I Am A Craft Beer Marketing Consultant…

The wonderful and ever posting Jay Brooks has posted the latest version of this odd video meme (pronounced “me-me” for obvious reasons) and it has me scratching my head as much as that Craft Brewer video of a year ago. Here it is:

As I noted at Jay’s, how many of these drinkers are really marketers in their day to day life? Can they not actually find 12 or 23 real, honest to goodness average Joes who like craft beer? And what the hell is it about the soundtracks of these things? Does anyone actually associate classical string quartets or whatever the hell that stuff is with craft beer? Would a little heavy metal or bluegrass not send the right marketing message? It makes me want to fall asleep about half way through.

It’s a form of denial, we know that. And a form of spin. But wouldn’t it be interesting to have one of these promotional video thingies based on the following:

  • I am a craft beer drinker. I am a fan of good beer. I buy good craft beer.
  • I earn my money through hard work and expect craft brewers to earn it from me.
  • I have no time for the floaters, the makers of dull amber ale, the brewers who are there for the government grants.
  • Me and people like me reject badly made craft beer or beer stores that pass on soaking costs for trendy unbalanced crap.
  • We have the conviction of our own ability to determine what tastes good. And know a great craft beer goes with a bag of chips.
  • We know when it is stinking hot nothing goes down like a Miller High Life and respect our friends who like that stuff just fine.
  • But we also know that when the BBQ smoker in the backyard is pissing off the neighbours, when we are sick and tired another mouthful of steamed corn gak, when there is extra money in the wallet and when our mouths demand something that has extraordinary taste…
  • …that is when we buy good craft beer.

Background music? Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” morphing into a little early Johnny Cash ending in a crescendo of grunge. “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” perhaps?

Yutes Today Less Empaffetick

I don’t know why this is so silly but maybe it’s because I was a thoughtless college yute in the 1980s:

Today’s college students are 40-per-cent less empathetic than those of the 1980s and 1990s, says a University of Michigan study that analyzed the personality tests of 13,737 students over 30 years. The influx of callous reality TV shows and the astronomical growth of social networking and texting – technologies that allow people to tune others out when they don’t feel like engaging – may be to blame, the authors hypothesize…The researchers found a 48-per-cent decrease in empathic concern and a 34-per-cent decrease in perspective-taking between 1979 and 2009. In particular, post-millennial students were far less likely to agree with statements such as, “I often have tender, concerned feelings for people less fortunate than me” and “I sometimes try to understand my friends better by imagining how things look from their perspective.”

Forty-eight percent! Who knew? Weren’t we the “me generation” or is every group at that age lumbered with that label? I recall college years being based upon the need to get beer, find money to get beer and to consume that beer. I can think of one or two guys who were involved with ding something good for others and the hundreds of others I met were just getting by and/or getting it on one way or another. Tender concerned feelings were demonstrated by that guy who kept the collection of empty rye whisky bottles in his dorm room. Now, to be fair, there were more dudley do right Earth Day organizing sorts after my degrees were obtained by 1991 but even that would not qualify so much as perspective as a amateur junior lobbyism practice. Then was the time of the rise of the “anti-s” and should nots.

What is being such rose coloured revisionism? Must be today’s parents. Trained as they were in a pool of ale and shooters, I feel for them.

Where Else Hides The Culture of Entitlement?

Pete Brown’s piece this morning about, according to my finger count, seven members of CAMRA and two incidents entitled “CAMRA’s Noxious Culture of Entitlement” got me wondering. Craft beer is funny stuff as any fan-based hobby is. People lose perspective. So, somewhat related to the Hedonist Beer Jive‘s 5 Most Boring Topic in Beer Journalism, are there five most tedious or obnoxious themes in craft beer appreciation? Do these compare?

  • The brewery that considers itself outside proper business regulation because they make, you know, craft beer;
  • The organization or artist that can tell you what you should think of the beers or brewers they support because they are speaking for “the community”;
  • The advocate who claims others have a conflict or some other ethical fault never mentioning that they do consulting on the side;
  • Anyone who bristles at “it’s just beer” more than they would “it’s just cheese”;
  • Lobbyists who disconnect craft beer obsession from health and legal downsides like obesity and drunk driving.

Are those fair? Are they even in the same ball park? I have no idea. The CAMRA men (all Pete’s examples were male, right?) trigger feelings of that sort of bile raising obnoxiousness even to those just experiencing the events second hand. But there seems to be acceptance of plenty of similar things without a boo. Is that fair? I don’t know.

Surprising Protzian Update: Amazingly, there is actually a retort from Mr. Protz who was apparently one of Pete’s boorish company. I leave it to you to enjoy the fireworks but would point out that I found Mr. Protz’s description of what makes for good fun coarse and exceedingly discomforting in the past. Entitlement indeed.

Pants on Fire Update: Clearly Pete Brown and Roger Protz are both big fat liars as each has described the same incident giving utterly different takes on the same few facts. Interesting to note the fact arose in the context of unmoderated alcohol consumption. Surely nothing like this has ever happened before. Why can’t UK beer writers control themselves or their consumption of beer when presented to them at no expense? Who else was at this table of vipers at the free dinner in the National Brewery Centre last week? Confess!

Has An Unacceptable Level Of Drinking Been Described?

Pete Brown has run a series of posts this week and last that delve into stats being issued by various government agencies and health lobby groups in the UK. It is important work that Pete is doing as there is no stat worse than the unexamined stat. Today’s post was called “More Hilarity with Statistics” which examined claims about the level of drinking in Scotland. I made a comment over there but did some more rooting around to make sure I agreed with what I was seeing and, to avoid looking like a totally rude idiot being all finger pointy in the comments, thought I would set it out here instead. I also got thinking because even if a stat can be discredited it does not mean that the underlying facts necessarily do not exists, only that they are not well described. But, as I said in the comments, I am really bad at math so I am happy to be corrected.

The BBC story Pete began with was titled “Scots ‘Drink 46 Bottles of Vodka‘” by which they mean per person per year on average. Pete suggested that this was not particularly well researched as tourism trade taking the booze away was not figured in – but then when I ran the numbers I saw this pattern:

  • Scotland has about 8% of the UK population
  • total UK booze sales in 2007 were worth over 41 billion pounds
  • and therefore, Scotland’s booze sales can be approximated at around 4 billion pounds.

I took the numbers from this soul suckingly slow .pdf source. I read them to meaning that if every penny of the 25 million pounds spent at distillery shops was non-Scots resident alcohol sales, removing it entirely from Scottish consumption, it only represents well under 1% of total Scottish sales? If that is the case, the variation is under a bottle of vodka a year. I said that even if I was off by a whole decimal point and the distillery sales represent 10% of sales isn’t it still a little bit alarming that every Scots adult averages 41 or 42 bottles of vodka a year? By which I mean I had a gut feeling it was in fact pretty high. But is it?

A little more looking around further, found information stating that 30% of Scots adults say they do not drink – which means the drinking Scot averages 58 or so bottle a year working off the conservative 41 bottles a week stat. It is more like 65 a year if you go by the BBC’s number of 46. I got the “did not drink” percentage from this pdf. So you have 30% of Scots not drinking, 35% drinking up to the average and 35% drinking over the average.

What does that mean? 58 bottles a year on average means 1.12 x 700 ml bottles a week at 40% that means 313 ml of pure alcohol a week. By comparison, a standard Canadian 12 oz 5% beer has 341 ml. Which means that average Scots drinker’s booze consumption is the equivalent of 19 standard 5% Canadian beers a week. Sounds like a bit more than you might think is a good idea, week after week day after day. But not fatal. It’s maybe what we expect the average healthy working Joe would drink in a week. Similarly, a US 22 oz bomber has 650 ml. At 8% that is 65 ml of pure alcohol. Which means that the Scot’s drinker’s booze consumption is the equivalent of 4.8 bombers of 8% US craft beer a week. Is that going to scare off a craft beer fan? Hardly.

But it is an average and that is what I think is the real concern. It means 35% of Scots drinkers adults drink more… because 65% drinkers there drink less including the 30% who abstain. I think those numbers are troubling. They may well be wrong so please do your own a arithmetic. But if they are not wrong – is there not a valid public health concern where 35% of your population is doing that level of drinking. I don’t really care if you think there is no such thing as a public health concern from a libertarian point of view as that is not the point here. Nor does someone called “Alan Campbell McLeod” care if you think this is only a Scottish problem. I think we can all agree that there is a point beyond which alcohol is unhealthy. Is that point been identified by the BBC report?

Why Does That Word “Pairing” Make My Temples Ache?

monkey4This has bugged me for a while. And that it bugs me bugs others, too. Here is what I know. Someone somewhere in the last few years decided we needed to “pair” beer with food. Prior to that, people just drank beer with their food and were generally happy with the many ways that great beer goes with good food. But one of the greatest turns of a consultants’ art is taking the obvious and often done, repackaging it and selling it back to you. That is what I suspect is going on with this “pairing” idea. Not that I have any issue with people being sold what they already own. It’s just not something I like to have done to myself. So, I worried when I read the very worthwhile Mark Dredge at the very interesting Pencil and Spoonwrite this over the weekend:

Today’s post is about pairing beer and food and is a simple overview of the tricks which beer can play that makes it a great companion to your lunch.

To which I asked “as opposed to the centuries of simply eating and drinking that have happily served mankind?” and to which Mark responded “Yes. Exactly opposed to that.” I have no idea what that means. What is the opposite of eating good food with good beer that still includes eating good food with good beer? When hasn’t beer been “a great companion to your lunch”?

Me, I’ve been happily eating food for almost my whole life. You should see my baby pictures. And since I was in the later end of high school, I have been drinking beer and pretty much as early as I could get away with it, I have been enjoying the consumption of good food with well made beer. I was lucky growing up in a seafood producing area of Atlantic Canada as my 1980s college days, among other things, were filled with regional beers with mussels in taverns as well as lobsters boils and early efforts craft beer. On UK trips and into the 90s, I liked plowman’s lunches with English style pale ales of brewers I could find to like those at Kingston Brew Pub or The Granite Brewery or Rogues Roost. As I moved on, moved out and got mortgaged, I baked breads with beer in it as well as New England baked beans and Texas chili. As access to good beer increased along with my interest in beer, I was quite happy to pull out old cheddars, blue cheese and even things that came out of a goat and try them with any number of brews. They all went pretty well… as did most roasts, most seafoody things and a lot of other things. In fact, I have now established that gueuze goes with everything and if it doesn’t, well, that thing is out of my life as long as the gueuze is in view. Get me in a room with a bunch of pals, a bunch of great beers and a pot luck of any types of food and I am happy to explore.

But I would never, you know, pair. I’d never get into that monogamous mindset where “this matches that” because we all should be aware that “these really go with those” and, if we are honest “all this pretty much is great with all that.” Did anyone really not know this? I have had the occasion to point out to food professionals that real hefeweizen goes really well with eggs and bacon and that flavours stouts created, among other things, to go with chocolate do actually go with chocolate – but it’s hardly the deepest thing I’ve picked up about beer. So, if it is not difficult information and it is something I’ve known for yoinks and most I know who like good beer have known for yoinks – what is all the interest in “pairing” based on?

Warning: Your Freebie Beer Blogging Ways Are Over!

A few weeks ago, a wiggling waggy hand rose above the crowd pointing out that there was uncertainty as to who was dabbling in beer blogging in relation to matters in which the blogger had a financial interest. Melissa Cole admitted that there were doubts even about her own writing and that it was all not quite on. It has all devolved into a well deserved bout of slappy heed [Ed.: in the comments] over calling out but not calling out yet the point is still a reasonable one… as is Jeff’s counterpoint… but not Pete’s… Pete’s contribution is not helping things at all.

Well, as the New York Times tells us things are now more serious than whether one or another or all of us are cool with… or is it cool towards… such practices. Bigger than even Pete Brown (as sophomorically illustrated¹) himself, the UK’s – if not the language’s – real top beer writer. See, the law is now involved as the United States Federal Trade Commission has issued a revision to its “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising” (warning: big honking burly .pdf) which states in a number of ways that blogging has now gone big time and we know so because the line between comment and endorsement, opinion and advertising has gotten blurred. For instance, the FTC states at page 14 and 15:

The Commission recognizes that because the advertiser does not disseminate the endorsements made using these new consumer-generated media, it does not have complete control over the contents of those statements. Nonetheless, if the advertiser initiated the process that led to these endorsements being made – e.g., by providing products to well-known bloggers or to endorsers enrolled in word of mouth marketing programs – it potentially is liable for misleading statements made by those consumers.

… and further at 47 to 48:

The Commission acknowledges that bloggers may be subject to different disclosure requirements than reviewers in traditional media. In general, under usual circumstances, the Commission does not consider reviews published in traditional media (i.e., where a newspaper, magazine, or television or radio station with independent editorial responsibility assigns an employee to review various products or services as part of his or her official duties, and then publishes those reviews) to be sponsored advertising messages. Accordingly, such reviews are not “endorsements” within the meaning of the Guides. Under these circumstances, the Commission believes, knowing whether the media entity that published the review paid for the item in question would not affect the weight consumers give to the reviewer’s statements. Of course, this view could be different if the reviewer were receiving a benefit directly from the manufacturer (or its agent). In contrast, if a blogger’s statement on his personal blog or elsewhere (e.g., the site of an online retailer of electronic products) qualifies as an “endorsement” – i.e., as a sponsored
message – due to the blogger’s relationship with the advertiser or the value of the merchandise he has received and has been asked to review by that advertiser, knowing these facts might affect the weight consumers give to his review.

So, while the FTC indicates that it will not go after the bloggers directly, it will go after the advertisers who use new media to get their message out. What will this mean? It may put a chill on ads, samples and…frankly… the goodies. And what the hell point is there blogging if one never gets the goodies??? Well, for those quasi-bloggers who are really professional writers (you know, the book writers) slumming with the cool kids, it will mean absolutely nothing because their revenue is through indirect advertising not the entirely more wholesome and less problematic direct moo-lah stream. Me, I actually get very few samples through the maple wall that is the US-Canadian border and the cash ads mostly come (however oddly) from other nations. But for the poor US based semi-pro beer blogger just looking for a little reason to go on, well, this may be the kick in the pants they don’t really need. So share a silent moment, if you would, for the blogger looking for that one little break, that something in return. It may just have become that bit less likely to arrive in the mail.

One last thing. I do think it’s great that the law is actually addressing new media (even if blogging was cool seven years ago and starting going lame about three years ago) but is this at all a likely outcome in an advertising model where a scurrying pack of small operators get paid peanuts to send out a viral message?

In order to limit its potential liability, the advertiser should ensure that the advertising service provides guidance and training to its bloggers concerning the need to ensure that statements they make are truthful and substantiated. The advertiser should also monitor bloggers who are being paid to promote its products and take steps necessary to halt the continued publication of deceptive representations when they are discovered.

No, me neither. Ain’t going to happen.

¹[Ed.: lesson – don’t blog with an eleven year old goading you on to make the cartoon look sillier. Sorry Pete. Really. Sorry. Just think how boring this post would be without your input… err… participation… umm… objectification.]

So Who Really Should Be Writing About Beer?

Stan linked via Twitter via Maureen to one of the oddest bits of beer writing I have ever come across in my years of doing this. It is by a Western Massachusetts based writer George Lenker, who apparently has had a beer column for about as long as I have written this beer blog. Looking at some of his other columns, he seems to have a thing about “amateurs” as well as his own special place in the beer writing trade. His convictions come out in force in his piece entitled “Sober Thoughts On Writing About Beer” published last Thursday in The Republican of Springfield:

…while I welcome everyone’s opinion on beer and craft brewing, I don’t believe everyone should be publishing his or her opinion with abandon, just because the Wild West ethos of Internet allows them to do so. By this I do not mean I want to see the suppression of said opinions; I just want to receive them in a manner that is both coherent and largely devoid of agendas and/or the shrillness that sometimes accompanies amateur beer writing…Unfortunately, some blogs and open forum sites burp up some pretty unbalanced and even incendiary writing at times and I believe this may turn off some newbies to craft beer. Anyone who knows me knows I am not trying to stifle anyone’s First Amendment rights here (as a journalist, it’s my job to defend them) but rather to coach gently those hobbyists whose shoot-first-ask-questions-later methodology of conveying their opinions does more harm that good.

In itself, I really could not care less if George Lenker likes or dislikes anything as I have never noticed coming across him before. I don’t care for the tone of importance though it is (I would hope) likely that here he is writing tongue in cheek to make the point or at least to get noticed. He did, after all, choose to use the phrase “the suppression of said opinions” – the use of “said” in this way usually being a flag for one thing or another. Yet, it is instructive at this particular point in time to consider the attitude that goes into making this sort or any sort of statement on a topic you are interested in. And, to be fair, it is likely due in part of the current pressures on print media. It may, however, also speak to something deeper. So, as a service to the reader who is unfamiliar with some of the issues at play when dealing with this sort of thing, there are some of my basics to remember when reading the work of anyone who writes about beer.

1. Most people have an agenda though many don’t state it. This is true in all things in life and not just writing. It is usually not a bad thing. It’s usually a synonym for “an interest” in something or another. Imagine a world where people did not have multiple interests. These interests pop up everywhere. For example, Mr. Lenker has used the word “superb” to describe the now defunct magazine Beers of the World – though to be fair he uses “superb” quite a bit. Mr. Lenker explains that he has written wrote for that magazine and presumably he has received payment for doing so. He has an interest in the success of that magazine. Good thing, too. For all the money there is in beer far too little of it reaches the palms of those who are thinking and writing about beer. We need more of it. We need more people with interest.

2. Interests can guide beer writers. For example, you will find a number of writers shrink from – and even mock – the writing of a beer review. Sometimes these same people have jobs that involve the selling of beer one way or another. This is good. It is entirely reasonable for someone to not cut the legs out of what is likely the larger part of one’s revenue stream. All that is required in such circumstances is a disclaimer as to limitation of their ability to speak to a subject. The best of us place the reason on the table so they can’t be taken as full authority. Look how well Stan does it in his recent review of a bookwritten by a friend and colleague. We should expect both multiple interest and disclaimers as to their existence. Maybe more than we see them.

3. Interests are inordinately sensitive topics but they are often the definitive factor in creating real value. Over at Knut’s place, Pete Brown and I got into it a bit this week in another “pros” v. hobbyist take on beer writing. He suggested I was challenging his integrity by noting he is a PR consultant to breweries. I was making an observation of fact. And what an important fact. No one else approaches questions of beer branding and its effect on the market so intelligently and consistently as Pete Brown. Frankly, one of the best bits in his new and utterly worthwhile book Hops and Glory is the Epilogue where he describes finding a vestigial use of the brand of a once powerful UK brewer, Allsopp, in Kenya. And, just to be clear, I don’t give a rats ass about branding. Pete’s interest in it makes it interesting to me.

4. Craft beers have relative value. But not everyone wants you to know that or talk about it. That should raise a flag. There may be an interest at play. To be clear, every child is special and, to some but not me, every dog is too. But every craft beer is not special and every craft brewer is not a good one. But things like guilds and associations and people who can write and seemingly accept concepts like “some beer writing may not be helping the cause” don’t like you to think about that too much. For some it is a toggle switch world out there – you are in or you are out. You either support the cause or not. Beware the toggle switch mentality. Further, the task of taking on the determination of relative value of such a complex set of data like the relative quality of beer requires a large set of evaluators. That is why, for all their own difficulties, ratings sites are so valuable. Likewise the combination of beer blogs and internet search engines. Only through these forms of writing and though not being concerned with “helping the cause” will the actual state of affairs be identified.

5. Beer information has great value. And that value has not yet been realized. For whatever reason, beer columns in a paper every week or two has not been a successful format for capturing the imagination of beer consumers except in a few local markets like Philadelphia. Making a commodity of information about beer and capturing it successfully can get you advertising, subscribers, membership fees and above all that brass ring of a job which is about writing about beer. I’ve done that. Beer pays for itself and I pay income tax on my beer writing generated through this site. That is what the ratings sites do and that is what others making money from beer writing do. It is good. Frankly, there should be more of if. And, also frankly, this talk of professionalism is difficult to divide from having a financial interest in the writing about beer.

6. Beer has downsides. The issues of productivity, health, public safety, budget and family life as they relate to being a regular drinker of alcohol have been written about as long as people have been writing. This is not a part of the discourse, however, since at least the days of Kingsley Amis or Richard Boston. In some way, I think Michael Jackson focused the discussion singularly on the wonderfulness of craft beer in a way that persists. This can be described reasonably as being “pro-responsible drinking than anti-anything” but it also raises questions about whether we do not write about difficult or negative subjects out of our own discomfort. These days, there is too much “Hooray for Everything” about craft beer including in beer writing. The lack of discussion of a topic or an angle on a topic may indicate that an interest is at play as well. Associating craft beer with negativity and even human suffering might not help the cause.

7. Beer has serious downsides. It is obvious that beer creates issues about weight. I am fat. Other beer writers are fat, too. Beer writers in the past like Ken Shales and David Line have died young. Was it the lifestyle? Craft beer is loaded with calories and the bigger the beer the bigger the calories. We don’t like to talk that much about it. Similarly, drunk driving is not being properly addressed. I started the idea of BBADD as a bit of a joke but immediately was struck by the discomfort of the response. I knew it must have meant something. We have beer writers writing against mass media descriptions of binge drinking in the UK and writing against MADD in the US. There may be real problems with these topics but we don’t have much writing about getting a handle on what is actually going on. And we certainly do not have the unified voice of craft beer or beer writers speaking out about these results of excess. Avoidance of the negative probably does not help the cause but does it help the consumer?

8. Craft beer is part of pop culture. The craft beer industry is not rocket science and it is certainly not a topic of exclusive or professional expertise. Yet it is a topic of great significance and even substantial financial importance. Think of being a craft beer fan as being similar to being a sports fan. Who in this day and age would accept a sports reporter palling around with team owners and athletes socially while reporting on the games they play? That’s the way it used to be. Who also in their right mind would suggest that (a) fans having an opinion, (b) those fans considering their own opinion as being experienced and valid or (c) fans expressing their opinions could any way be improper. You want people to be passionate about your pop culture product. Craft beer is a pop culture product. The opposite of the fan is the snob, the exclusionary. The craft beer snob is as out of place and illogical a concept as the baseball snob. For an author to suggest otherwise – to suggest that “some beer writing may not be helping the cause” – speaks to such a fundamental misunderstanding of the convivial and democratic role of beer in society that it leads me to question other opinions voiced by that author. And the question of undisclosed interest like the desire to maintain exclusivity under the umbrella of perhaps unwarranted professionalism. Fortunately, there are a horde of other beer writers – some justly earning a living, others writing out of pure passion. They are all out there now with other ideas and better ideas expressed to various degrees of success who enrich the overall discourse as best they can. Rather than being a time of degradation, it is, in fact, a wonderful point in beer writing.

Sure, these are interesting times for professional beer writers. The democratizing dynamics of the effects of beer blogging and beer forums let alone Twitter and Facebook may well have changed their world order. Even so, beware the one who suggests that the world is divided into people who should be granted exclusive commercial right on one hand and “hobbyists” on the other. As I noted a few weeks ago, this was the same complaint made by Bill Gates in the mid-70s at the point when distinctions between open source and commercialized computer software were being defined. As we know, the ramifications of open source are still being played out in the free and open marketplace…. well, free and open as long as it is governed by sensible anti-trust legislation.

These comments just touch the surface. They may even miss the mark. You may not care about them or may take issue with all of them. Think about them if you care to and write about how flawed they are. Or think or write about something else in the world of craft beer if that is your passion. Practice writing and keep at it because no one else can speak for you or describe how you see things. Don’t let anyone stop you if only because you may have an idea that no one has thought of before. That’s my advice to beer writers for what it is worth.

That Messy Messy Democracy That Is Beer Writing

Stan H. and E.S. Delia have both written posts in the last few hours that go to the very heart of beer blogging. Stan’s post “The end of beer writing as we know it?” and Mr. Delia’s “On Beer Writing” both explore the relationship between blogging – an amateur form of expression – with profession beer expressions like movies or beer magazines. Dalia writes:

The bigger issue is the nature of beer writing. Carroll quotes filmmaker Anat Baron’s take on beer writers versus beer bloggers, implying that the writers’ assessments were more astute or level-headed than that of the beer bloggers. I don’t get paid for this, so perhaps my opinions are less valid.

Nothing is so embarrassing as when condescension meets foolishness. It reminds of the old joke “what do you call a doctor who got ‘D’ in first year anatomy?” The answer is, of course, “doctor.” Like Dr. Johnson said of nationalism, this sort of idea about professionalism can also be the last refuge of a scoundrel. For further study on this idea, I suggest you seek out the works of Ivan Illich. You may not agree with the idea that professionalism in itself carries downsides but the perspective is nonetheless worthwhile.

Fortunately, both Mr. H and Mr. D reject such poppycock. Both suggest the far better idea that beer blogging is not in any way illegitimate and in fact can uniquely advance the discourse on beer culture in ways that profession beer sometimes can’t. Delia reminds us of the need to look to and weigh content. Hieronymus looks with hope to innovation and new beginnings. Sure, there is a lot of crap in blogging as well as failed technicalities like poor grammar. But there is also a lot of crap in magazine writing and in documentary film making as well as failures such as the business botch of misplaced trust in an illusory homogeneous craft beer community which will buy your tickets or purchase your subscriptions like unthinking autobots. What has been going on for years – and what some still don’t get – is that all this writing is a collection of disorganized personal explorations which, like this post exemplifies, feed each other and weave another part of a large tapestry with ideas. It is a better more complex and richer way.

Thirty-three years ago, Bill Gates complained about the very same thing in relation to software “hobbyists” but he as wrong, too, as history has proven.

A Glimpse Into What The Beer Blogger Is Likely Not

As you may have guessed, I like to think about my relationship to beer and the brewing trade. That is, at this moment, really my prime motivation for this blog. It is not so much that I need to chronical my time with beer. And it is certainly not that I think that I have any right to suggest I write like Pete does, am a beer historian like Ron or knowledgeable of the trade like Lew or Stan or that I even have ambitions to be a beer journalist like Troy. No, if this habit of writing is anything it is about me thinking about me and beer. Maybe that it takes so much writing likely speaks more to who’s typing than what is being considered. I never said I was that bright.

So, being essentially a magazine about me, this sort of blogging sometimes means you have to consider what you are not. Yesterday, I dropped into Allagash to pick up my border crossing quota of a few large bottles and a two-four of their White. [By the way, when I asked for a “two-four” I was first brought a couple of four packs.] I was served a sample of their Black, a very nice stout, by a genial pouring host who turned out to be Rob Tod, owner and brewer. He was speaking with an other at the bar retail store’s bar who turned out to be one of the senior guys who ran Victory in Pennsylvania, himself also on a road trip. We chatted a bit as I grabbed bottles to take with me. About how hard it was to bring US craft beer into Ontario. About how Rob was going to be doing a beer dinner in Toronto this fall. I even mentioned I was picking up another of Allagash’s Victor due to my strong and unexpected reaction which had challenged my thoughts about my own taste. I had heard a new grape had been used and wanted to compare. The comment was received with interest, perhaps given the general positive reaction beer fans often provide, but also with real courtesy. In addition to touching on the challenge of storage conditions, the man from Victory (whose name I will be embarrased to be reminded of I am sure) poiinted out that beer also changes all the time due to the availability of ingredients whether the consumer knows or not. Very pleasant conversation as is usual with both brewers and Mainers. All the while, though, I was noticing that each brewer seemed to have a few more of their staff along in the next room sharing samples – and sharing at a level that was more trade than consumer. Instead of beer geekery, it reminded me more of listening to my pals in the software development business I used to hang out with: a little door was opened before me to a level I likely wouldn’t really get. It wasn’t so much the “hard working people working hard” that we geeks are often reminded of as quality brewers comfortably exchanging ideas.

My options seemed limited. To fawn. Or to buy and leave. I was happy with the glimpse and skee-daddled.

That Persnickty Barley Carbon Absorption Rate Thing