This started as a Facebook comment that kind of grew…and I thought it was worth a post.
As with all spiritual teachings, it will probably grow further and be added to. If you have a teaching to add, drop it into the comments.
It started with the photo (right) posted on Facebook by someone called Jack Diddley, which followed on the heels of the very funny video (below) that’s been doing the rounds this week.
Anyway, it got me thinking. Beer appreciation is great. Beer enthusiasm is to be encouraged. Beer advocacy is wonderful. But when does it make that misdirected turn into ugly wankery?
We’ve all been out to dinner with ‘the wine guy’ that makes everyone a little bit nervous about ordering the wine they like lest their selection be found wanting. If beer ever gets to the stage that the beer wanker escapes from the parody video into a mainstream movie with a line like, “I’m not drinking lager. If anybody orders fucking lager, I’m leaving“, I think I’ll go teetotal.
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Anyway, here’s the opening thoughts in:
Brews News’ The Tao of Beer
- Beer is a richly varied and fractally interesting thing. Beer appreciation is disproportionately rewarded by even a little knowledge. (Thanks to Zen-master Phil Cook for this near-perfect expression.)
- But don’t be a dick about it. Take beer seriously but never yourself while you do. It is a hedonistic pursuit not an intellectual one. If a beer brings you or someone you know pleasure, on that measure it is a good beer.
- Drink widely and drink well.
- Know that fads are fads. Just try to find an Imperial White IPA hopped with Mosaic on the shelves next year. Fads flower then die. The two great things about them is that they seed the next season, and sometimes – just sometimes – they will throw up a mutant offspring that will permanently occupy a corner of the garden.
- Appreciate the blooms, nurture the garden.
- The best beer is often a good beer thoroughly enjoyed.
- If a brewery is good, there’s every chance it will grow. Don’t hate it for being successful.
- If a brewery grows, there’s every chance it will be bought. So what, if the beer doesn’t change.
- Encourage diversity, both in style and ownership, through your own purchasing habits.
- But don’t be a dick about it.
This is a great start to a very interesting conversation. Maybe we need to take a leaf out of other established religious protocols and adopt something like a 10 Commandments of Good Beer; “Thou shalt not act like an arse-hat if someone orders a mainstream lager in thy presence” “Thou shalt not accept graven images purporting to be ‘craft'” “Thou shalt not kill – a party by reciting hopping regimes to those assembled before ye who don’t give a fat rat’s crack about hopping regimes”? That sort of thing.
Great post Matt and very funny comment Pete.
I went to the Hunter Valley a couple of weekends back and was lucky enough to have a tasting with a vineyard owner. He said that when he bought the vineyard some 13 years ago he asked the winemaker to teach him how to judge “good wine”. The winemaker said, “That’s easy, I’ll teach you right now. Take out the bottle of wine, pour yourself a glass. Take a sniff and have a drink. Set the glass down and say,’That’s a good wine’ or say, ‘That’s a shit wine’.”
His point is that only the drinker of the wine, or in our case beer, can judge whether it’s good or not.
“There seems to be a backlash against ugly beer wankery of late”
OR
“There seems to be a straw man campaign against non-existent beer snobs of late”
Maybe I move in the wrong circles, but I just don’t see much evidence (yet) of this sort of behaviour in Oz.
If that carton doesn’t resonate with you I can understand that you might feel that way, but it’s out there and it’s growing.
Don’t be a dick about it pretty much somes it all up. As I’ll be at GABF Geelong on Feb 1 I’ll get to see shit loads of both ends of the spectrum. The macro swillers wincing at flavour and the snobs bitching about lack of hops. Should be fun.
I’m more the beer enthusiast picture – I will generally buy what I know the host likes or if I don’t, it’ll be a safe craftie, like a mainstream Kolsch.
But I do have to avoid getting excited about talking beer – and not to be the horrid beer snob, but just love talking beer, and flavour.
On the flipside, you have the people who bag out anything other than their choice beer. Someone who drinks VB or XXXX exclusively and refuses anything else, is a beer snob too – just their choice is different.
All great points Chris and, like you, sometimes it’s a battle to contain my enthusiasm! Still, there’s reasonable wide line between enthusiasm and snobbery.
The other issue is lupulin-threshold-shift.
My missus isn’t a beer snob (and is, fortunately, there to alert me to beer overenthusiasm in mixed company), but regards Vale/IPA as adequately hoppy.
Sometimes when you’re in mixed company, having a standard Pale Ale, and you remark (mainly to yourself) that it isn’t hoppy enough, and everyone around you thinks you’re a snob, it can get uncomfortable. Again in beer enthusiast territory, after all, you aren’t bagging out their Carlton Draft. However, it does make you appear snobby.
Finally, if someone gives you a carton/6er of something awful like VB – there’s always a regift or a re-favour (you can build me a kegerator cupboard, and I’ll give you this carton).
Again, great point Chris. As I always ask when people tell me categorically that Little Creatures has been dumbed down, “Has it changed, or have you?”
Always worth a palate reset. I generally chose a week of Boag’s Draught (the only megaswill I can stand) as my penance.
Everything tastes hoppier after that.
My theory on beer enthusiast’s desire for hops is much like hard-core pornography. Over time mainstream pornography has become more ‘hard core’ to use a difficult to define term but one which most will understand its definition (excuse the oxymoronic nature of that comment)!
Please, allow me to explain. If you’re in Oz and over 30 chances are you cut your teeth on ‘macro’, less than flavoursome beers before discovering more flavoursome craft brews. The first time you tried one perhaps the hops were overwhelming. It seems after a while you get used to what you’re drinking and end up looking for something ‘hoppier’, constantly chasing that high because your taste buds have become somewhat desensitised over time. Enter my hard-core porn analogy. Porn becomes more hard-core over time as the viewing public become desensitised over time and need something more stimulating (aka hoppier).
So before you end up sequestered in a dark room with the curtains drawn drinking the beer equivalent of midget donkey porn stop and take a deep breath. Malty beers can and are nice (so are hops), non-imperial stouts are nice (so are imperials) and even bog standard lagers and golden ales can soothe what ails you.
At the end of the day, beer is there to be enjoyed, so if the individual imbibing is enjoying it who are we to argue (midgets and donkeys excepted).
With all the marvelous craft beers out there, we are spoilt for choice. I do feel sorry for the mega swill drinkers though. Their beers are progressively getting worse.I can remember from my youth in the late sixties and seventies, beer tasting good, from , believe it or not CUB. The flavour was distinctive between their varieties and they used real hop flowers actually grown in the Melbourne suburb of Ringwood. POR flowers give an aussie lager a good flavour and bitterness. High gravity brewing with hop extract and watered down again at bottling just does’nt produce good beer.They can make good beer, but won’t. A good reason to support the small brewers before they are snapped up by the big brewers. ( bluetongue anyone? )
regards,
Andy
So much of this website promotes Beer-Snobery its not funny!
Don’t get me wrong, Im an avid reader of the “Brew News”
BUT – all you do is Praise the little random guys and Kick the “Big Guys”
Even when you make a “news” story about something good one of the Big guys do you can’t help but reference something bad they have also done.
This site is all about Beer Snobs, Written by and for Beer Snobs.
Its all cool but I struggle with the fact that years of bias reporting can be brushed aside in one article claiming that we are here not because we are beer wankers!
Fair enough that you feel that Ray, though I think it’s a massive over-simplification that all we do is praise little random guys and kick the big guys. All you need to do is look at my twitter stream today where I got a kicking for daring to suggest that Matilda Bay belonged in good craft beer bars. Beyond that, I’d be interested in seeing any article I have written that describes any big beer as not being worth drinking if someone enjoys it…
But thanks for reading…