musing

Beertown 1997 & other web artifacts

The most recent The History of the Web newsletter focused on travel and the internet in 1997 (or somewhere between 1996 and 1999), which got me thinking about beer in that context at that time. What follows is certainly not the definitive history of beer on the internet, or even beer on the internet in 1997. It’s mostly an excuse to post the sketch of Beertown I remember vividly, for whatever reason.

Backing up a bit, in September 1994 All About Beer Magazine published a story headlined “Tapping the Net.” This was about the time the Netscape browser launched. Thus AABM provided, first, a primer for those who recently received an AOL CD in the mail, and second, a guide a guide to resources that remind us there was/is more to the internet than the web. Not surprisingly, I can’t link to the story because AABM didn’t begin publishing online until 1996.

(Let’s get the disclosures out of the way now. I created the first AABM website, and am properly embarrassed to revisit it. I also worked fulltime for The Real Beer Page/The Pro Brewer Page, which we’ll get to soon, from 1998 until 2003 and part time for 15 years after that.)

Because there is no AABM link, I have scanned the various lists [view the pdf here]: a guide to usenet groups, to mailing lists, to ftp sites, to bulletin boards and to a few World Wide Web pages. You’ll notice the urls are rather long. Although domain registration was free before 1995, hosting a site was another matter. It was a different time.

By 1997, a few beer sites operated out of their own domains, which makes them much easier to find using the Wayback Machine. The logos here are the size they originally appeared, although I have converted gifs to jpgs. Just another reminder the era of dial-up connections was much different. [Here’s a bit of dial-up nostalgia – be sure to turn on the sound.]

Beertown

The image is missing in this 1997 page from Beertown, the umbrella site for the National Homebrewers Association, Association of Brewers, etc. I grabbed the drawing from a 1999 page.

The Real Beer Page debuted in 1994, although it didn’t serve from its own domain until 1995. By 1997, it housed the largest collection of beer-related stuff on the internet. I use the word stuff because I’m not sure how to categorize burps (which are still around, if you know where to look.)

The Pro Brewer Page

Real Beer officially launched The Pro Brewer Page (now ProBrewer) in 1997. Lots of jobs still being found here, lots of used equipment still changing hands.

Brewing Techniques

Brewing Techniques began publishing in 1993, moved online in 1996 and ceased operations in 1999. The link is to a 1997 page.

All About Beer Magazine logo

I’ll quit showing you logos now and finish with just a few more links. As noted, All About Beer began posting content online in 1996. Here’s a front page from 1997.

The Discovery Channel created a Michael Jackson Online site in 1996, in part to support an interactive, but not really that interactive, CD it was selling. The Beer Hunter site which is still online today, although it has not been updated since he died, launched in 1998.

Finally, a couple more links from 1997: Brew Your Own magazine and Stephen Beaumont’s World of Beer, which celebrated its first birthday in 1997. That we can look at long gone posts from that second site are one more reason to support the Internet Archive. Beaumont sold (you would have, too; admit it) the domain name to the World of Beer chain of drinking establishments and a bit of history with it.

Other voices, other rooms

Mountain Toad Brewing

With apologies to Truman Capote or Nanci Griffith. Her 1993 album took its name from Capote’s novel, and is a collection of covers (and some sweet collaborations) that draw attention to artists Griffith’s fans might not be familiar with.

Jeff Alworth wrote last week about how women enrich beer, pointing to a multiple voices beer drinkers and thinkers will benefit from listening to. That they view beer as outsiders may be their super strength.

I’m currently reading an advance copy of “A Woman’s Place is in Brewhouse,” available Sept. 21, a sweeping history of women in beer by Tara Nurin. It provides context for many things I’ve read of late, including Alworth’s post, and sometimes what I read elsewhere adds context to the book.

A week ago, The Guardian posted an interview with Jeanette Winterson about her new book, “12 Bytes: How We Got Here. Where We Go Next.” Although Claire Armistead was describing Winterson’s task she could have been referring to Nurin’s: “This means writing women back into history as active contributors to the modern world, capable of imagining the future, breaking codes and solving the knottiest scientific problems.”

Why we drink
A bit of context for the “hard seltzer is dead, no it’s not” flap. “How Big Beverage poured empty promises down our throats” (from The Goods at by Vox) barely mentions beer, but you can connect the dots. Two paragraphs to consider:

– “At this cultural moment, drinking for drinking’s sake is considered a waste of time — people want their beverages to do something. As a result, we’ve created an entire category of ‘functional’ beverages that claim to have the ability to make us better in every single way, from our brains to our beauty. Beverages must play an active role in our lives, and assist us in achieving self-determined goals.”

– “Beverages have become just another way for people to signal allegiance to a certain lifestyle or to tell ourselves that we are working toward something better. But our faith in the beverage industry has mostly survived so long because we are in denial about what gives us pleasure. Instead of collectively admitting that we love drinks — on a social and emotional level that is hard to compare to anything else — we would rather fool ourselves into believing that drinks can fix us.”

On the lighter side
VinePair calls Modelo Especial the most important beer in America right now. The statement is based on metrics generally used to define success, that is sales.

But here are a couple of other numbers.

1 – That’s how many mugs (out of a possible 5) Howard Hillman gave the beer in “The Gourmet Guide to Beer” in 1983. Budweiser got two, Bud Light zero. And he wrote, “Brewed in Modelo and not so ‘especial.”

16 – The rating from James Robertson (out of a possible 100) in his “Beer-Tasters Log” (compiled during tastings across three decades. He wrote, “Tawny-gold, malt aroma; faint malt flavor that gains in strength at the finish; long dry malt after-taste.”

There’s more than one way to pay for beer

Threes Brewing in Brooklyn is accepting cryptocurrency. You know, like Bitcoin.

Compare and contrast with Scratch Brewing. You likely know the name because Marika Josephson and Aaron Kleidon have made an art out of brewing with foraged ingredients. Good beers, but the real reason people keep going back is the joy of simply being there. Not the sort of place you’d pay for a beer with digital money. In fact, if case you aren’t seeing the image below, they only take cash.

Scratch Brewing, cash only reminder

What will the chapter after the ‘craft beer era’ be called?

Beer Lovers pub, Cartagena, Colombia
Beer Lovers, a pub in Cartagena, Colombia – part of a worldwide phenomenon.

“Historians love chapter breaks. COVID-19 will come to be seen as a chapter break.”
               – Robert Kaplan, American foreign-policy expert

“All history is contemporary history.”
               – Benedetto Croce, Italian philosopher, historian

Context is everything, so I think there is value in reading these two blog posts in the same sitting. I’ll wait.

How will we understand the craft era? – from Jeff Alworth at Beervana.

An expedition into craft beer – from Sarah in Dublin, a Nashville native in Ireland.

The first is a sweeping overview, so let’s start with the second. Sarah signed up for the National Homebrew Club of Ireland’s BJCP Tasting Course and wrote about the first of six classes. The result is a delightful, breezy read from somebody who enjoys drinking beer.

Exhibit A: “I also found myself being influenced by what someone else was saying they could sense. Is this more caramel or raisin? I’m not sure. . . Oh, well, he said caramel, so obviously I can totally get that now. Of course, it all makes so much sense. What fool would say raisin? Amateurs.”

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Craft brewery exceptionalism . . . and reality

In “Craft: An Argument,” Pete Brown writes, “(Craft) isn’t just about the things we make; it’s about the kind of people we are. And for this, we get to an unspoken assumption we may be reluctant to admit even to ourselves; we believe that makers and buyers of craft products are morally superior to other people.”

When will people quit believing that?

The Kansas City Star dug deep into what has been going on for years at Boulevard Brewing for years but remained mostly secret outside the brewery doors until last week. The headline — Boulevard leaders knew of sexual harassment but didn’t stop it. ‘They were all aware’ — only hints at how bad things were.

To cut to the chase, “Sixteen former and current Boulevard employees interviewed by The Star said an intense and insular culture helped to breed a toxic workplace that is especially unsafe for women — ranging from a ‘boys’ club’ atmosphere to gender discrimination to sexual harassment and assault.”

Notice the difference as this story unfolded between when women were speaking and when men did. Patt Mullin, digital marketing director, Tuesday tweeted: “Behind almost every company crisis or controversy are a lot of innocent people within who are hurting, frustrated, trying their best to do right and just LIVE. Remember those people.”

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