Paper Moons

I spent an hour last night with my hand on her heart, feeling it feebly bump, telling me it was probably time. She’d grown thin from renal failure, but those eyes, they still burned with that distinct feline conviction.

I think people who say they don’t like cats misunderstand their power. While dogs are rarefied ideals of energy and optimism that encourage us to be our best selves, cats are much more humanistic, prone to moodiness and fits of fancy.

Dogs are motivational posters. Cats are mirrors.

Pandora – Dora for short – was my secret therapist of 13 years. I can’t even remember how many personal truths I whispered to her, knowing her judgement was silent, and her silence absolute. I’d lie on the floor next to her, talking about all the hardest and worst things in life, and her yellow eyes would just stare back, gently. My stresses would fall into her fluff. Her powerful purrs reverberating against the rhythm of my heart.

She saved me more times than she knows. Part of the adult I am is the work of that cat, how she healed my heart, and warmed me, physically and emotionally.

She was my first trial at being a “dad.” The first thing my wife and I loved together, outside of ourselves. The first living creature I nurtured and raised from kitten to crone. I’ve loved and lost other family cats in my life, but Dora was wholly mine. My responsibility. My companion. My feline extension. She taught me about patience and temperament, all things I use as I raise my actual human daughter.

An accidental tutor that cat, years of tutelage in hairballs and head hugs.

We cry for the lost because of what they leave missing in us. A brush against the leg in the morning. An after work enthusiastic meow-borne greeting. As she passed today, left me one ally shorter in the literal cold of the winter, I feared one of the lighthouses flooding light onto the darkness of my mind had been extinguished.

In the short term, the shadows close in. But I know Dora’s spirit – those years of white fur and bright eyes – have permanently rolled back the fog on my psyche, and all I need is to think of that little face to arc a beam of light across even the saddest days.

Dora’s favorite song was “It’s only a Paper Moon” (the Bing Crosby version). She especially liked it when I’d whistle it at the highest pitch possible. If I couldn’t find her – inside our out – one chirp through the chorus and she’d come running.

While I know the song by heart musically, I’d never really considered the lyrics much until today.

Love for a pet is reciprocal in so much as you believe it is. Some people might think it a superficial love, or a lesser love,

But it wouldn’t be make-believe

If you believed in me

I’ll miss you kiddo. Until the next time your purrs and my heart meet

Work-Life Balance

When I started this blog, I wanted to write more.

That was seven years, 529 posts, and over 1.2 million words ago (yes, I have a spreadsheet, #sorrynotsorry).

I didn’t set out to write about beer, despite what the blog’s title might imply. Beer simply flowed into my life on tributaries of family history, popular trends, and culinary exploration.

In retrospect it was inevitable. Writing about beer is an organic confluence of two of my favorite things in life.

I never expected the blog to be more than an outlet for my words, but through it I found a niche; a little corner of a very crowded world where my mind felt equally comfortable and challenged, where my opinions seemed to matter, but there was always something new to learn. I quickly became enamored with the depth and breadth of beer as a holistic entity – where else can a person write about chemistry, agriculture, psychology, history, and culture and still stay coherently on topic?

Over the years, I had weeks where I spent more time thinking, reading, and writing about beer than I did on my full time job. I’d count down the hours until I could take a phone call with a brewer for a piece I was working on, and pined for those half-days on a Friday so I could pop-in to see some of the friends I’d made in a world so temperamentally and philosophically apart from my own.

Sitting sharing pints with brewers, talking malts and hops, I always wanted to cross that line; leave the drab cubicles of government contracting and IT behind for a land of shiny taps and kegs. But I never did. Partly out of the fear of abandoning a career and personal network I’ve spent a decade building, partly out of numb, perfunctory comfort, partly because none of the opportunities I came across ever quite aligned with where I was in life, and my real world skill set.

Working full-time in beer seemed a dream inside another dream, something that I’d never really be able to realize except in a fantasy, or through this blog, 1000 words at a time.

Until now.

Starting in November, I will be the Marketing Manager for the new Guinness Open Gate Brewery and Barrel House in Baltimore. After all this time working towards something like this, it still feels a little surreal to type that out. I’m beyond excited to be able to take all of my enthusiasm and love for this industry and actually put it to practical use, as well as bring a whole new experience to the beer drinkers of my home state.

The taproom opens to the public today at 3:00 PM, and the full brewery and restaurant is slated to open in 2018. Additional details about the new brewery can be found here, but feel free to ask me if you have any other questions! I really hope to see you there.

I do plan to continue my writing – time permitting! – so nothing should change on that front, barring a few more disclosures appearing as necessary 🙂

Here’s to taking chances, living dreams, and finding a way to make what you do what you love.

“It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.” – E.E. Cummings

 

San Juan

“We’re in no rush,” I said.

We weren’t, but the cab driver still warped his minivan into the traffic jam with uncomfortably tight weft. I braced the car seat containing my nine month old daughter like somehow my meager arm strength could prevent what the seatbelt could not.

Ivy smiled up at me and giggled. Shiny blue eyes a mirror of mine, but years before beer and stress and time diminished their luster. Hearing her mom, she fidgeted against her restraints, letting out another giggle. Out the dusty van windows, we passed rows of dilapidated, graffiti-marred buildings, interlaced with familiar fast food restaurants.

San Juan is the Harvey Dent of cities: one side of its face authentically charming, packed with Caribbean lore, the other a bloated, scarred facsimile of the worst of American capitalism. A Starbucks – literally a copy/paste of any other you’d find stateside – wedges itself between two vibrant local bars. Massive sea-slug cruise ships, fat with fat people and leaving trails of slimy wake for miles, pull up to a fort whose stones predate the Declaration of Independence by a couple centuries.

Puerto Rico: mourn the loss of culture, but appreciate that your cellphone still works without roaming.

Still sticky with recycled airplane air, we decide we need to eat.

“Is it spicy?” I ask the concierge of traditional Puerto Rican food.

“Oh no, not at all,” she says, smiling, thinking that’s what I wanted to hear. Typical tourist, I didn’t research the food and just assumed island nation meant spicy food, for some reason.

Disappointment crept onto my face. “Well, it can be! We have hot sauce here,” she adds, still smiling, trying to make me feel at home. She circles a few spots on an over-designed map, parting only with, “try the mufungo!”

The stroller clops across weathered cobble; the rhythmic rumble enough to lull a baby to sleep. A subtle blue reflects off each, as if the stones were infused with elemental Cobalt. They’re original, it seems, but at the same time almost too idyllic. That sort of worn-to-appear-cool that’s normally crafted by corporate committee, not foot traffic and summer rain.

It’s relatively quiet, now, with no big ships in port. Besides the 2.5 members of the Gray family, there’s nary a tourist. Most of the locals scoot about their business: cleaning sidewalks, emptying trash, greeting us cheerfully, in a very practiced manner. In a tourist economy, welcomeness is worth its weight in Spanish gold.

A heavy accent interrupts our wandering.

“Best mufungo!”

A tallish man steps in front of baby and stroller, producing a menu without prompting.

“We close tomorrow for two months. Last chance to eat here! Best prices. Go ahead and look at the other places, we are cheapest.”

He’s not a very good salesman, but he didn’t need to be, as this was the very spot the concierge had suggested. As we’re reviewing the menu, his coworker asks us about the grammar on the closing sign.

“You have good English, yes?”

My wife nods.

“Is this sign correct? He points at a professional-looking, but still clearly homemade sign that reads, Mojitos is close until October.

“It’s not bad. It should probably say, ‘is closed until October’” my wife says.

“See, I told you!” Says the younger man to the original interrupter.

“Well, people will understand it, and that’s what matters,” I say.

The tall man laughs in agreement, and puts his arm on my shoulder, guiding me into the restaurant. It’s not much to look at: there’s a relatively modern bar hugging the left wall, but the low ceilings and Formica covered tables don’t exactly scream the luxury the prices on the menu suggested. He seats us at the very back of the narrow building, with plenty of space to set up our stroller.

“Try the mufungo,” he says, again, before disappearing into the back.

Ivy, consumed with other types of growing, grows impatient, with both hunger and fatigue creeping up on her tiny constitution. Tiffany dances and hops a favorite stuffed bunny around the table. Ivy near loses her shit with laughter.

She’s good, for now.

Our waitress, before even saying hello, sees Ivy, and squeals, “bonita!” She crouches down to see her closer, then turns to us, “she’s so beautiful! God bless her.”

Being heavily Catholic, it’s not shocking that Puerto Ricans invoke the lord a lot. The trend of the trip was people stopping to tell us our baby was beautiful and blessed. Didn’t matter where we were: hotel, grocery store, rain forest. Family shines paramount among the virtues of this island, apparently.

She stands up again, greeting us. Tiff orders a Piña colada – a favorite back home, but one that must be even better in a place where coconuts grow wild on trees in the streets. I stay in character and order a beer, but at least one brewed on the island. Magna, to be specific, which might as well be Puerto Rican Budweiser. In that humidity and heat, it tasted divine.

The sun continues to drop like a quarter into a parking meter, fast-balling rays through the windows at the front of the restaurant. They catch Tiff’s hair and embrace, all red and fiery. I look at her closely, but not enough to stare. She’s incredible. Already having shrugged off most of the fatigue of pregnancy and new motherhood, she wears her new self like a radiant cloak. This is the first trip we’ve done together in a long time, the first to the tropics, and the first we’ve ever done with Ivy.

In that moment she looks equally strong and free, an illuminated goddess shining so bright I feel undeserving. She sits Ivy on her lap, stroking her few wispy hairs, and I’m overwhelmed by my own fortune.

“Sorry for the wait; the food will be right out,” our waitress says, as she slips by the table with a tray of drink.

“We’re in no rush,” I said.

Despite Incredible Breadth and Flexibility of English Language, New Brewery Still Opts to Name New Beers after Boobs

Chicago, Illinois – Even though the owner’s native language is arguably the most malleable and creative in all spoken linguistic history, a new startup brewery in the Wicker Park neighborhood of Chicago has decided to name their flagship citra dry-hopped India Pale Ale: “IP T&A.”

James Grimshaw, former homebrewer and founder of Barkin’ Big Dawgs Brewing Company – who speaks perfectly acceptable English and apparently even read a Shakespeare play in college – explained the reasoning behind the names. “We brainstormed for like an hour but kept coming back to these,” said Grimshaw, seemingly unaware that literally the entire lexicon of the English language was available to him at the time he chose the names. “I think it will really resonate with the guys, you know?” added Grimshaw, as he high-fived his partner and head brewer, Gavin Johnson, who from outward appearances, also seems functionally literate.

As the two men walked the floor of their corner warehouse space adjacent to a CVS that contained thousands of products with names that didn’t objectify and belittle half of the population, they explained the concept of the new start up. “We know it’s edgy and some people won’t like it,” said Grimshaw, who, despite correctly and freely using technical brewing jargon and complicated process descriptions, still submitted official paperwork to the Tax and Trade Bureau that sounded like it was written by a horny 7th grader. “The market will decide, that’s what we say.”

“I dunno, like, it’s funny and sexy, which is sort of what we’re going for in terms of theme,” added Johnson, who, having lived for 38 years in an English-speaking nation, has said, heard, and read countless linguistic flourishes like pun, rhyme, allusion, alliteration, assonance, metaphor, simile, hyperbole, personification, and symbolism, but still opted to name his beer after boobs. “You can’t please all of the people all of the time,” he continued, invoking a casual literary reference and colloquial idiom that proved his awareness of both.

The brewery’s other beers will – in what can only be called a direct insult to every writer, poet, and linguist who ever bothered to articulate their ideas thoughtfully and cleverly – follow a similar naming convention. Grimshaw, a self-described doting husband and attentive father to three daughters aged 2, 5, and 8, noted that the blonde ale will “definitely have the word ‘stacked’ in the name” and “the amber ale will for sure reference a smokin’ hot redhead.”

“We really see Half-Acre [Beer Company] as a local inspiration,” explained Johnson, an acknowledgement that shows the two men realize beer doesn’t have to be named after sexualized female body parts. “5 Rabbit, too!” added Grimshaw, introducing the baffling detail that the two adult men understand beers can be named anything across multiple languages and still, somehow, opted to go with the tits approach.

“It’s really all about the beer,” said Grimshaw, even though his decision to not even dip his toe into the massive, ever-undulating ocean of boundless creativity when naming his products pretty much guarantees that ultimately, it will not really all be about the beer.

Sources confirm that – even though Grimshaw is also openly aware of the existence of famous artists, the general aesthetics of Western culture, and the various mediums one can use to create visual art – the brewey plans to pair the new names with labels featuring crudely drawn images of disembodied cleavage and shapely female buttocks. At time of press, Grimshaw was heard saying, “it’s OK though, a girl drew them.”

Dialectic Lost – We Can’t Talk about Beer Rationally Anymore

On Monday night, I responded to this tweet:

Shill

— Oliver Gray (@OliverJGray) July 4, 2017

Having swapped silly banter with Beerbecue on Twitter for half a decade, I know he knew this was a joke, so no harm done. But where I intended innocuous fun, the joke festered; ate away at the reasoning center of my brain, to the point where I was still actively thinking about it when I fell asleep a few hours later.

I didn’t have to think about that response at all. It just came out of my brain casually, expectedly, perfunctorily. Calling someone a shill (or apologetic, or a corporate toadie, or whatever) for even being associated with Budweiser brand or AB-InBev business is pretty par for the course in 2017.

But that’s a problem.

As much of a problem as AB-InBev being defensive, oft petty, and downright inconsistent with its inevitable clapback. We’ve seen them attempt to belittle craft, then pivot to be proud of their macro scale, then the most recent almost 180-mollifying-spin to try to shift the blame of competition onto other, poor alcoholic beverages.

It all feeds into this dichotomy of views that ruins any attempt to ascertain real truth.

The classical Greek philosophers reigned as the kings of argument. I imagine their days were wine-laded metaphysical orgies of thought; the kind of “let’s sit around thinking about thinking and then talk about it” only done by prep-school stoners these days. But in all that intellectual rigor, they came up with a few pretty great ideas, many of which we still reference today.

The most common one is debate. A debate aims to “win” an argument by either proving your point or disproving your opponent’s. But people being people, debate tends to be littered with emotional detritus; many don’t just argue facts and logic, but rather, subjective morals and perceived supremacy of thought. Such a debate rarely has a winner, and in the social media generation, often has two losers.

But Socrates and his bros championed another form of discussion: dialectic. Rather than the ultimate goal being to sway your opponent to your side or flat out prove them wrong, the rules of dialectic instead suggest two conflicting view points work together or riff off each other to seek (and hopefully find) a truth (or truths) through fact and reason.

We have completely lost sight of dialectic in the beer world.

Debate around beer is mired in moral relativism. Impassioned but generally one-sided opinions left unchecked have infused a slow-working poison into the conversation. It’s not just beer, either: modern discussions about politics, economics, hell, even sports teams, very quickly devolve into tribal chest thumping where instead of attempting to further the dialogue and perhaps learn from each other, we opt to go back to our confirmation bias trenches and dig them a little deeper. It seems the modern debater prefers an endless stalemate where they never give an inch over an eventual end to the war.

All that sort of thinking does it reinforce a smug sense of superiority. I used to think the beer world’s satire was pretty excellent – Don’t Drink Beer was exactly the nerd boner reality check we all needed, and the recently started BreitTank is doing some Onion-level social commentary shit. But good, healthy jabs are few and far between, and rarely done well.

Instead, we’ve seen proliferation of Poe’s Law incarnate.  To this day I don’t know if BrewStuds is a real thing, or just a very well done satire that went (and continues to go) completely over my head. We’ve got people – average, random, people who drink beer in bars – going on tirades against beer journalists and publications for – gasp – taking money for their work. Twitter and Reddit and countless other public forums are awash in poorly constructed arguments wrapped in ad hominems all backed with the passion of a hundred Don Juan’s..about beer. Beer.

It all feels very appropriate for the Trump-era, even if with that appropriateness comes a certain level of depression when we realize this is the reality we now inhabit. I completely understand industry folks defending their livelihood and respect and support them in that. But the average dudes putting this much energy into their inebriation? I’ve written about why I think they care so much, but it’s still sort of baffling.

We’ve managed to build our castles so completely on the moral high ground that we can’t even seen the lands below anymore. We just assume it’s all the same, and we’re still right, and that there’s no reason to ever come down. Because coming down would be admitting we might be wrong, and there is no more humiliating thing than humility.

Having taken a few steps back from being awash in beer culture, I’ve found that distance helps with perspective. It’s still a wonderful industry filled with wonderful people making wonderfully tasty drinks, and the science of fermentation remains one of the coolest things I’ve ever studied.

But it’s also currently stuck. The narrative is dominated by he-said-she-said polarized thinking. Long gone are those whimsical stories of how a brewery came to be and who they are, partly because the drinker has already heard too many of them, partly because…well here, I’ll let Jeremy Danner say it for me:

Some make good points, but "We're not ABI." isn't a compelling story to tell.

— Jeremy Danner (@Jeremy_Danner) July 4, 2017

There’s something to be said – or perhaps feared – about AB-InBev’s encroachment on the market, their manipulation of distribution, their buyout strategy. It’s a fascinating study of real-time Capitalism in a budding industry, as well as a spur in the side of the Brewer’s Association and smaller breweries reminding them that this battle is far from over.

But the general conversation isn’t that. It’s get rekt noob, big beer is evil! Or yay hooray independent beer is good! Both sound as silly as the NRA’s “good-guy bad-guy” line of thinking; simplistic, childish, and ultimately, unhelpful.

There’s no dialectic where people are trying look at big beer’s practices objectively or taking a real critical eye to the BA, to figure out whos and whys and hows. There’s certainly never any talk of collaboration, because obviously, you never work with an enemy. There’s hardly even any exploration in why a thing deemed so bad is actually bad; I only need two fingers (one and two) to count the number of well written articles directly about AB-InBevs strategy. The rest of the bad will stems for theoreticals and hard headedism.

I get it, the hero of the story needs a villain to triumph over. I wrote about it at length. But it’s important to remember that to the villain, the hero can often look like a terrorist. For every story a perspective, for every perspective a truth.

Therein, the issue slumbers.

There are valid points to be made on either side. The new Brewer’s Association “Independent” seal feels like too much hot glue leaking out of the edges of a kid’s art project, but the underlying reasoning behind it is solid, and probably needed. There are legitimate concerns with and political blows to strike against monopolistic moves. If they roll over, they’ll likely lose.

But AB-InBev also spearheads domestic barley research, and are pretty heavily responsible for the development of new, more robust strains. Their money is being used for things that prop up the beer industry by sheer necessity; things Bud Light and Two-Hearted drinkers benefit from simultaneously. They’ve got standards and practices for QA that could remedy countless problems for smaller breweries. To slap a blanket “cut off” label on them is short-sighted, and, if we’re being honest, completely ineffective.

I only hope that eventually we’ll stop playing “I’m right and you’re wrong” ping pong. This industry is undergoing some seismic shifts in culture and business that are downright fascinating. They deserve attention, even if it means admitting maybe we’re not right about everything at all times.

Somewhere, in the ignored middle, there’s a truth to beer: cervisiam veritas.

 

The Mom in Grandma

My mom sits in the dwindling light of the evening, cradling my daughter in her arms. She’s sideways in an over-sized chair, head down, oblivious to the world outside the little baby below. We’ve been trying to get Ivy to go to sleep.

Softly, she sings. It’s hard to make out from my spot two rooms over, but as I focus, I pick out the unmistakable cadence of “Hush, Little Baby.” My mom sings a lot, and aloud, and I’m often amazed at the breadth of her repertoire. She’ll move seamlessly from show tunes into Disney, then slip casually into Motown or some 80s hit.

But there’s something about a lullaby. I was too young to remember her singing them to me, but here she is, singing them word for word to my daughter. For the first time in 31 years, I see my mother as she was when she was my age, when I relied on her most of all.

She continues the song, reciting verse after verse. At the next, she falters a little, unsure of the next rhyme.

Every mom has a superpower.  Given how much a baby relies on them, and how much of themselves they have to sacrifice, it’d be impossible to survive if they didn’t come equipped with some superhuman abilities. My mom’s is the ability to keep going, without blinking, in the face of absurdity and adversity. To call her strong or brave would be a disservice; she possesses innate, boundless courage and fearlessness of unforeseeable future.

She mumbles a little, but doesn’t let that stop her from moving into the next verse. I can see Ivy’s eyes fluttering; she’s fading as fast as the sunset and the light in the room. She loops back to the first verse, still sitting still, eyes still focused, powered by equal parts motherly duty and grandmotherly enamor.

My mom turns 60 today. I’ve gotten so used to her as an adult mom – the funny friend you owe your life to, but almost view as a peer – that these fleeting moments of vulnerability and flashes of her own motherhood catch me off guard. Watching her with Ivy gives me a rare window into how she was with me, and in those moments I see just how much of her there is in me, and how much of me will likely be in her.

The love of a parent cascades. It falls onto you and pools; collecting, nurturing, supporting, until it’s finally time for you to pass it on when you become a parent yourself. The love of a grandparent acts as a multiplier. Just when you thought they’d given you all the love you needed to raise your own kids, they muster more – not just for you, but for everyone around them.

Ivy is asleep now. There’s barely any light left, but I can still see the shadowy outline of my mom’s gentle rocking. She’s still looking down, still cherishing. I want to thank her, tell her how much she means and how much her love has made me the man I am today.

But I don’t want to wake the baby.

And somehow, I think she already knows.

 

A Crisis of Faith, not Finances

“Get some craft brewers together, and they’ll tell you that if we continue down this path, we may be witnessing the beginning of the end of the American craft beer revolution.”

That’s the closing quote from Jim Koch’s Friday, April 7, 2017 Op-ed in The New York Times. I’m noting the date so we can mark another spot on the calendars of history where the future of all that is good and holy and right in this world (beer) was given the end is nigh treatment. The beer industry is as accurate about predicting the end of the world as Harold Camping at this point.

While the piece leans a little heavily on the gloom for my taste, Koch isn’t completely wrong. A duopoly running free in the wholesale wilds because of a toothless DOJ generally isn’t good. The buyouts and mergers and three tier dealings will likely affect consumers and choice. All that “big beer corporations will ruin craft beer!” talk is legitimate.

It’s a little ironic that Koch (the billionaire founder of a publicly traded company) would decry the evils of corporate warcraft. From my perspective as a drinker, he’s the same bottle, just wrapped in different packaging.

This is true about the whole upper echelon of the BA’s top 50 breweries club. Despite how we may feel about them, Sierra Nevada, New Belgium, Bell’s, etc., are large companies, far removed from that “friendly neighborhood brewer” trope that has permeated the thinking of beer aficionados nationwide.

And even though we’re willing to drink Starbucks, eat McDonalds, and turn our faces into dogs on our iPhones (all those companies started as small, “craft” startups, for what it’s worth), beer fans somehow fault breweries for their success, and hate that “beer has gotten so corporate.”

My question is: what the hell did everyone expect?

Nowhere in the shuffling definitions of “craft” is there any promise of altruism. Nowhere on the Brewer’s Association website is the part about new beer’s dedication to ethical purity and anti-establishment ideals.

I’ll say it plainly, because apparently it needs to be said again: brewing and selling beer is, was, and will always be, a business. Any business, even the most community and quality minded, exists to make money. The logical extension of making enough money to stay in the black is making profit, which has become the de facto metric of success for any modern American company.

You can choose not to like that, but it’s a fact, evidenced daily by Panera Breads replacing family bakeries, and Lowes popping up where that mom and pop hardware store used to hold sway. Americans as a whole have fully embraced the retail/franchise chain, even if a small subset still tries to buy only homegrown and handmade.

For some reason, in a dazzling display of cognitive dissonance, beer was supposed to be an exception. Consumers created an expectation – that “craft” beer was somehow immune to and therefore above the governing rules of American capitalism – because they really, really wanted “craft” beer to be better, both literally and philosophically.

The prior happened; hooray! The latter, though, is a feel-good fabrication that breweries and marketing teams were all too happy to co-opt once they realized people were investing more into their beer than just dollars.

To say: there is a bubble in craft beer, but it’s not economic. It’s spiritual.

I think we can all agree that the main driver behind this movement was taste. To those not gustatorily inclined to light domestic lager, an aggressively hopped IPA was a white daisy in a field of dandelions.

And that’s great. But new access to new flavors only tells part of the success story. It’s not mere coincidence that this new beer movement started firing on all cylinders around 2008. The American economy was rotting. Job prospects sucked. Wages were low and debt was high. Hope for the future balanced precariously on a wilting “if.”

The traditional things that young people associated with success, based on the lessons from previous generations, suddenly seemed impossibly distant. “A mortgage? Shit. I can barely afford a pizza,” they thought. Since they couldn’t wrap their identities around the historical white picket fence American dream, they invented their own, with whatever they had lying around.

Like a burgeoning, counterculture beer scene.

Tidy little dry-hopped dominoes: craft beer was perfectly setup to fall in line with what people needed. Close knit culture where you felt important? Check. Pseudo-scientific jargon that made you sound like an expert? Check. Lots of public spaces to show off your new, slightly buzzed, you? Check. It doesn’t hurt that it also got people really drunk.

For those who couldn’t find much stability in the rest of the world, craft beer was a haven. It was cool, but not too cool. It had the allure of a cottage industry, and just enough hipster cred to make one feel unique. The proverbial, now almost comical beards and plaid were neon lighthouses for those seeking harbor. When you drank your local IPA with your friends, you had some control.

I know, by now, some of the people reading this are saying, “Bullshit! I drink good beer because it’s good! None of this applies to me.” And sure, maybe. But tell me you didn’t take a little joy in being that person who knew about the latest collaboration brew. Tell me you didn’t take a little, selfish glee in snagging a couple extra bottles of those rare releases. Tell me, entirely, that you weren’t emotionally involved with beer at any point, and I’ll free you from the burden of this narrative.

I’m willing to bet you can’t. I couldn’t. I’m just as guilty as everyone I’m describing here. I stood, in the eyes of many of my friends, family, and peers, as “the beer guy.” It felt good. I was an authority on something, with no lingering feelings of impostor syndrome.

Until I realized that some people only saw me as the beer guy. When you let the roots of a hobby grow deep into your soul, it becomes difficult to free yourself from them. They start to be a part of what defines you as an individual, and if anyone questions that, especially fundamentally, it shakes your entire core.

For many of us younglings, this is the first time we’re seeing the transformation of an entire industry, live. The first time our preconceptions about what’s right and just in the world are being challenged by the concept of who can pay the most. The first time youthful idealism meets cold, calculating gotta-make-ends meet reality.

It’s scary. Because if it happened to those guys, who at one point, were the little, local shop, it can happen to your guys too. And if it happens to your guys, suddenly, everything you thought you knew about a large portion of your life no longer makes sense. When your favorite brewery could be snatched up by the evils you’ve been long decrying, that “if” your whole life balanced on starts to look dangerously like a “when.”

So here we sit, craft beer still growing even with the slowing, with people discussing the minutiae of shelf space and tap line ups. Despite Koch’s sandwich board doomsaying, there’s still a lot of positive in those breweries serving truly local markets. But we can’t forget that we’ve got a group of zealots who must be getting tired by now. A group of people who when, forced to by the vicissitudes of modern life, look back upon themselves, might not like what they see.

We can argue corporate ethics all we want. But our problem isn’t at the wholesale level, or the retail level, it’s the consumers themselves. When those drinkers find they can’t reconcile what they thought beer was versus what it really is, the problem Americans will face with beer will be one of faith, not finances.

There’s no crying in the Garage

The screwdriver slips from its slotted perch. My knuckles rasp against the mangled folds of an old radiator.

As drops of fresh, red blood well up on my skin, so do the tears in my eyes.

He towers up, and looks down at me as I cradle the wrist of my injured hand, stifling sniffles as well as an eight-year-old can.

“There’s no crying in the garage,” he says.

For my entire life, I regarded my dad’s behavior as a form of classical machismo. He wasn’t being overly harsh, or reinforcing contemporary gender stereotypes about “strong men,” but instead passing on to me the toughness he’d accrued from years of amateur rugby and slinging wrenches on engines in the cold of England evenings. Hardening through experience, to face the challenges of life.

Weakness held no sway around him. I’d flex my fledgling biceps in a show of pre-pubescent power and he’d laugh, quipping, “when I was your age, I had more muscles in my spit.”

I never got angry, or bitter, or resentful, because he practiced what he preached. Rarely did I see my dad wince at physical pain. He never hinted at psychological stress or fatigue. I never saw him cry.

I swallow the pain and wrap my knuckles in an old, oil stained cloth. He comforts me in an utilitarian way, and tells me to wash my hand and go find a band-aid. There’s expectation in his voice, an implication that I will return to work and not let so little a thing beat me. I nod, and wipe away the few salty drops that managed to migrate down my cheeks.

Even when his mother died, I didn’t see him cry. Maybe he did, behind closed doors, but in front of us, he remained forest pond placid. I envied him, then, wishing to be so in control of my emotions that the worst of the world’s worries simply rolled off like water on glass.

My daughter cries. Hard. Her tiny little lungs muster more than enough air to send her vocals chords into a fury of complaint. She has no other way to communicate, and I can’t blame her, but the sound tears through me. It startles me awake mid-REM. It eats at my heart. Her every outburst feels like a failure as a parent.

The layout of our house, as functional and open-concept as it is, means her cries echo and rebound, filling every corner with anguished bellowing. If she’s upstairs, the cries cascade down. If she’s in the living room, the sound reverberates off counter and coffer. It’s impossible to escape the sound of my irrational questioning of my ability to parent.

Except in the garage.

When the heavy door swings shut, I can’t hear her crying. When I pop into the garage to take out the trash, or grab a beer, or snag a screwdriver, I get a tiny respite from my nagging doubt. If I can’t hear the cries, she’s OK, and I’m doing things right. In that moment, as I cross the threshold, I go from father to son again, existing as two spirits in one space.

I remember him, there, and think of her, here.

But there’s no crying in the garage.

 

Dreams of a Dad

I startle awake to the sound of a grunt and a meek cry. I drape my arm over the side of the bed to look at the time on my phone, hoping to block as much light as possible from the display. My head aches.

2:13 AM

Lately, I dream of my dad. He’s particularly annoyed with the car parts I’ve bought. Not a single night passes where he isn’t scolding or explaining; imparting, in his own way, how he would have done it, which is invariably not the way I did, in fact, do it.

While the dreams play out in a vividness as potent as waking reality, he almost never speaks. All our communication is nonverbal; grimaces, smiles, shrugs, winks. He’ll often walk some distance in front of me, leading, but rarely looking back.

But last night, he spoke. As he passed an hunk of metal under a spinning wire brush, cutting through 50 years of road grime, he said, “I bet you don’t even know what this is.”

He held it down to my face, so I could inspect it. I realized I was a kid again, standing behind the master as his ever-learning apprentice. The old dirt had given way to brilliant silvery surface below. Pretty, but pocked with years of neglect.

“It’s a brake caliper,” I said.

He smiled. An acknowledgement. I handed it back, so he could return it to its original luster. In that moment, I was as tall as him.

I wake again, this time to a more perturbed sigh and snort. I play the bed-phone-light game again, but this time accidentally flood the room with blue light. The bassinet next to me shifts and fidgets with the hungry wiggles of a newborn.

3:36 AM

Her mom is busy studying her role as Sisyphus, rock replaced by breast and pump. I go downstairs to grab a bottle. The cats barely stir as the fridge turns kitchen night into kitchen day.

In the dreams, we also rarely touch. He wasn’t one for hugs or physical affection in life, either, so perhaps it makes sense. If we do connect, it’s through some medium; my hand on a ratchet as I place it into his waiting, open palm.

But last night, he touched my shoulder. Standing behind me, in a flip of usual place, he reassured me as I torqued down the bolts on a cylinder head. A summer breeze swept through the garage. For the first time in a long time, the tone was not one of lecture, but one of acceptance.

She sucks greedily from the fake nipple. Her little blue eyes flash at me in the dim light, so bright, so wonderful, so overflowing with curiosity. I take the bottle away for a burp, and she screams, but then settles.

Normally, she doesn’t speak, but this morning, she coos and goos a chorus of baby questions.

Normally, she doesn’t touch me, but this morning, her tiny little hands wrap my fingers with a vice grip.

She may never meet her grandpa here, but part of me knows she’s already met him there.

She snuggles into my shoulder a little, drunk on milk and midnight dark.

Donald Trump: President, IPA

On March 28, 2011, AB InBev admitted defeat. One might think the day they bought Goose Island Brewery would be one of victorious celebration. It marked their first major foray into the then “craft” segment, and potentially showed their willingness (and ability) to diversify their pale lager heavy sales portfolio.

But in the midst of that win, there was also a loss. A quiet acceptance that the subset of beer drinkers who’d only bought their beer because they had no other options suddenly did. An acknowledgement that those consumers actually had some power, and perhaps their fringe tastes were now mainstream enough to not be ignored.

I think it’s probably how Hillary Clinton, most Democrats, and even some Republicans felt on the morning of November 6,  2016. With bleary eyed recalcitrance the entire political establishment watched as the status quo melted, just a little bit. The orange blur on the horizon of the future was not just a business-as-usual changing of governmental hands, but a sign, albeit tiny, of a change in the winds on the sea of sameness the governing elite had always sailed.

As much as some IPA loving liberal folks may hate to admit it, Donald Trump won the presidency using the same kind of ideology craft brewers used to wedge a foot in the door of domestic macro lager’s dominance.

It may seem odd to compare a style of beer to our new tee-totaling president. Obviously IPA didn’t cause the craft segment to rise so quickly on the back of silly acronyms and populist rhetoric, and Trump didn’t win the election because of his overabundance of Mosaic hops. But they both represent a key ideal of the American republic: the ability of people, when given a rallying cry and common enemy, to slice right through the soft belly of those sitting complacently on the throne.

The US political system has always been polarized by left and right leaning mentalities, but still managed to retain that singular semblance of “as is government” no matter who was in office. For most Americans, a loss to the other party maybe meant you were bummed out about taxes or spending going up or down, but in periods with no major social or military upheaval, the person and party governing were sort of inconsequential.

That was American beer, for the last ~60 years. Didn’t really matter what you bought, as it all kind of tasted the same.

Enter our first reality TV president. Sure, he’s Republican on paper, but who he is and how he acts is antithetical to what most of us had come to know as a “normal politician.” He lacks nuance. He’s in your face. He’s often unbalanced and leaves a bad taste in your mouth.

He is, without hyperbole, an American IPA.

And that’s exactly what the people wanted.

The reasons the craft beer segment did so well are myriad. Identity politics tied to products, groundswell support of local, inclusive warm-and-fuzzy community, well-timed PR and marketing swoops. I’d even go as far as to credit the fundamental underpinnings of capitalism for this hop-born renaissance of fermentation.

Americans are not the kind of people who do well when picking between subtly different options. They want easy, binary choices. To me, the reason IPA did so well is because as a style, it stands in sharp, technicolor juxtaposition to pale domestic lager. The two beers almost couldn’t be any different and both still be beers.

One is unflinching, boring but approachable, traditional, easy to drink, consistent.

One is wildly mutable, tasty but complicated, niche, aggressive, volatile.

The people chanting “Make America Great Again” wanted change. So did the people who scoff at Miller Lite taps, and always order the hoppiest beer they can find. A large enough group of people analyzed the status quo and found it wanting, challenged it, and transposed their reality onto everyone else’s.

For good and for bad.

The presupposition we’re forced to accept in this scenario is that change is good. I’ve heard the fallacy echoed so much now, I almost believe it. Anything was better than another “establishment” president. Any beer is better than “fizzy yellow water.” But that only works when we also accept that what existed before the change was icky and terrible and legitimately required change.

It’s not a perfect analogy to compare Hillary Clinton to a mass market lager, but in the context of the 2016 election, she was. More of the same, something a lot of people drank just because it was there, and other options weren’t all that different. Lots of people also really, actually, genuinely like Bud Light. It’s got pedigree that you can’t deny, even if you, personally, do not like it.

A lesson that seems nigh unlearnable in the US in 2017: things that you do not like are not automatically bad.

Jeremy Danner of Boulevard Brewing Company has said it repeatedly: despite complaints from the craft crowd, Bud Light in not an objectively bad beer.

@OliverJGray @joshchapman @BryanDRoth Yes. It's a stunningly accurate execution of intentions.

— Jeremy Danner (@Jeremy_Danner) February 17, 2017

But rabid, zealous craft folks are quick to call it swill, faulting it for being exactly what it is supposed to be. They’re also willing to focus solely on the negative aspects of their adversaries, while rarely acknowledging problems on their own side of the world. Sort of like repeatedly focusing on emails while ignoring the infected IPA of a candidate you’re putting forward.

Here’s where the anti-Macro, Pro-Trump line of thinking loses me. There’s nothing to say the flip side of what is happening now will be better. While the craft movement gave us literally thousands of new options, it’s also more expensive, and plagued with quality problems. To the group of people who – not through ignorance, but through an experienced adult palate – voluntarily drank Bud Light, all these new beers are a waste of time and resources. It’s almost like we should come up with a phrase that warns people of misguided and unfounded expectations of change. Something about green grass maybe.

There’s one thing for certain: if AB InBev doesn’t campaign to keep Bud Light relevant – and perhaps get a few of their own IPAs in the game – then those vocal and active people looking to completely change the system will start to win more and more. The landscape -if we’re still extending this double metaphor to its already too stretched limits – will forever change, politically and zymurgically.

Even worse, if they’re not very careful, the final resting place of Anywhere, US might be in a hazy, New England town.