#Indie Beer – How the American Beer Scene and The Protestant Reformation Actually Have a lot in Common

When Martin Luther allegedly took nail to paper to secure his 95 theses to the door of Wittenberg’s All Saints Church in 1517, the Roman Catholic Church wasn’t exactly a paragon of morality. The domination of Catholicism loomed large over Europe, and Papal leadership wasn’t shy about abusing that power. Without a full, boring history lesson, by 1517, the church was about 40 years deep into that awkward teenage “Spanish Inquisition” phase, were big fans of oppressing peasantry with unfair monetary loans, and had a knack for selling positions of clerical and theological power to the highest bidder. They’d also found a way to milk even more money from the average church-goer by selling indulgences to anyone who’d sinned a little too much on their post-medieval weekend bender.

Luther and his peeps, pretty happy with the whole Jesus and Christianity thing, but also pretty upset with the rampant and generally unchecked usury, simony, and other bad words that end in -y, decided a lot needed to change. They printed their grievances Gutenburg style, and left them all over Germany for people to see. Other people had tried to reform the church earlier, but Luther’s proto-distribution of poorly xeroxed pamphlets kicked off what we now know as the Protestant Reformation. While Luther lead the charge, it’s important to remember that the people made up the army. It turns out pretty much everyone who wasn’t a ranking Catholic clergyman agreed that the Catholic Church had gotten a bit too big for its fancy pope-hat.

As usual, by now, I’m sure you’re asking what the hell this has to do with beer. Besides the fact that Germans were already brewing lager at this time and had official “beer laws” on the books (they weren’t allowed to brew in the summer), two fundamental concepts arose from Martin Luther’s protestations: sola scriptura and sola fide.

The two Latin phrases were the crux of reformation-age Lutheran rhetoric. Sola Scriptura (translated: “scripture alone”) noted that holy text (in this case, the Bible) was and should always be regarded as the source of all religious authority, basically giving a big middle finger to the Papacy for trying to make up their own religious meanings to benefit earthly gains. Sola fide (translated: “faith alone”) supported scriptura, suggesting that god’s opinion of you, and your ultimate metaphysical salvation, was a matter of how strong your faith was, not how much money you gave to the church. The two ideas formed the foundation of a branch of Christianity that was much more personal. A relationship with god where church was a spiritual catalyst, not a gatekeeper.

Fast forward almost exactly 500 years, and start to genuflect on bar stools instead of pews. Much like a church, a brewery is dependent on its congregation to survive. There’s a massive battle being fought to keep church goers going and beer drinkers drinking. One that centers around – you guessed it – money.

Without being hyperbolic, there are some legitimate similarities between the 16th century Catholic Church and AB-InBev. Both asserted domination over an aspect of life across a large demographic, both used their position of power to affect political and socioeconomic change, both played manipulative games riiiiight on the periphery of law, trying to control how their constituency feels, and ultimately, how they spend their money. AB-InBev purchasing other breweries is like a great schism; a huge move that makes people lose faith in the power and legitimacy of the organization.

Without too many mental backhand springs, Carlos Brito (CEO of Anheuser-Busch InBev) could be seen as the leader of a new Papal order; one more concerned with the fate of your liver, than the fate of your soul.

But a lot of people aren’t happy with that, for the same reason Martin Luther and his dawgs weren’t happy with how the Catholic Church was running things. They see the potential of a better future, a future where they have control, and don’t have their tastes dictated for them. A future where no central, shadowy agency holds ultimate power of choice. A future of dipsomatic freedom, good or bad. While not as important as say, the future of your immortal soul (although some people seem to treat it that way), beer matters on a fundamental enough level that people want to see it change, and wrestle the power back into the hands of those who proverbially “get it.”

One, if being whimsical, might argue that beer is a living, bubbling microcosm of American society at large, fermenting the desire to break the strangle-hold of the status quo, and usher in a better, tastier era.

It’s not even that far-fetched, considering. Look no further than the new idea of “Indie” beer. While “craft” started and lived most of its life as a marketing term, this new incarnation seems so much more personal, less about differentiating from a sales perspective, more about hardening the identity of a loose group of like-minded revolutionaries. What is the first thing a Christian denomination does when it makes enough internal changes to break away from the main church? It renames itself.

Even rock bands do it, when they can’t place their new style into the existing molds of what music should be.

Why not breweries?

Many have been trying to reform the beer world, but probably none have been as effective as the Brewer’s Association. The BA holds the reigns of the teeming network of smaller brewers – those modern-day Luthers ready and willing to post the 95 Tweets on the door of the @AnheuserBusch handle. But I think, by now, as good beer hits a softer, balding middle age, consumers are less enamored by yet another trade organization who claims to have their best interest at heart. I’m sure the BA means well, but beer people have trust issues, thanks to Big Beer. As a result, this reformation will be hammered into history by the consumers, one IPA or Imperial Stout at a time.

I mentioned sola scriptura and sola fide for a reason. Both sought to remedy problems created by the current ruling body, and both focused on bringing purist belief back to the people. Is that not, almost too conveniently, exactly what this “craft beer movement” has been about? A beerish interpretation of Sola scriptura could mean that true beer authority should be derived from all-grain, quality ingredient recipes, not what some brewery tells you is good. A modern take on sola fide might mean that ultimate beer enjoyment derives from a drinkers individual tastes, not the result of some hamfisted marketing campaign.

Whatever happens, I believe the ones purchasing beer hold the ultimate power. More so than the pagan-esque homebrewers who attempt to define their own rules, and definitely more so than the corporate group-thinkers who attempt to apply blanket rules. A reformation will happen, and I’m guessing sooner than later.

But remember: the clash between the Protestants and the Catholics didn’t end quietly and peacefully. It ended in one of the most devastating wars in human history. A massive amount of geopolitical and financial power is up for stakes, again. Seriously, billions upon billions of dollars. I’m not saying beer drinkers, the BA, and ABInBev will ever come to literal blows, but you heard it here first: the tension building now will not end with handshakes and smiles and everyone going home and having a pint.

 

A Modest Proposal for the Removal of the Word “Craft” from Beer

Cultural trends evolve the same way as genes, mutating to survive, adopting those traits that give them the most benefit against the hostility of their current environment. Language mimics an ecosystem; some words that stand out for their offensiveness or callousness die of exposure, or unceremoniously at the hands of predators, while other words spring to life almost randomly as young people explore the fertile lands of linguistics, dropping seeds of pop culture as they go. Some words slowly dwindle into obscurity from years of poaching and misappropriation or abuse and overuse. Others, like forgotten floppy discs in the back corner of your closet, disappear through no fault of their own, victims of the inevitable obsolescence associated with an ever-changing lexiconic landscape.

The word “craft” (as related to beer) has picked at my brain like a crow on a corpse, mainly because it always feels sort of tacked-on, overly explanatory, even defensive. On a recent trip out to Annapolis, I heard a waiter declare proudly that his restaurant had “several craft beers available,” really emphasizing the F and T, as if he wasn’t exactly sure what the phrase meant, but it was important that he said it, and that his customers understood that this beer was special by virtue of a single adjective.

Etymologically, all Germanic, Dutch, and Old English roots of the word (kraft, kracht, and cræft, respectively) mean “skill” and “strength” which is certainly appropriate given American beer drinker’s constant flirtation with high ABV. But the contemporary application of the word feels somehow wrong, far too nebulous, relating to something emotional, psychological, that cannot be easily quantified. It took fellow local beer writer Tom Cizauskas commenting on one of my posts for me to finally realize why it always gave me pause when I typed it, like he reached into my brain and solved the long-jumbled Rubik’s Cube for me:

“What is ‘craft’? Homemade? Then the use of stainless-steel and machines would seem un-craft. Size? Then ‘craft’ punishes craft’s success. Taste? Then size doesn’t matter. Quality? Then many small breweries quite often are not ‘craft.’ At their worst, craft’s apostles can sound shrilly solipsistic. The term ‘craft’ has become as meaningless as the term ‘IPA,’ and as irrelevant as mud for the enjoyment of beer.”

“Craft” – as an identifier for beer – has become a suit jacket that no longer fits the swollen mass of our brewing industry. When viewed from an outsider’s perspective, it looks silly and ill-fitting, like an adult trying to hold onto the vestiges of their childhood because they’re not quite ready to grow up. Worse, “craft” – as an identifier for the enthusiast – has been maligned, or at least realigned, to mean “snob,” “elitist,” “trendy,” and “exclusive.” Even if that isn’t personally true for you, it’s a real thing that while great for satire, hurts the entire industry, and keeps potential new fans of less hardy conviction at a cultural sword’s length.

Not, by any stretch, to suggest the word is useless. From a marketing perspective, marrying another word to “beer” proved a brilliant move; it gave enthusiasts a unified banner to rally behind, decorated the heraldry of many a beard-clad revolutionary, and instilled an entire subculture with a sense of identity. “Craft” differentiated the methodologies and approaches of smaller brewers from those of the giants of Budweiser, Miller, and Coors, just enough to give them traction in the market, and stand a chance against the titanic footprint of pale American lager. It is possible these five little letters are to be hugged and kissed and loved for their influence, always looked upon with starry-eyed reverence.

But it’s time to take the training wheels off. “Craft” has served its purpose, and helped the smaller breweries bring their products to the forefront of tap lineups and store shelves, given them a chance to compete for taste-bud real estate. It’s time to compare the apples to the apples, or more aptly, the pints to the pints.

To risk putting forward an ineffective call to action, I propose that beer enthusiasts stop using the word “craft.” I don’t propose they replace it with something else, but simply let it vanish into the fog of human history, to be remarked upon by the historians of some distant generation. I don’t propose we make a big deal about not using it any more, and instead let it slip out of our vernacular like so many other phrases du jour. I don’t propose we do anything except only refer to beer as what it actually is: beer.

Instead of relying on the dubious definitions associated with a made-up prefix, let’s instead judge every beer on how it tastes; every brewery individually for the merits and faults of their recipes and execution; every brewpub on its freshness, atmosphere, and service. If our beer is as good as we all claim it is, we shouldn’t be worried, right? Many in the community are concerned about quality, and unfortunately, the current phrasing gives less consistent breweries a shield to hide behind, a scapegoat for an “off” beer under the guise of the ever-accepting umbrella of “craft.” By not using the word anymore, every brewery – from White Plains to Escondido – can be treated as equals. People can experience any and every beer they want, 12ozs at a time, without fear of being put into any one group, deciding for themselves what beer is good, regardless of what oddly specific definition it falls under.

When beer is just beer, we can look at it more objectively. The cheerleading and cultural gerrymandering will drop off to a minimum, easily picked out instead of easily blending in. The “craft” beer community has done an admirable job of pulling the industry out of the shadow of big brewing, but it’s time to drop the nicknames, let beer be beer, and watch it fly on its own.

(If you liked this piece, go check out John Holl’s much more in-depth and researched version over at All About Beer Magazine!)

Beertography Distractions!

My announcement last week said that the first episode of “December, 1919” would go live today. Unfortunately, due to unforeseen illness, I need to push that back a week (it needs those editz, yo). I don’t want to start the story on the wrong foot, and I do feel bad for not sticking to my original schedule. I blame nasopharyngitis and his punk friend rhinopharyngitis.

In the meantime, please let these pretty pictures from my recent trip to 16 Mile brewing and the Dogfish Head Brewpub in Rehoboth (the place that started the DFH name, and where Sam Calagione slept on a cot in the basement) distract your from my bumbling and missing deadlines!

Featuring: Bryan, Josh, Liz, Douglas, Sean, Matt, and some other who I can’t tag for legal and technical reasons.

The Session #94: The Way I Role

(DING is back as our host for The Session #94, this time asking us to consider our individual roles in the beer community/industry)

As I downloaded the pictures we’d taken in Gettysburg after my wife’s birthday-turned-photoshoot, I had to briefly pass through hundreds of shots of bottles and cans of beer in front of our guests. I’d hooked my laptop up to the TV, and my previously imported beertography spilled out all over Lightroom, too fluid and legion to clean up or hide quickly. My wife’s friend noticed, and laughed. “Did you really need to take so many pictures of beer?” The rest of the room laughed with her.

I felt a flush of embarrassment. There are a lot of photos of beer on my computer. Nearly 200 GB, if I’m being honest. Lots and lots of photos that are nearly identical, short of a slight change in depth of field, or a minor adjustment in framing. The nested folders of images translate to many hours behind the viewfinder, and exist as proof of my obsession that few people ever see.

Did I really need to take so many pictures of beer? Yes, I did.

To me, every photo contains a story, or at least the potential for one. The old adage parrots “a thousand words” but to me there’s more than just the details in the arrangement of the pixels. I spend so much time and take so many pictures trying to capture that one fleeting second, the one perfect microcosm of me, in our culture, at that exact moment, all so I can tell a story.

Not so I can promote a brewery. Not so I can earn money. Not so I can show off.

Only to tell a story.

It’s the same reason my mind builds narratives when I’m scanning beer labels, or wandering around a brewhouse, or ordering another round for friends. Beside all those proto-photos rest skeletons of stories, bones and structure with no meat, frameworks waiting for an infusion of reality to reanimate them.

I’m a writer who lives in a beerish world, and as a result, I’m always trying to mine the veins of our culture for some literary truth. I feel obligated to tell the stories that make up my world, that make up our world, so writing about beer becomes a literal manifestation of “writing what I know.”

Contemporary beer writing has been plagued by a decided lack of storytelling. It’s not completely systemic, but I do see a lot of writing that, while functionally fine, reads like technical documentation or corporate copy. The latent sex-appeal of beer has been supplanted by a strange utilitarian slant, where brewing details, tasting notes, and arguments over semantics have wrestled importance away from engaging a reader and potentially teaching them something.

We’ve gone full-throttle on the science and the details, but forgotten that industry need not be mechanical and cold, and that a lot people have difficulty connecting with data and flat exposition. We’ve forgotten that humans are hardwired to follow narratives, connect to characters, to start at the beginning and stop at the end.

In short: we’ve built the rituals and canon of beer without developing any of the mythology. Joseph Campbell would be pissed.

I try to populate the empty pantheon. I try to weave all the loose threads into cohesive forms, move past the liquid in the glass to stories that people want to read. I’m not always successful, I know, but that’s my “role” if I had to pick one.

Writers have more competition for attention than ever in the history of writing, so I feel it important, if not downright necessary, to write something that’s free from errors, creatively composed, fundamentally worth reading. Either because it has a point that makes one challenge presupposition, or because it’s legitimately fun to read or intrinsically beautiful.

That’s it. No other secret plans or ulterior motives or special considerations. I’ve always enjoyed reading stories (I might even argue that I participate in them), so it only makes sense that I’d enjoy writing them, too. To me, human history is one big book, and American beer is a chapter that’s still being written. Let’s make sure it’s a good chapter, a chapter worthy of all this cultural passion, one story at a time.

Birthday-turned-photoshoot results. Worth way more than a 1000 words, I think.

Mashing in Masham (A Tour of Theakston Brewery)

Against a backdrop of rows of ivy-covered cottages, tiny winding Yorkshire roads lined by impossibly close hedges, and the idyllic contrast of bleach white cricket uniforms on verdant green, that unmistakable pungent waft of yeast lets you know there’s a brewery nearby. You can see it from the road, but unmarked and austere it looks like any old industrial remnant in a small English town; one square, stone smokestack rising up like a Gulliver among Lilliputians.

You have to search a bit. First for a place to park in the crowded but lively square of Masham town, second for a sign that actually points you in the direction of the brewery. Down a side road, past some private residences. Through a stone alley with a slowly rusting black iron gate. Under a long pergola shaded in fragrance by thousands of budding, nascent hops. Finally to a little patio that welcomes you, cheerfully, to the “Black Bull in Paradise.”

Tucked back in a cozy alcove of the town like a beery nest for migratory drinkers, there’s an old cooper’s house grinning the same stone and wood smile (plus some minor dental work) it has had on its face since 1827. To the right, a darkened doorway leads into a room with a low ceiling, exposed beams, and a rough stone floor. To the left there’s an impromptu beer garden, framed neatly by a rainbow menagerie of empty casks (not kegs!), all awaiting their filled fate.

A brief stroll through a surprisingly stocked gift shop and past two green-clad employees, will drop you into the quaintest of pubs, half ripped from a Tolkien novel, half planted firmly in reality, all the English whimsy a beer-minded American could dream of. This is no modern, urban American tap house; only 6 pulls line the bar with perfect parallel panache, each connected to a classic beer engine, with nary of molecule of carbon dioxide to be found in the entire building. You overhear a patron mention malt between sips of his Black Bull Bitter; a cheery woman at the end of the bar waxes brewlific about the
protein of two-row barley, and how to combat inevitable haze. Her vocabulary has all the hallmarks of a brewer, so you gently inject yourself into the conversation. Lynne. She’s not a brewer, but your tour guide.

Lynne leads the small group, six plus your party of five, back under the hoppy pergola, down a different side alley, past freshly painted red windows and doors. As she walks she talks, giving a brief history of the nearly two hundred year old brewery, describing the founding, sale, merger, and eventually reacquisition of the facilities to bring it back “under old management” in 2003. It’s impossible to ignore the stark difference of the building – and its history – when compared to the contemporary breweries you’re used to, State-side.

Her green shirt like a green light to explore the premises, Lynne leads you up some worn stairs to a room piled high and wide with bags of Simpsons Malt. A large pulley-powered conveyor lifts the fifty pound sacks to the top floor of the building; the first in many steps to use gravity (not pneumatics) to move and brew beer in the classic tower-style brewery. Several winding red staircases later and you’re at the very top, in a room that smells like Sunday morning; toasted bread and sweet cereal. The mill cracks the grain at the apex so that it can be easily passed into the lauter tun, one room away and about 5 feet down. Before leaving, Lynne describes all the ingredients – from the pale and crystal to the Bramling Cross plugs. Each in the group takes turn cracking the malt between their teeth. Some smile at the surprise sweetness, others cringe after crunching too hard on some astringent roasted barley.

You stop at the sadly empty lauteur tun. It’s a behemoth, ringed by cast iron, topped with a braced and riveted wooden lid. Lynne explains that it’s almost original, and the cast iron bowl only had to be replaced once in 187 years of brewing. The wooden top, subject to hours and days and years of hot mashing, hasn’t managed the same longevity. Across the open room but one platform down, between two catwalks, the copper kettle gapes its maw at you, like it’s yawning out of boredom from not having any wort to boil. When you look back again, it’s physically unchanged, but this time it looks like it’s laughing, grinning, very pleased with itself that it gets to make beer soon, and you don’t.

Without much else to show, Lynne’s green shirt descends again, this time pointing out the tubes and valves that carry the wort from the kettle onwards, to the “basement” of the brewery. This basement turns out to actually be on the ground floor (but still lower than the kettle) where like massive pans of rising bread, the beer ferments in open top containers. You resist the urge to dive into the feet-deep krausen froth, but flash Lynne a cheeky smile. She laughs, like she can read your mind. As she moves the tour forward, you sneak into a side room to admire the neatly lined up samples of various beers; quality assurance turned art, accidentally.

Finally gravity’s natural decline brings you to the logistical heart of the brewery, where some more familiar processes and equipment greet you with shining brilliance. But while the stage may look the same, the actors play different roles; where an American brewery worker protects and primes kegs with shields of C02, these casks are filled with fresh, uncarbonated beer, giving them a shelf life of a few weeks, not a few months. The casks look fatter, jollier than their American counter parts, with a round hole that must be plugged and hammered to keep the beer inside from the harsh oxygen outside. The full casks travel down a conveyor to awaiting trucks, who, if everything goes to pubby plan, will return, empty, to the brewery in fewer than thirty days.

Back in the Black Bull, Lynne lets you sample the products of the mashing Masham marvel you just toured, pulling third pints into branded glasses, letting the creamy head settle, then explaining the recipe behind each. A pale, subtly citrus wheat beer plays guest this month, mainly in celebration of the large bicycle ride that passes through Yorkshire each summer. A roasted barley number called “Smooth Dark – Extra Cool” is not very cold compared to American beer, but that hardly matters as your head swims in the delicate balance of coffee, chocolate, and sweet grain. The rest of the line up echoes English brewing tradition; heavy malt melodies with very, very subtle hop accompaniment, smooth, low alcohol, all approachable, none too challenging for even a novice palate. You try to pick a favorite, but can’t really, because they’re all so exotic when put head-to-head against the 7% ABV, aggressively hopped IPAs of home. Each is very good, and you half-plan how to get a cask past those pesky TSA agents on your trip home.

Noting your fascination and legitimate interest, Lynne lets you pull some pints. She invites you back behind the bar, something you’ve never done before (especially not in a brewery taproom in England), and gives you a quick tutorial on the “two hard pulls” needed to first set the head, then finish filling the glass. The engines feel substantial and heavy, even sticky, and each satisfying pull connects the muscles in your arm to the beer itself, makes you feel like you earned that beer, didn’t just have some forced gas rush through a line and dump it into the glass for you.

You don’t really want to leave. There’s something in the whimsy, in the deliberate, old-fashioned methods that speak to you, remind you that every pint you sip carries with it ancient tradition. You thank Lynne, who oddly thanks you back, and make your way for the door. Before you leave, you grab two souvenirs – a pair of half-pint glasses with the Theakston logo printed on the side. The rules of the airline may not allow you to check a full cask of beer, but you’re pretty sure they’ll be OK with you carrying your memories on, 10 ounces at a time.

See below for a full gallery of the brewery tour.

Beertography: BrewKeep App Launch Party

With Dale’s Pale Ale in hand and a Sam Adam’s Utopias up for grabs, I made my way to Fell’s Point, Baltimore, to capture the launch party festivities for a new “Pandora for beer” app called BrewKeep. The launch buzzed in the neon air of Max’s Taphouse (who seriously managed to secure the domain “Maxs.com” which amazes my inner nerd), and, I’d venture, everyone who attended had a pretty good time. I didn’t win the Utopias, but I did make some new bearded, beery friends (and some without beards, too).

As usual, I’ll let the photos do all the real narrative work.

(Full disclosure: founders Sean and Matt lubricated my photographic adventure with a couple of free beers.)

The Session #91 – Forgotten Friday: My First Belgian

(I missed the last few Sessions due to travel and exhaustion and illness, but I’m back! This month’s topic is “My First Belgian” hosted by Breandán and Elisa over at Belgian Smaak.)

Occasionally, the many moving parts of my writing life line up in a perfect row, like some rare celestial event where arcane energies mingle and a portal to other worlds opens very briefly. As the Session falls on a day I had other writing plans, I can feel the gears of my mind click and sync, suddenly whirring together as one as the clutch reengages. I typically write “Forgotten Friday” posts about places and items that have been lost in plain sight, but today, I’m using the literal definition of my favorite nostalgic infinitive: “to forget.”

This month’s topic asks me to recall the first Belgian beer I ever managed to sneak down my gullet. The problem is, no matter how far I stretch my brain, how many stories I pull from the depths of my hippocampus, how many bottles and labels I recall on the selves of the dozens of fridges of my life, I cannot remember my first Belgian beer. I can remember the first beer; it was a Boddingtons Pub Ale, at the dinner table with my parents, around 7th grade. Although, photo evidence says I probably drank a bit earlier than that (thanks, Dad), that’s my first fermented memory, the first time I remember drinking beer.

I also remember thinking it tasted like bitter instant oatmeal that someone had added way too much water to, followed by a quick internal question, “why would anyone want to drink this stuff?”

Don’t judge, it was the 80s in England. Just look at that red table and white leather couch.

If I had to guess, my first was probably one of the big boy Belgian beers: Duvel, Hoegaarden, maybe even a stray bottle of Delirium Tremens left to age in the back of our family fridge after a party. It’s possible, in all its wasted decadence, that my first Belgian was Trappist; my mom would often keep a bottle of Chimay Red on hand during the holiday season, for reasons I don’t quite understand, because neither she nor my dad drank it. But I cant’ say for sure. It’s a black void in my mental vault, one of those things I never built a place for in my memory palace, that will probably be forever lost in the deep dark ocean of my memories.

I’ll confess; I probably don’t remember because I’ve never taken to Belgian beer. I’ve homebrewed it, tried countless styles and brands, forced my tongue into a steel-cage death match with funky fermentation, hoping to one day emerge bloody but victorious, the Champion of Brussels. While I’ve gotten in a few good punches, I’m still likely to brace myself before taking a sip of saison, clench my jaw when quaffing a quad. I appreciate the artistry and heritage of many Belgian breweries, but something in the bready unmistakable yeast character of Belgian beer is antithetical to what my taste buds want.

While that may seem tragic (and trust me, for years I was convinced there was a fundamental flaw in my mouth), it has allowed me to finally accept a reality a lot of modern beer enthusiasts forget, try to dance around to avoid appearing unlearned or inexperienced: it’s OK to not like a certain style of beer. It’s OK to not like super hoppy, high ABV imperial IPAs. It’s OK if you find the salty sour of a gose a bit too much for your particular preferences. It’s OK to say, “I have tried this, and it is not for me.”

The only thing you’re obligated to do is appreciate that someone else, somewhere, probably does like that style. Maybe likes it so much they’re known to throw “favorite” in front of it whenever it comes up in conversation. You don’t have to like a beer, but always keep in mind: your not liking it doesn’t make it bad. Subjective bad and objective bad are wildly different beasts. If you’re into beer enough to have opinions (and don’t just enjoy it as a drink), it’s on you to be able to acknowledge when a beer is well made but not to your tastes, verses poorly made, and not up to the quality standards of excellent beer.

Memory is tied to taste, and I was hoping that sipping on some Belgian beer would cause a chemical cascade of mnemonic flashes. But it didn’t. It just reminded me of all the ways I’ve tried to force myself to like a style because of faux cultural pressure and personally manufactured expectation, and how, when looking at it in hindsight, that seems like a very silly thing.

Millstone Cellars – Fruit, Funk, Fermentation

I stuck my nose deep into the little glass of pale yellow, letting my nostrils swim in a smell I’d never expect from a cider: blue cheese.

Kyle Sherrer played thief-wielding, sample-slinging host to us this weekend, as he lead us around his cidery, Millstone Cellars. With his father, Curt, Kyle makes cider and mead using old world methods: wood barrels, wild yeasts, spontaneous fermentation. They’re creating dry marvels from a forgotten time, using locally sourced ingredients (even some from their own backyard).

I could wax voluble about the intriguing apple, honey, and berry fermentations; the spicy wood and musty stone of the building; or the puckering joy of sour meads, but I’ll let the pictures do the talking.

Landing Gear Retracted

This time tomorrow, my feet will be dancing on English soil. I haven’t been back home home since 2006; mere excitement can’t capture my emotions right now, as I visualize pints of mild resting dutifully on welcoming wooden bars. Unfortunately, between getting ready for the trip, regular work, a side project, and other sundry adult-type responsibilities I won’t bore you with, I’ve found very little time to cobble my thoughts into any kind of narrative you’d want to read. So instead, here are a bunch of pictures (from the 2014 Philly Beer Week) to substitute for real content while I’m on vacation.

(I’ve got about 10 posts in draft, and another 10 ideas based on my England trip, so please excuse this slight delay in our regularly scheduled program)

You Don’t Have to Love Brewing to Love Beer

Last weekend, I had the pleasure of teaching a group of close friends how to brew. We gathered in our host’s driveway like a gaggle of birds flocking to a piece of tossed bread, excited to gorge our brains on malty knowledge, to create and learn all in one very efficient swoop. I’ve taught classes at a corporate level before, slinging SharePoint solutions like a pro, but I’d never taught a class on how to brew. I went crazy with it. I even made a 7-page handout!

You forget, once you’ve fully ingrained yourself in a process, how many aspects of the art you take for granted. As I held up a cylinder full of golden wort to explain hydrometers, sugar density, and original gravity like these were concepts the average person should know about, it struck me how involved and complicated brewing must seem to someone who hasn’t been studying and physically doing it for nearly ten years. I did my best to explain (in less scientific terms) how water, sugar, hops, and yeast eventually become the drink we all immediately recognize, which forced me to reanalyze brewing as an activity, and it’s applicability as a hobby.

At some point, when I was explaining how to troubleshoot a stuck fermentation, and how relatively subtle changes in temperature can result in unwanted off flavors, I realized that homebrewing is a high risk, low reward venture. It requires a significant start up cost, large swaths of free time, and until you’ve done it for a while, results in pretty mediocre beer. It requires a lot of study, a lot of patience, and sometimes, a light sprinkling of luck. It’s clearly not a hobby for everyone.

A strange current undulates deep in the aquifers beneath craft beer culture, an ebb that pulls beer drinkers into production breweries, and a flow that pushes them to gaze upon rows of stainless steel tanks in jaw-dropped awe. The phenomena is unique to beer (from what I can tell); writers do not spend their time inside publishing company warehouses, admiring printers and book binding machines, while comparing and rating fonts. Foodies rarely walk into the kitchens of their favorite restaurants to grab a quick bite with the head chef while admiring his oven. In other fields, such behavior would be bizarre, possibly even ridiculed.

Part of the allure of a brewery comes from novelty; prior to the last few years, the only options you really had to see beer-making in action required generic tours through massive Bud and Miller industrial complexes. Many people who have loved beer for a long time now get to peek behind the curtain, see that the great and powerful is actually the organized and practical, demystify the processes and the people that lead to their favorite drink. General brewery openness to invite the libatious public into their work space shows just how welcoming our little community really is, but comes with an oft overlooked side effect that mars all that generous inclusivity with unintended exclusivity.

The obsession with breweries makes it seem like you have to love brewing if you already love beer. Everyone else seems enamored by the creative side, puppy-love smitten by the idea that beer is crafted by people, not just spawned in bottles and distributed to the masses. So why not you? I’ve heard several friends and colleagues announce, with much dejection, that they “just can’t get into brewing,” or “I tried homebrewing, and didn’t enjoy it,” their voices tinted with frustration and failure. There is an implication that the enjoyment of the product is inextricably tied to the enjoyment of the process, and that you cannot possibly be into one without being into the other. A subconscious malignant trend whispers mean words to the dark, suggesting that people who love to drink beer aren’t “real beer people” unless they frequent every brewery in a fifty mile radius, and homebrew every weekend.

I’m here to tell you that’s all nonsense. In a commercial context, there will always exist two subsets of people: creators and consumers. While there will inevitably be some cross over, in nearly every other modern industry, the lines are pretty cleanly drawn between the two groups. You don’t expect every voracious reader to also be a writer, or study sentence structure and grammar, do you? You’d never suggest someone who enjoys delicious food also learn how to cook every dish they enjoy, Iron Chef style, right? We appreciate the creators because without them we wouldn’t have our products to consume, but trying to culturally tie creation and consumption together will lead to a lot of unreasonable expectations, and possibly some alienating let downs when reality deviates from the prescribed popular path.

It’s OK to not want to try your hand at homebrewing, or to find the process tedious and unrewarding.

It’s OK to love beer for it’s mosaic variety and deliciousness without giving a single solitary shit about how it transformed from raw ingredients to decadent ambrosia.

It’s OK to not want to visit breweries, to not have an aesthetic opinion about stainless steel versus copper, to not really care at what temperature the grain for your favorite beer was mashed.

You can love, respect, and enjoy beer without any of that. You should still maintain a healthy respect for those who do spend their time making beer (as long as they do it well), but feel no shame in not wanting to pack up and move yourself to that side of the beerish world. While it would be pretty difficult to love brewing if you didn’t love beer, never let the culture, or any unspoken trend, suggest the opposite is true.

It’s OK, really, to love brew as a noun, but not as a verb.

“If it is true that there are as many minds as there are heads, then there are as many kinds of love as there are hearts.” ― Leo Tolstoy