel free to correct me and I’ll update accordingly)

There’s a lot of buzz in the beer industry about India Pale Ale (IPA) reaching critical mass in terms of market share, and a quick glace at any US beer store might betray a prophecy coming true. But despite an overwhelming selection, the data and money follow the hops, and for the time being, America can’t get enough humulus lupulus.

The legacy of lager rumbles in the background like a storm on the horizon, while sour beers pop up in a perfectly mowed IPA lawn like defiant dandelions. The winds are changing slowly, subtly. If I had to bet, I’d put my money on a trend shift away from IPAs, and my guess is that the move won’t be entirely grounded in consumer burnout or “lupulin threshold shift,” but partly fueled by consumer health.

Let’s make no pretenses: as much as we love it, beer is not a health food. The contemporary spike in beer appreciation means a lot more people are putting a lot more beer into their systems, which will, at some point or another, manifest as slight (to severe) medical complications. By graduating from pale adjunct lager to IPA, we’re ingesting record numbers of hops and their constituent chemical parts, the impacts of which have yet to be realized (but no, for the millionth time, you won’t grow man-boobs).

Alpha Acids

The metric used to measure a hop in brewing is alpha acid. Typically listed as a percentage by weight, this term as Stan Hieronymus defines it in For the Love of Hops, “in fact refers to to multiple acids that are similar in structure but significantly different.” The three that matter most to beer are humulone, cohumulone, and adhumulone, which, when isomerized in a brewing boil, become the six iso-alpha acids that give us that desired bitterness.

The amount of acids extracted during the boil is reliant on the pH of the mash and wort, but IPAs tend to have significantly more parts per millions than other styles:

“Commonly, these iso-alpha acids are found in beer at levels from a staggeringly low value of 1.6ppm (Michelob Ultra) to over 40ppm (Ruination IPA)” -Beer Sensory Science

TL;DR – IPAs, by nature of being an aggressively hopped style, contain more iso-alpha acids.

A few months ago, a former coworker and brother-in-writing-arms sent me what I thought was an innocuous message over Gmail chat:

“I’m telling you, since I quit drinking IPAs, no more heartburn.”

I dismissed his comment as a personal gastrointestinal discovery, thinking maybe the rest of his diet was contributing to his over-achieving acid production. But the thought stuck with me, festered as if it were indigestion itself, until one night a few weeks ago, when I drank a Bell’s Two-Hearted IPA.

Heartburn after about half a beer. For the medical record, as to not appear to be falsely attributing causes, I’m an athletic, water drinking, veggie eating young man, with no predisposition to acid reflux in my genetic history.

I’ve had plenty of Two-Hearted in the past, love the beer, and never had an averse reaction to drinking it. But recently, any IPA over ~50 IBUs sets me off, and if I dare drink more than a couple in an evening, I wake up feeling like I used my esophagus to put out a campfire.

Time to dig deeper, said my brain. Time to drink more water, said the rest of my body.

Beer pH and You 

A normal human body has an overall  pH that hovers around a very slightly alkaline ~7.4 (remember from Chem 101: the logarithmic scale is 0 to 14, acid to alkaline). Beer’s pH varies by style, but is always acidic (~3.1-~4.5). For reference, black coffee tends to have a pH of ~5, while soda pop sits around ~3. That’s a lot of liquefied acid.

Basic logic and chemistry means that when we drink beer, we’re adding an acidic solution to an alkaline environment, which, after diffusion, will bring down the alkaline levels of the body in turn. This is normal; hell, our stomach is filled with 1.5-3 pH hydrochloric acid, but the deeply alkaline environment of our bones and muscular system help balance everything out.

Homeostasis is amazing.

The problem appears when consistently introducing acidic solutions to a body trying to remain neutral. While its pH remains similar to other styles, IPAs tend to have more additional acids in suspension waiting to be processed by your body, meaning the style contributes even more acid increasing compounds on top of an already acidic drink. While all beer will eventually lower you body pH, (in theory) IPA will do it faster, and with more gusto!

Eventually, if chronic enough, a low body pH leads to a condition called acidosis. This condition can cause serious respiratory and nervous system issues, but is also one of the main causes of acid reflux and GERD. Combine IPAs with other acidic or acid-promoting foods (like those found in large majority of American diets), and you’ve got a recipe for a pretty miserable existence where popping Prilosec like Larry the Cable guy becomes a morning ritual.

Alcohol, too

Brewing an good IPA is a beautiful tango between sweetness and bitterness, between malt and hops. As the amount of hops in a recipe rises, the brewer needs to use more malt to retain a semblance of balance. More malt means more sugar, more sugar means more alcohol. It’s the reason a lot of modern IPAs clock in around ~7% or higher, and why a lot of people (like me) think session IPAs lack body and taste like hop water (not enough malt for the amount of hops).

Alcohol inhibits your kidneys’s ability to regulate phosphate ions against mineral ions, which helps balance body pH. Mixed with a physical increase in the amount of acid in your system, you’re looking at a spike in acidity that your body can’t effectively control. If you consume hoppy beer daily, your body never has a chance to reestablish a neutral base, increasing your chances of developing acidosis and its sundry symptoms.

RIP IPA

What does this mean for the future of our beloved hop-bombs? Young, healthy people tend to process alcohol and acid quickly and efficiently. But as the “craft” beer market ages, and the average drinker’s body is not as able to process additional acidity as effectively, we may see beer drinkers move onto styles that contain fewer suspended iso-alpha acids, or at the very least, significantly curtail their consumption of IPAs. Ultimately, the trend may shift not because of taste, but as consumers are forced to consider the detrimental effects of too much beer, or vis a vis, too much acid in their diet.

The solution to the potential IPA-to-acidosis problem seems obvious, I’m sure: moderation plus a healthy diet. But some of the underlying hedonism of being into beer juxtaposes “just having one,” as evidenced by the World Health Organization’s survey noting that the average American drinks 778 drinks per year (or ~2 every day). Beer enthusiasts (myself included) are probably guilty of even more than that, on occasion (thanks a lot, SAVOR).

While moderation is the ideal, those with IPA-laden habits are not likely to break them. Not unless they have to for some major reason.

Like, oh I don’t know, their health?

(Obviously this post contains a lot of conjecture. I just wanted to probe potential health issues related to pH, so don’t take any of it as gospel, please. I should also note that there are some fringe health benefits to some of the alpha acids in hops, but most of those come from ingesting small amounts, and are probably lost when talking excessive drinking.)

 

 

Beer Bloggers and Writers Conference 2015 – Moving Beyond the Beer Review

In a few weeks, amidst the serene beer landscape that is Asheville, North Carolina, I’ll be presenting on a panel at the Beer Bloggers and Writers Conference. The panel itself, “Moving Beyond the Beer Review” promises to be a pretty awesome foray into moving ones blogging and writing into the fertile lands that exist past the walls of the basics, and I’ll be speaking with some very esteemed company (a description of the panel can be found here).

I’ve done a lot of presentations in my 29.7 years, either at work, or through school, or as part of some culminating social experience. I’m one of those people who doesn’t fear speaking publicly, and sometimes even really enjoy it (especially the “have energetic conversations with enthusiastic people” part). Call me loquacious. Call me loudmouthed. I like to speak.

But this presentation manifests in my brain differently; perhaps because it’s the first presentation I’ve ever done about this little laborious love I call a blog, or about beer, or about writing about beer. It means a lot more to me than some generic book presentation or SharePoint training, and as a result, I really want to make sure I get it right. Thus this post.

Moving Beyond the Beer Review

Note: This is not a copy of what I’m going to present at the conference, I just wanted to get my ideas down/logically oriented and simultaneously make a reference document to share with attendees. If you’re going to be at BBC15, there might be some overlap, but I promise I’m not giving everything away. Think of this as supplementary ramblings.

When I started writing about beer, I wrote beer reviews. Creating accurate expository descriptions of beer means taking the time to learn brands and smells and flavors, giving a writer a good basis for creating good prose. Basic beer reviews are Beer Writing 101; a prerequisite needed to ground your mind and palate in the proper context, before exploring more elaborate topics.

I quickly moved past the beer review in my own writing, and have, for a few years now, sort of looked back at them with irrational disdain. My default line is that the traditional appearance, smell, and flavor driven review is boring. But simply dismissing them as not interesting doesn’t capture my true sentiment. It’s not that they’re inherently bad or have no use (the popularity of sites like Beer Advocate and Rate Beer proves otherwise), it’s that they don’t offer a reader anything except flat, encyclopedia-like information. I wanted to dig deeper and figure out why the beer review turned me off so much.

To start, there are some inescapable flaws with the traditional review:

• They’re too subjective to be worth much
• Thousands upon thousands of people have already reviewed most beers
• Myriad sites already exist with this content, so reproducing it on a blog doesn’t offer anything new
• There are so many other things in beer culture to write about besides what the beer tastes like

But these still didn’t get to the beating heart of why I disliked reviews so much. After much soul searching, I came to this ultimate, writerly conclusion: a generic beer review offers no story, and as a result, has a very hard time engaging a reader who seeks anything beyond rote fact.

A quick, important grammar lesson before moving on. And don’t get me started on your “not liking grammar.” A writer who doesn’t like grammar is like a chef who doesn’t like spices or a soccer player who doesn’t like shoes. Learn how to use your tools or find another trade.

Annnnnyyyyyway, there are two kinds of verbs: transitive and intransitive. Transitive verbs take a direct object, while intransitive verbs take a subject compliment.

Transitive: Oliver writes about beer.
Intransitive: Oliver is a writer.

While both sentences are similar, the transitive sentence shows me more information and progresses the sentence by using a strong verb, as opposed simply telling me a fact about the subject. Whenever you see “is” or “was” substitute in an equals sign and you’ll see what I mean.

Oliver is a writer (Oliver = a writer)
The beer was an IPA (Beer = an IPA)

All you’re doing with “to be” verbs is creating a comparison, not actually moving the writing forward, or creating an engaging narrative.

Let’s look at a full (but simple) paragraph to get an even better sense:

Transitive: Oliver writes about beer. He spins stories about fermentation. He also enjoys teaching people about grammar.
Intransitive: Oliver is a writer who writes about beer. His stories are about fermentation. Teaching people grammar is something he enjoys.

See the difference? Notice the lack of flow and staccato rhythm of the intransitive sentences? You’re also sinking deeper into the mire of passive language when using intransitives, and are forced to adorn your sentences with even more grammatical embroidery to capture the same information.

The operative word and idea is that transitive verbs show the reader something. There’s an old adage that pops up in writing workshops everyday: “Show, don’t tell.” It’s the idea that you want to guide your reader through a narrative and let them experience it as they will, not hold their hand and point out every little detail that is suppose to be important. Even if you’re only writing a review, readers want a arc, a mini-plot, a point, not just a data dump. This concept isn’t scary or new, either, it’s part of storytelling (and fiction!) fundamentals.

Knowing this grammatical sleight of hand, we discover that the beer review is not in fact boring, it simply does not show the reader anything.

Instead, it tells them. Forces information through their eyes and into their brains with no elegance or flow. It tells them what it tastes like, what it looks like, what it smells like. Why, as a reader, would I want that? Why not just go out and experience that myself?

When you ground your writing in intransitive comparisons (I see a startling overuse of “to be” verbs in nearly every review I read), you’re subconsciously telling the reader you don’t trust them to properly read your writing, or understand what you’re trying to say.

Not cool beer writers, not cool. Trust your readers, assume they’re smart and that your writing is clear. Have as much faith in your product as you do in the products you review.

BBC15 TL;DR – The innate problem isn’t the idea of beer reviews themselves, but with how a vast majority are executed. I see the same problem is event recaps, brewery and brewer profiles, and release statements, too. If you want more readers, more conversation, more engagement on your blog, you need to learn to use verbs to tell a story, even if that story is of you sitting at home, tasting a beer.

For some examples of transitive, story-based beer reviews, check these out:

http://literatureandlibation.com/2013/11/06/beer-review-sam-adams-thirteenth-hour/
http://literatureandlibation.com/2014/09/10/beer-review-southern-tier-warlock/
http://literatureandlibation.com/2014/06/27/beer-review-bells-two-hearted-ale/

Grammarian’s note: I don’t mean to imply that intransitive verbs are incorrect and should never be used. Obviously that’s not true, as I used dozens of them in this post (including this sentence). Just be aware of when you’re using them, and if they’re the proper verb for the context of your sentence. Sometimes they are, but with newer writers, often times they’re not. For more information about verbs, read this.

10 Terms to Boost Your Beer Vocabulary that Aren’t Made Up Bullshit

I hate that I have to write this, but someone on the internet is wrong, and wrong about something I’m passionate about. There’s little in life that irks my inner pedant as much as the lassiez faire spreading of misinformation.

An article from “Visit Tri-Valley” (a promotional website for a location but 45 miles from the iconic Anchor Steam Brewery) bounces around the intertubes as we speak, claiming to be packed with information to improve your fermented vernacular.

Great! Education is paramount, and I’ll always support it…

…except when it’s grossly misleading and full of information that might make someone look foolish.

Look, I get it. Beer. Beer!

It’s tasty and accessible to everyone and you wanna get in on this trend. No one wants to feel bad when they order a pint in the pursuit of enjoyment, and I want the beer world to be inclusive and friendly, which means demystifying the jargon and industry talk. Admirable goal, if done correctly.

So do yourself a favor; don’t read the bizarre made up crap and clearly not fact-checked mistakes in that other article. Read (and share) this one instead. I put my beer nerd reputation on the line to vouch for its accuracy:

1. ABV – This acronym stands for Alcohol By Volume. As might be obvious, it denotes the relative amount of alcohol in the beer. Listed as a percentage, this number is the result of a simple calculation between the amount of sugar in the liquid before fermentation (Original Gravity or OG) and the amount of sugar in the liquid after fermentation (Final Gravity or FG). The range of ABV can swing wildly based on style; Berliner Weisse for example can clock in at ~3%, while barleywines can finish at 12% or higher. The ABV is dependent on the amount of sugar in the beer (more sugar = higher ABV). The current trends show that Americans prefer (or at least highly rate) higher alcohol beers.

2. Ale – Ale is one of the two overall types of beer. An ale is brewed “warm” (around 65-75°F) using yeast that typically remains on the top of the beer while it ferments. Ales brew quickly, and can be ready to drink in only a few weeks. Many popular styles fall under the ale category, including pale ale, IPA, porter, and stout. Not all ales are dark, pale ales and IPAs for example, can be as pale as pilsner.

3. Lager – Lager is the other of the two types of beer. Unlike ale, lager is brewed “cold” (45 to 55 °F), using a yeast that tends to remain in the middle or on the bottom of the beer during fermentation. The word lager means “storage” in German, and after fermentation, this beer is held in cold storage for several weeks to allow it to settle and clarify. Lagers require more time and equipment to brew, which is why many new breweries stick to ales. Most well-known American beers are lagers, including Bud Light, Miller High Life, and Coors. Styles of lager include pilsner, bock, helles, and dunkel. Like ales, lagers aren’t typecast as a single color either; many are very dark, like the delicious German Schwartzbier (black beer).

4. Hops – These pungent, sticky, green cones are the flowers of female hop plants (a horticultural cousin to marijuana). They produce lupulin (and other compounds), and grow on tall, broad-leafed bines (not vines) that spiral around trellises or other supports. They can grow very tall; upwards of 20 feet by the end of the season. They’re used for two main things in beer: bitterness and aroma. They also serve to balance out the sweetness of the malt.

5. Malt – “To malt” is a verb that describes the process of germinating and roasting a starch like barley or wheat. When a brewer says malt, they are referring to malted barley. Most modern beers are brewed with “base malts” that provide most of the sugar for the yeast to eat, which are then supplemented by specialty malts (like roasted barley or black malt, which gives porters and stouts their dark color). Malt has been called the “soul of beer,” and it provides many of the flavors and all of the color. The phrase “malt” is also used in relation to whiskey: “single malt” is a type of scotch whiskey that is made from malted barley, so don’t order a single malt and expect to receive a beer 🙂

6. IBUs – This acronym stands for International Bitterness Units. The scale goes from 0 (no bitterness) to 100 (intensely bitter). While technically a beer could be calculated higher than 100 IBUs during brewing, 100 remains the soluble maximum (and probably the most a human tongue could discern). Many brewers list IBUs so that the drinker will have a sense of how bitter the beer is. For example: a 35 IBU IPA might be more balanced with a touch of sweetness, while an 85 IBU IPA would be sharp and very bitter.

7. IPA – This acronym stands for “India Pale Ale.” A long-standing myth encircles the lore of this style, but it turns out it wasn’t a beer specifically brewed (or hopped) to survive a trip to India, a brewer named Hodgson just got lucky, which started a trend. IPA is currently the sweetheart of American “craft” beer, making up a very large percentage of sales across the entire country. They can be brewed multiple ways (high ABV double IPAs or low ABV session IPAs) but all retain one singular characteristic: an abundance of hops. American IPAs lean heavily on hop aromas as part of their flavor profile, and stand in sharp juxtaposition to the traditional American light lagers.

8. Notes – This was in the original article but it’s not an important beer term. You might hear someone say “this has citrus notes” but all they’re saying is “I smell or taste mild citrus in the hops of this beer.” Notes can also mean the scribbles some people write down while tasting a beer, which they then typically post to Beer Advocate or Rate Beer without editing.

9. Pilsner – This is a type of crisp, pale lager that originates from the city of Plzeň in the Czech Republic. The style tends to be very refreshing, and lowish in alcohol (4.5-5%). Many large scale American breweries brew “pilsner-style” beers, which while spiritually similar, are not quite the same as their European brethren. Two well known, large scale pilsners are Pilsner Urquell and Stella Artois, but modern American examples include Victory Prima Pils, Great Divide Nomad, or Sam Adams Noble Pils.

10. Stout – Almost antithetical to the pilsner is the stout, a dark (sometimes entirely black and opaque) ale that originates from Northern Europe (probably the British isles). Originally, stout was a stronger and more robust version of a porter (a dark beer consumed enmass by sailors in port at London in the 1700s). Now, it is a broad style that can range from traditional lower ABV dry Irish stout (think Guinness), to decadent high ABV Russian Imperial Stouts (like North Coast’s Old Rasputin). Contrary to popular belief, stouts are no “heavier” than any other beer, and the dark color has nothing to do with their perceived weight.

(For the record, l think the vast majority of listicles are parasitic depravities gorging on the fat underbelly of the internet, but here I am writing one, so whatever don’t judge me I’m trying to help)

December, 1919 – Chapter 12

Welcome to chapter twelve of “December, 1919″, a serialized novel written by Oliver Gray. New chapters will be published every week. Links to all published chapters can be found here. 

Chapter 12

Wherever I went, the German followed. If I went to the bakery, he was already there, marble rye in hand. Outside the newspaper, he’d loiter on a street corner, near the valets and drivers. Through the steam of coffee dissipating into the frozen air, I could pretty much always see him, a giant half obscured in mist.

He wasn’t exactly inconspicuous. He’d drop his hat down to cover part of his face, but rose above almost every bustling city crowd; an oak among saplings. I hadn’t called him. Definitely hadn’t paid him. And yet he persisted, on my tail until the moment I walked back through my front door at night.

I didn’t mind.

Virginia did.

“It’s creepy.” she said, watching him with a side eye as we stood outside the office near the newly paved taxi line. Hot asphalt mingled with exhaust. The stench of modern progress. “How do you know you can trust him? What if he figures out what we’re doing?”

I laughed. “This guy knows what mom made me for lunch, what story I’m chasing, and my exact shirt size. He already knows about the malt, the kettles, that sack of dried hops; I’d guess everything, Ginnie.”

She huffed, not panicked but annoyed. “Well he better be able to keep a secret.” She leaned into my side, jabbing me with her elbow. She locked her eyes to mine. A deep, piercing stare to show she was serious, but all I could see was a sparkling array of emerald.

He had kept the secret, so far at least. I’d done my best to slip and sneak through side streets on our sojourns to the brewery, but this man was a professional. I’m sure he had no problems keeping up with me, even with his massive size. I’d seen him in streetlight shadows when I snuck out the cellar door after a session. Whatever his reason for following me, it had nothing to do with the clandestine brews we’d been boiling in the midnight deep.

We’d produced three barrels in two weeks. Our kettle limited production size; we hadn’t dared fire up the actual brass, not with the news of police already clashing with smugglers and brewers moving south from Canada. Virginia had pawned her gun after she’d realized that it takes a lot more gumption to use the thing than it does to own it. With the money she bought our kettle – an old but sturdy pot from a soup kitchen – and an angry little dagger – white buckhorn handle leading to five inches of potential cuts.

There was plenty of malt to mash for a while, but we had precious few hops to work with. The small garden behind the brewery would produce enough bines to keep us brewing, even if we couldn’t consistently guess the bittering we’d get from the fuggles that my father had dropped into the soil years ago. That didn’t matter now anyway. It’d be at least six months before they’re pop green cones all sticky with yellow dust, spicing the air with pungent citrus and pine.

I’d found some cans of pre-hopped syrup in a dry goods store just outside of Cherry Hill, across the Delaware. The nasty goop compared poorly to real, grain-mashed wort, but the yeast didn’t mind, and I figured beer-starved patrons wouldn’t either. Virginia scolded me for even considering a cheap path, especially when my father had done all he could to keep Philadelphia beer pure and traditional.

“Here, taste this,” she said, holding out a steel ladle. “It’s sour and thin; no one would want to drink this.”

She wasn’t wrong – I’d stretched too little syrup too far – the beer was horrible, if still technically beer. “Beggars can’t be choosers?” I said, raising my voice with my shoulders and tilting my head. She threw the ladle at me.

“I know it can’t be the same as it was, but if we’re going to do this, we should do it right,” she said, her tongue a paintbrush of devotion. “I want to be the best illegal beer in Philadelphia, no, the entire east coast!”

Her zeal made her even more beautiful, even more enticing and alluring like her passion fueled my own. “I agree,” I said, “but if we don’t have any hops, we don’t have any hops.”

“I wonder…” her voice trailed off as she looked up, pensive. “The IRS probably kept all those ingredients, right? And not just ours, but all of the ingredients from all the local breweries.” A grin stole her lips and wrenched them upward. “And I bet they put them all in one place, too.” She rose onto the toes of her boots, as if the climax of her idea was lifting her into the air. “We find that place, find a way in, and take what we need!”

I sighed. Saw it coming, but still faltered as the freight train of crazy came barreling down the tracks. “You’re out of your mind; you do know that right?” I asked her, making sure my mouth wasn’t hanging open.

“It’s not that crazy. All those ingredients…right there. Hops aren’t heavy. We could make off with pounds of them and be set for months. All we have to do is learn where they took it all.” She moved closer. The excitement manifest in a rapid heart beat and ragged breath.

“We’re brewers, Ginnie, not burglars. You think we can just break into a government building? Just jump up to the roof like John Carter of Mars?”

She paused for a moment. “Maybe we can’t.”

Relief prepared to sink in…

“But maybe someone else can.”

…and then disappeared, dashed against the rocks of illogic and insanity.

She paced in a circle around the bubbling kettle, performing her nightly deep-thinking ritual. She stopped, raised a hand high, then brought it back down as and even bigger smile took over her face.

“The German.” She said, triumphantly.

“What? No.” I said.

“Yea, it’s perfect. That’s what he does. Learns things. Gets into places. He’s everywhere,” she said as I sat on my stool, staring at the boiling wort, unsure of what to say. “It really is perfect, Jack. We ask the German to steal us some hops.”

“I could do zat,” said Schweinsteiger, almost silent, like a cat, stepping out from the darkened piping behind two kettles. “But you two will have to do something for me, first.”

To be continued…

The Beer Apocalypse: The World After Big Beer – Displaced People

(This is the first post in a series of theoretical end-of-world scenarios probably resulting from my reading too much dystopian science fiction. The series will cover how the people, places, markets, and beer of the United States would change if Anheuser Busch and SABMiller just up and vanished. I’m not playing apologist or anything, just having fun with what-ifs. #longread warning)

The unifying craft cry resounds obvious and singular: big beer is bad.

It’s bad because it doesn’t taste good. It’s bad because it’s corporate. It’s bad because compared to modern beer, it’s adjunct junk. Repeat ad nauseum.

What the claim lacks in tangible, objective proof, it makes up for in passion and consistency. The rising tide of local, independent beer would stop at nothing to push the current market share nearer and nearer 100%, completing a role reversal that would radically change the definition of “American beer” for good, and for better. At least that’s the common assumption.

Given the money involved, these giants would not go quietly in the night, nor would they go alone. If smaller, local breweries do eventually take over a majority of the market, it will be the result of a slow and steady decline; an empire falling from internal Cran-Brrr-Rita centered conflict, backlash from fed up citizenry, and other really poor decisions. It will be years – decades even! – of lost battles, attempts to retake old ground or stake flags in new, maybe even resulting in the transformation of the big beer companies as we know them as they finally decide the only way to compete is to brew for beer, not brew for money.

But let’s just say that small beer fans got what they wanted, and for the sake of this piece, they got what they wanted overnight. That by some divine stroke or extraterrestrial intervention, Anheuser Busch, SABMiller, and all their corporate subsidiaries just went poof. Eaten by zombies. Spirited away by cosmic horrors in the midnight deep. Vaporized in a hellish post-nuclear landscape.

What would the United States look like without “big” beer?

(To keep things more simple, I’ll focus on the two beer behemoths only, as they do represent 68.2% of the overall US beer market.)

Displaced People

First things first, a lot of people would be waking up to get ready for jobs they no longer had. Even after Carlos Brito’s “fat-trimming” during the InBev take over in 2008, Anheuser Busch alone employs nearly ~14,000 people nationwide. SABMiller employs another ~10,000 (as a point of reference, Apple employs ~98,000, but that includes on-site Apple Store employees). When flooded by ideas from the media, it’s easy to think of corporations as executives; suits and yearly bonuses and unnecessary salaries. But behind the overly designed blue and red and chrome of crushable cans, a football stadium’s capacity of people need and rely on the companies to pay their mortgages, feed their kid, live their lives.

If you included the entirety of the international parent companies in my made-up scenario, the loss of big beer would put over 200,000 people out of work. While that may seem like a drop in the bucket when considering the global population, it would seriously, negatively impact areas and cities in direct proximity to the breweries (like St. Loius, which homes nearly ~4,200 of the aforementioned ~14,000).

And that’s just people employed directly by the breweries. The beer industry relies on a massive logistical network of distributors and transporters. It’s difficult to pin down exact numbers because the three tier distribution systems splits the labor of moving and selling beer too minutely to easily research metrics. But if nearly 70% of the beer made and sold in the country disappeared, it’s safe to assume there would be significantly less need for industry support staff, at least initially.

Distributors would need fewer salespeople. Trucking companies fewer drivers. In states where beer can’t be sold at gas stations or grocery stores, we’d see a sharp decline in the number of in-liquor-store employees needed; a direct result of stores losing money from flagship macro sales. Those sales might rebound as other breweries flood into the ginormous AB/MC shaped hole, but it would take time to build consumer confidence and physically brew and ship enough beer to meet demands.

While accurate, all these numbers omit those people on the economic periphery who might indirectly rely on the sales of macro lager: tiny, local bars in small towns who depend on alcohol sales to stay afloat, the bartenders and wait staff they employee, the landlords who rent the space to the bar. If a very popular drink (41% of drinkers prefer beer over wine or spirits) suddenly vanished, the bar would either have to make up sales by selling other beer (that its blue-collar based clientele might not like, or more importantly, be able to afford), or other liquors. My guess is many would close, leaving large social and economic dents in places that are already swirling the recessional drain of middle America.

Price would remain paramount. “Big” beer is cheap, while “craft” beer is expensive, partly due to economies of scale. Without the ubiquitous macro lager, drinkers would either be forced to pay a premium for beer (until smaller breweries managed to speed-brew lagers on a cheaper, more sprawling scale), or drink something else. At the behest of stretched wallets, expensive “craft” beer could indirectly lead to a rise in sales of cheaper spirits in the 75.42% of the population who make less than $50,000 a year. Assuming not everyone wanted neat whiskey or vodka or rum, the preferred drink may manifest mixed, soda or juice to cut the harshness of lower tier spirits. Soft drink companies (who also own juice and water brands) like Coca Cola would drink up those new found profits gladly.

It’s also worth noting that the directly displaced employees would have to go back into a highly competitive, noticeably limited job market. The beer industry is expanding rapidly, but smaller breweries have smaller staffing needs, and might not be prepared for the additional space or money needed to bring in quality assurance, marketing, and financial personnel. While the best brewers from AB and MC might find new jobs at Sam Adams, Sierra Nevada, and New Belgium, the “craft” section of the industry might not be able to fully (or properly) integrate all these additional resources, either forcing people to seek entirely new careers, fight tooth and nail for positions in smaller breweries that probably pay less (and would probably require relocation), or start their own breweries in a densely packed, ever bloating market.

The ripples of losing ~$80 billion in big beer sales would eventually hit every corner of the country, causing financial chaos and social displacement. It’s easy to bully big beer for their group-thunk terrible marketing ideas, or for just not tasting anywhere near as good as the other options we have today, but we can’t forget how many people actually rely on the fizzy yellow stuff to make ends meet.

Up next in the series we’ll look at the brewing infrastructure that would go fallow in: The World After Big Beer – Abandoned Places.

A Beer Review with No Adjectives – Victory Summer Love

Reviews of beer contain adjectives. Lots of adjectives. An abundance. An overflow. Supernumerary manifest.

A challenge arose on Twitter. I accepted. I present to you a review of a beer using no adjectives. I will try not to have clauses or phrases with adjectives, either. Articles, fragments, intensifiers, nominatives, prepositions, interjections, summatives, resumptives, appositives, and adverbs remain.

Victory Summer Love Ale 

Victory, of Pennsylvania, brews. They mash and whirl and ferment beer, beer destined for mouths of the proud. Of the beers they brew, Summer Love stands a monument. A bottle of freshness, replete with flavor, the summer distilled. When the cap pops, the season starts. Available come Spring, but gone by Fall. You think it a lager, but it esters an ale.

A player swings a bat on the label. The sun rises, rays from a ball, as if sport defines the onset of fun. But not fun, romance. Love. Baseball. Pastels decorate the remainder, outside a block of letters cheering the name. The beer begs a hand, your hand obliges.

The cap contains a rumble of carbons. Cerulean in a circle. The beer slips from the bottle like the Yangtze. Dandelion diffused. Bubbles burp a bouquet; spice in hops – Tettnang, Simcoe, and Citra says Google. In a dune aromas settle. Your tongue pelted by UV-rays. The sun captured and served.

The beer lilts, but the song lacks crescendo. Even with the bright, it lacks layers. Complexity crashes on the backend, leaving tongues wanting. But one can’t detract for aspects out of style; for what it represents, Summer Love taste like drinking gold. IPA-ubiquity shelved to make way for a grandfather of sessions. Five point two percent.

You drink this when the heat reds necks. You slug this to mimic bat meeting ball. You mellow on this as night creeps in on the melody of crickets. Victory hits a homerun.

(Grammarian’s note: this is harder than it might seem at first. You cannot use any intransitive verbs [including any form of “to be”] as the subject complement coming after an intransitive is always an adjective. That leaves you with three types of sentences: 1) S -> V -> DO; 2) S-V; 3) S-V-IO-DO. Without introductory or supporting adjectival phrases, you have heavily rely on prepositional and nominative phrases, or adverbial flair to keep the sentence patterns fresh.)

No adjectives here, either

Spiking Beer: As Intended, As Brewed?

If the gadgets popping up in the beer world are representative of some growing trend, drinkers harbor a strange desire to “change” the beer they’re drinking. “Change” is usually couched cozily in “enhance” but this time around, I can’t help but read it as “mess with a good thing.”

I suppose modifying already brewed beer started with Dogfish Head’s Randall, a device you pass your beer through to infuse it with the matter you’ve managed to mash into the plastic chamber – coffee beans, fresh herbs, Fruit Loops, Oreos – whatever your depraved, drunken mind can think of. Although some might argue it’s just a product of American cross cultural contamination, the Randall (and it’s home-based Jr. version) might have been the lead catalysts in spawning the “dump random crap in your casks” craze that plagues perfectly good beer engines across the country. Thanks, Sam.

And then came Synek, the “beer Keurig” wanting to change how growlers worked, and how you drink beer at home. Then that baffling OnTap flavor enhancing goo, which we’d all do our best to forget. Then, as if we hadn’t had enough, came Fizzics, a bizarre device with a micro-filter that’s supposed to provide a much better head on your beer. And now we’ve got Hop Theory Sachets, basically tea bags full of hops and other dried ingredients, meant to “improve” your drinking experience with some post-brew modification.

Cool!

I guess.

Right?

Like, it’s cool we have options and can spend a bunch of money and wile away out leisure hours spiking beer with random stuff. Variety is the spice of life, and we’ve certainly got some potent spices to work with these days. I’ll be the first to admit I’ve quite enjoyed some augmented cask beers, even some totally not beer-ish ones like gold ale with orange peel and vanilla. I’d be hypocritical to not agree that the novelty of these gadgets makes for a fun little Saturday after you’re done at Home Depot.

I do get the appeal; brewing is a remote mountain many can’t or won’t climb, and these devices put some control back into the hands of the consumer. But, cultural industry announcement! The consumer is not the brewmaster. No matter how many Reddit articles they’ve read, or how many unique check-ins on UnTappd. I don’t want the norm to slowly be ok with changing beer that’s already finished. Therein lies the less favorable rub of gadgetry; every single one of these devices, despite a positive message of gustatory freedom, carries with it a secret. An encrypted code deeper and more important than just, “change your beer!”

All of these devices suggest that beer fundamentally should be changed – and by the consumer no less! – a concept I find insulting to brewers, and disconnecting for drinkers.

Beer isn’t always perfect. Any homebrewer can tell you some diacetyl laced horror stories. The problems aren’t automatically fixed when scaled up to multiple BBLs either. We’ve got quality assurance and consistency issues in a lot of start-up breweries. A lot of beer coming out of the fledgling “craft” movement sings a song of avoidable defects. There are some beers that downright lack, that need all the help they can get to not scorch or sting the palate.

Acknowledged, appreciated, archived.

That still doesn’t mean we, as consumers, should be willing to or responsible for somehow righting brewhouse wrongs.

Brewing is science wrapped in art. The equipment must be cleaned and the temperatures must be monitored, but the amount and type of malts and hops, and ultimately the flavor of the beers, are up to the brewer’s discretion. Like a chef, the oven and the pans are standard; the ingredients and processes where they create signature tastes. Even the worst production beer is the result of a planned recipe, an entire brew cycle, someone’s missed vision. To brew beer is a difficult labor of love; failures in the brewhouse mean missed intentions, not opportunities to perform first aid.

And that presumes these devices are intentionally marketed at poorly made beer, which I’ll argue they’re not. They’re marketed at all beer, including world class examples of styles. Some of these will be used in or on beer that is already delicious and on-point, already a manifestation of the brewer’s will and skill. To pass even a mainline, year-round beer from an award winning brewery through some random device is to suggest you know better than the brewer when it comes to the flavor of the beer. Unless of course you are a trained brewmaster. Then I guess by all means you crazy bastard.

I know, I know, I sound like a purist beer regressivist, decrying innovation because it’s scary and new. But you don’t take your own sauces and spices to a restaurant, ready to add them to a chef’s dish just because you think you can make it better. Part of paying for a product is accepting that it is packaged how the manufacturer intended it should be. When you pay for a beer, you’re paying for the the expertise, training, and creativity of the brewer, not just the liquid itself. Many brewers have formal educations or have spent years apprenticing to be able to bring you delectable decoctions of fermented flavor, and you should appreciate that every time your pop a top or slip a sip.

If you really must channel your inner Warhol by trying to elevate the existing, I’m not one to stop you. Just make sure you’ve tasted the beer as it is supposed to be, as the brewer wanted you to taste it, well before you introduce it to any gadget de l’amélioration. Drink beer as beer is, as it has evolved from years of trial and error, as the yeast made it through vigorous bubbly labor. You’ll be a better beer citizen, and brewers will thank you for taking the time to appreciate their art.

Left yes, right no.