Because we all love a good beer rant

Of course a right proper rant from Andy Thomas, CEO of Craft Brew Alliance, Monday at Beer Business Daily’s Beer Summit grabbed the headline.

But in the midst of his 45-minute presentation to something like 300 beer industry types he rolled over the rock labeled “movement” and suggested “craft beer” could eventually account for 70 percent of all beer sales. Seventy percent. At that point perhaps we might be able to agree to just call it beer.

Brewbound has the details. “Are we really doing what we can to educate consumers about brewers, styles and brands or are we confusing them so much that they will go to something that is easier for them?” Thomas said. And here’s the nut, when he draws a parallel to Starbucks and the evolution of the coffee industry. “Is this a movement and not a trend?” Are we on the cusp of a brave new world?”

Two important bits of context. First the Brewers Association does not define the CBA breweries — including Redhook Ale Brewery and Widmer Brothers, which were among the first “microbreweries” in the Northwest — as craft breweries because AB InBev owns a considerable stake of each. Second, Thomas was talking to members of the trade, not the couple at the local hamburger joint enjoying a locally brewed beer and not the guys lined up at the beer store for the latest limited release.

So on to the rant (worthy of a passage in “The Unbearable Nonsense of Craft Beer – A Rant in Nine Acts”) as channeled through Brewbound:

“We have the honor of having two pioneering craft brands in our portfolio,” Thomas said, referencing Widmer Brothers and Redhook. “Yet, an industry association doesn’t consider us ‘craft.’ Isn’t it time that we stop acting like 13-year olds? That we stop taking ourselves too serious and start talking to consumers and retailers again?”

Thomas elaborated, drawing a link between the socialization models of young adults – the “jocks, stoners and nerds in high school” — and maturing craft brewers.

“We label; we operate in cliques,” he said. “Are you a craft brewer? Did your equity come from a certain place? Do you not use certain ingredients? Name-calling, labeling, craft versus crafty.”

And then he issued a challenge, which seems like it should be an animated gif.

“Don’t bash beer,” he said.

Thomas pled for all members of the beer industry to stop the infighting.

“Don’t elevate yourselves by cutting someone else down,” he said. “Don’t make someone question their beer.”

He emphasized his point, over and over again.

“Don’t bash beer,” he said. “Don’t bash craft beer. Don’t bash crafty beer. Don’t bash domestic beer. Don’t bash imported beer. Don’t bash light beer. Don’t bash brands. Don’t bash brewers. Don’t bash beer consumers. Don’t bash retailers or wholesalers. Don’t bash beer — celebrate beer.”

To reiterate, he wasn’t calling for everybody who talks (and writes) about beer to join hands around the campfire and sing only songs of praise. This was a message to the trade. So feel free to dis that beer in your glass if it deserves the dontdrinkbeer treatment.

Monday beer links, musing 01.27.14

Another round of beer bonuses. A-B InBev is paying about $5.8 billion to reacquire a Korean brewery it unloaded for $1.8 billion in 2009. It might look like ABI didn’t make the best business decision, but “ABI’s managers, who haven’t invested their own money, will share an extra $2.5 billion in bonuses, including nearly $300m for Carlos Brito, the company’s boss.” Plus pick up some more cash because of the bump in stock price. [Via The Economist]

Can we tell the media anything? and get away with it? More (if you were paying attention last week) from Luke Nicholas in New Zealand. [Via Luke’s beer]

Pull up stool with Brian Grossman. The son of Sierra Nevada Brewing founder Ken Grossman talks about the giant new brewery soon coming on line in North Carolina. And other things, like “Thank God my dad didn’t make cat food.” [Via All About Beer]

Praiseworthy beer from American Trappists. Don Russell uses the release of Spencer Trappist Ale, from St. Joseph’s Abbey in Massachusetts, to review of the history of a mostly forgotten U.S. monastery brewery. St. Vincent’s Archabbey in Latrobe, Pa., brewed and sold beer for more than 40 years at the end of the nineteenth century. [Via Joe Sixpack]

Between Beruit and a Hard Place. It will be difficult for Steve Hindy to top “story of a Isarelia-backed militiaman and murderer who kidnapped me in Lebanon and ended up selling ice cream to children in the streets of Detroit” in his upcoming “The Craft Beer Revolution: How a Band of Microbrewers Is Transforming the World’s Favorite Drink.” [Via Vice]

Monday beer links, musing 01.20.14

New Beers Everywhere, But Buyers Beware. Luke Nicholas, he of Epic Brewing in New Zealand, actually provides three posts for your consideration, linking to a couple within his own. You’ll also want to read The Emperor’s New Suds, in which Greig McGill asks, “Why should the consumer have to pay for an experiment which went wrong when the brewer should know damn well the beer should have been dumped?” as well as what Geoff Griggs has to contribute. But back to the questions Nicholas asks.

What is happening is the market is learning, everyone is learning. Those that know need to share their knowledge.

We just need more champions talking more about the bad stuff. I know that I needed to be told when I was first learning the different flavours in beer and what they were called. It is associating a word with a flavour. The first challenge.

Maybe a blog isn’t the best place to call bad beers out? Maybe it is?

Question: If I know a beer is bad technically to the point I wouldn’t drink it, should I share that information? Would you want to know?

Plenty of feedback at Facebook. [Via Luke’s beer]

German beer’s existential crisis. The New Yorker uses the news that four of Germany’s largest breweries were hit by massive fines for price fixing to discuss the Reinheitsgebot, why the “craft-beer approach is surely a better method than price-fixing,” innovation, and other related topics. Nothing wrong with the story, but a reader might be left with the impression everything new is going on in Berlin.

A mention of the Bier-Quer-Denker, a group of brewers in Bavaria, would have been nice. Look at a map of Germany — big country, and Berlin is a long way from Bavaria.

Even Brew Berlin commented on this.

One question remains. Why does Filtz mention two of the youngest companies in the new German beer movement? Experimental brewers and start-ups like Riegele, Schneider Weisse, Crew Republic and especially the Radeberger spring-off Braufactum have been questioning the status quo for years.

[Via The New Yorker]

When naming goes awry. Mouth Raper IPA. Really? [Via Beervana]

Will your Coke taste better in a specially designed $20 Riedel glass? Looks like it would also hold beer. [Via LA Times]

Artisanal toast. Bread jumps the shark. [Via Pacific Standard]

About the movement in Craft Beer Movement

BOOK REVIEW: “The Unbearable Nonsense of Craft Beer”

Is the “craft beer movement” a social movement, a political movement, an aesthetic movement, any sort of movement?

Tom Acitelli uses the term, or simply the movement, on more than a third of the pages in “The Audacity of Hops.” He does not categorize this movement, and that probably illustrates how the words “craft beer movement” have become an entity unto themselves. Only a couple of months ago, the Detroit Free Press suggested “Pride, personal experience help define the craft-beer movement” without explaining what makes it a movement.

Within the context of “The Audacity of Hops” the implication would be that Acitelli is discussing a social movement. The publisher states, “This book not only tells the stories of the major figures and businesses within the movement, but is also ties in the movement with larger American culinary developments.” And Acitelli certainly links craft beer and Slow Food, often itself described as a movement and even defined by Wikipedia as a social movement.

(The lengthy Wikipedia list also includes the civil rights movement, right to life, Tea Party movement, Ku Klux Klan, and Health at Every Size. In the end, what constitutes a “social movement” is less clear than finding a definition for “craft beer” and we know what folly that is. Academics have laid entire forests to waste simply theorizing on the life cycles of social movements. If there is such a thing as a craft beer movement, social or not, it would be interesting to determine where it might be in its life cycle. Another day.)

I’m pretty sure that Max Bahnson and Alan McLeod would not label it a social movement. In fact, perhaps they should rename the eighth chapter “The Unbearable Nonsense of Craft Beer – A Rant in Nine Acts.” Instead of calling it “Evangelism, Movement and Community” they might have chosen “Evangelism and the Myth of Movement or Community.”

A quick explanation is probably in order. “The Unbearable Nonsense” is a work of fiction, science fiction really and not at all like Evan Rail’s “Triplebock: Three Beer Stories.” Rail’s stories are about fictional characters who, through their actions and the dialogue, eventually reveal truths about themselves and beer, perhaps about ourselves and our relationship with beer. Banhson and McLeod are simply Max and Alan throughout the book, time and space traveling into fictional setting, but talking just like the guys who write their blogs.

Each chapter, as the title promises, provides a platform for them to rant. In Chapter 8 they basically kidnap a guy variously known as Lanky Geek, Lank Geekston and LG, a not particularly adept beer evangelist. He doesn’t stand a chance. They describe him as trying to “keep his grip on the myth.” It is Alan who tells him:

Supporting and promoting what you like is a nice thing to do. Sharing it with friends even better. We all do that… But taking it as a mission, as a responsibility? That just ain’t right. Believing that you, a consumer, are part of a movement that involves producers; that ain’t right either. You’ve been lied, duped. You’ve been disingenuously made believe that you and a group of brewers share a common interest. You don’t. In fact, your interest couldn’t be any more different from theirs.

Alan continues to pile it on, then Max resumes. Eventually, “The lanky guy nodded but kept his thoughts to himself.”

I wish he hadn’t. I wish he’d suggested that at some/many/most post industrial breweries those paid the most make only a reasonable multiple of those at the bottom of the salary ladder, compared to an obscene multiples CEOs enjoy at many large corporations. That would imply such breweries are part of a social movement. Or he might have pointed out that the producers genuinely enjoy the taste of the beers they make, just as the customers who buy them must (or they wouldn’t be buying them). So perhaps an aesthetic movement.

Do I know these things to be true? I’d like somebody (else) to do the research. I wouldn’t suggest it, however, if there weren’t anecdotal evidence.

That “The Unbearable Nonsense of Craft Beer” provokes such thinking beyond the words on the screen is a good thing, but I’m not certain what sort of audience this Kindle book (a Lulu version is in the works) will reach. It is one thing to kidnap a Lank Geekston and another to expect him to pay for a series of one-sided rants that will mostly piss him off. He’s not as likely to be entertained as those who regularly read A Good Beer Blog and Pivní Filosof – Beer Philosopher or consider this alternative view.

(And to be honest, even those who agree with the authors may not always be entertained. The word “rant” in the title is perfectly accurate so there is some rambling, and the language R-rated.)

But, geez, it costs just $3.99, less than a pint at happy hour. I only hesitated to hit download when I considered what other sorts of science fiction Amazon might recommend for me based on this purchase.