Monday beer reading: culture, culture, culture

Good morning, class. Your assignment this week is to write an essay that should include beer and culture in the title as well as one or more of these words:

Class
Luxury
Affordable
Craft
Postmodern
Postindustrial

The reading material:

– First up, last week, Boak & Bailey asked “What is a healthy beer culture?”

– During the week, Jeff Alworth posted about time in Prague, including a bit of “generalizing.” Along the way he writes, “Beer, as I’ve mentioned probably too many times, is a product of culture.” Don’t click away without reading Alistair Reece’s comment.

– This may seem like an aside, but it is a reminder that alcohol is one of the attractions of drinking beer. Alan McLeod pointed to a story about experiences at a festival where the only manufacturers featured were Ontario based craft breweries that have begun to offer non-alc or low-alc products as part of their lineup. Some differences from the traditional version, and not just the demographic (some of the patrons have hearing aids).

– Mcleod also had thoughts about list of the most overrated beer styles.

To which, Mike Kallenberger commented at Bluesky, “The take on overrated beer styles has me wondering yet again if ‘chasing trends’ hasn’t caused subtle but lasting harm to ‘craft beer brand equity’ (whatever that is) even as it spurs short-to-medium term sales.”

– Think about that while reading “After a Boom, Craft Beer Considers a New Creed: Less Is More.”

At the end, Bob Kunz at Highland Park Brewing in Los Angeles says he sees growing demand for beer served by the pitcher. “Nobody has to think about what they’re buying,” he said. “You end up having more collective experiences if you’re drinking the same beer.”

– In ”The Sum of Small Things: The Theory of the Aspirational Class” author Elizabeth Currid-Halkett introduces the concept of “conspicuous production,” which stands in contrast to “conspicuous consumption.” She writes that, “Inconspicuous consumption in other words, has become a shorthand through which the new elite signal their cultural capital to one another.”

Let’s be realistic. Had some members of what Currid-Halkett labels the new elite not embraced craft beer, stories about it would not be appearing in The New York Times. And what could be a better example inconspicuous consumption than drinking beer by the pitcher?

Alcohol. People. Beer drinkers. Connections. Beer makers.

Have I left anything out?

The photo at the top was taken at Pepi’s, a restaurant in Vail, Colorado, that serves excellent German-inspired food. That is Deschutes Fresh Haze in a half-liter glass. A crossing of cultures, it seems. FYI, a member of our traveling party ordered it. I went with a Hacker-Pschoor.