Last week Alan McLeod celebrated the arrival of Brewery History, No. 139 in his mail, because he already knew he’d find plenty of ideas inside. Sure enough, the mini-book immediately provoked a post. Don’t worry, there are plenty of ideas left, which is why every beer blogger should buy a copy (ordering information here). Not just for the post fodder, but because it is packed with essential beer journalism history.
I’m going to try to wait to mine it for blog posts until everybody gets their own copy, reads it through and perhaps quotes from it. It won’t be all that easy. I’m ready and rarin’ to riff on Zak Avery’s discourse on “A taste of beer,” as well as what Mark Dredge wrote about beer writing and new media.
And I particularly like J.R. Richards’ memories about time on the road with Jackson in his final years, a period when we (at least I) saw a lot less of him in the United States. It made me think of the tribute Martyn Cornell posted immediately after Jackson died.
It is Cornell’s discussion of Jackson and style that caught McLeod’s attention. As almost every time the S word comes up much discussion followed.
It made me haul out the the transcript of a wide-ranging conversation Jackson had with three New Mexico homebrewers in 1990, when they drove him from brewery to brewery and he collected information to update his Pocket Guide to Beer. (We didn’t live in New Mexico yet, but I ended up with the tapes.)
At one point Jackson said:
“It’s important that styles are defined. If styles aren’t defined you finish up once again with all beer tasting the same pretty much because a brewer . . . I mean Coors makes a nice Winterfest beer and they call it a stout beer in their adverting. That’s just confusing, you know, it’s not a stout, it’s sort of a festival style Vienna lager. If some terminology is not agreed upon in a beer or two, I mean if that terminology doesn’t mean something specific we just finish up with a confusion and blurring and in the end all beer tasting very similar once again. If it’s golden you call it a pilsner whether it’s hoppy or not. You decide everyone else is calling their beer pilsner so you’ll call your a Dortmunder even though there’s no difference.”
And almost as if he was acknowledging Stephen Beaumont’s comment 20 years before it was posted, he said, “It’s difficult how do you retain the integrity of styles without putting them into corsets essentially.”
Lots to think about. And, by the way, you don’t have to be a beer blogger to enjoy that little book full of ideas.
Great quotes by both Jackson and Beaumont — and to add to Stephen’s query (as many a beer geek may counter to Jackson), how do you stop evolution?
While I appreciate Stephen’s perspective, I’m more inclined to fall in line with Michael; if it’s not a Stout, don’t call it one.
In the last century, I visited a small village in Georgia. For all I knew, it could have been called Brigadoon. The owner/manager of the hotel in the village, where I was staying, recommended a small cafe run by two black women. This was interesting because the reception counter at the hotel featured brochures about the local tourist attractions and the John Birch Society (look it up if you don’t know).
When I got to the cafe, one of the women said they had chicken that evening (there was no menu). I asked her how they made it (IOW, which style). She cheerfully replied: “Most people say we make it pretty good.”
I’d like to walk into a US brewpub or brewery and get that kind of answer.
Mike, I’ve heard that answer more than once . . . although it hasn’t always turned out to be true.
Stan, that’s exactly why I’m against the “craft beer” appellation.
with you Mike, craft beer can just mean “I have a small brewery” was just in NZ last week where I visited 2 “craft breweries”. One was awesome, the other not (wont name them here but they are on my blog) but they were both craft breweries. Kind of like saying they were both red cars, tru but not very helpful.
Think I might need to get this book though
Mike – Craft beer definitely would not work as an appellation.
Well, it’s great to see so many independent thinkers here. Speaking of which, who needs beer styles?
Mike – home brewers who enter comps, thats who
Fair enough, Darren, but let’s take that a step or two further: 1. who needs home brewers competitions? and 2. who says home brewer competitions can only be judged by style?
If home brewers belonged to a secret society and kept all that style stuff secret, I wouldn’t mind so much. But that nonsense has leaked into the open and now, it seems, almost every teen-aged kid is into “beer styles” the way, in past generations, they were into cars, stereos and computer games.
Agreed
woa Mike, I’m not saying I live by the beer styles, they are needed for the comps just the same as any other comp needs rules (i.e. you cant enter a great dane in a poodle comp). Beer is beer, good bad or otherwise, but I havent met these “kids” that prefer beer styles to cars and girls etc. that would be a sad state indeed. Dont get too hung up on it though.
Oh and no one needs homebrew comps, but we dont need football on a Saturday either, but I enjoy that a whole lot.
Darren, I also see no need for competition by home brewers. (And I do not see how you can relate that to either a dog show or professional sports.) Why, instead of competitions, don’t these clubs have workshops, for example? Why are competitions based solely on adherence to “style”, which, if they are using, for example, the BJCP, much of the foreign beer “styles” are more or less fiction? By stressing copying, rather than creativity or even “craft”, the US, for example, probably now produces more “Belgian-style” beers than Belgium.
As far as the kids (and I use the term loosely as I have seen guys in their 20s do this), I have witnessed this myself. One time, unfortunately (for them), they chose to do this (explain the history of a beer style to us poor civilians) in the presence of someone who has made a hobby of studying this.
I didn’t say they “prefer” styles to cars or girls, rather each was the subject of obsession by a different generation.
But, in any case, other than home brewing competitions, I don’t think we are that far apart.
I do like Brewery History, but they didn’t cast a very wide net in selecting some of the beer bloggers to write for that issue. I saw some of those bloggers admit to not even having read Michael Jackson until after they started beer-writing or even one who starting enjoying beer AFTER he died. Seems a pretty bizarre world when those are the people selected to write about his effect.
The conversation you mentioned there, for example, sounds fascinating and I would love read more about it, especially given how relevant his opinions still are to this day.