{"id":15911,"date":"2020-03-02T07:29:15","date_gmt":"2020-03-02T13:29:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/?p=15911"},"modified":"2020-03-02T07:29:15","modified_gmt":"2020-03-02T13:29:15","slug":"how-much-do-we-need-to-know-about-beer-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/how-much-do-we-need-to-know-about-beer-history\/","title":{"rendered":"How much do \u2018we\u2019 need to know about beer history?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week, Jeff Alworth struck a chord when he posted a list of \u201cfive breweries every serious beer fan should visit.\u201d<\/a> Lots of interest on Twitter and Facebook. No surprise, I agree that, \u201cEven if you\u2019re just into the standard American craft lineup, your appreciation for those beers will deepen if you visit the breweries that inspired them.\u201d <\/p>\n

This got a little more complicated for me: \u201cAn insularity is settling in among American craft beer fans, and it is cutting them off from the roots of their own tradition.\u201d I agree that appreciating tradition enriches us. But I don\u2019t know that today\u2019s drinkers are any more insular than drinkers have always been. <\/p>\n

That\u2019s just an aside. Because the post turned out to be a prelude to a family of questions.<\/p>\n

By chance, the next day on the Music Exists podcast Chris Ryan and Chuck Klosterman discussed, \u201cHow much do you really need to know about music history?\u201d<\/a> Not really all that timely because they were talking about the December dustup that began when Jimmy Kimmell asked Billie Eilish to name any member Van Halen.
\n<\/p>\n

\u201cWho? No, who is that?\u201d she asked him.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m gonna start crying,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Rolling Stone<\/em> reported, \u201cThis supposed lack of knowledge kickstarted a stream of invective on the Internet by know-it-alls who did not realize or did not care that the pop star is 17 and was only 10 when Van Halen put out their last album, 2012\u2019s A Different Kind of Truth.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Give Music Exists a listen or read what Jim Sullivan wrote at the WBRU-FM<\/a> website. <\/p>\n

For decades, there\u2019s been a rock \u2018n\u2019 roll tradition of paying homage to forebears, sometimes praising them in interviews, but very often in covering their songs, bringing their music to a new generation. Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis and Roy Orbison all did songs by those who inspired them \u2014 the Big Bopper, Chuck Berry, Hank Williams and Bill Monroe . . .<\/p>\n

It’s not that Eilish doesn\u2019t have influences or won\u2019t talk about them. It\u2019s that in her short time on the planet she hasn\u2019t found it imperative to dive into the cock-rock of the \u201980s. Her father raised her on rock, from The Beatles to Green Day, but two years ago, she told Interview magazine: \u201cI realized that there was this thing called rap and hip-hop \u2026 and that\u2019s where I am now, pretty much all hip-hop mixed with old stuff and really mellow stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n

So, to answer the question, does the college of musical knowledge still exist? The answer is: Yes, but the pupils are taking different classes.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This shifts the question a bit. Sullivan is describing creators. Ryan and Klosterman do as well, but also talk about those who consider themselves knowledgeable enough in other topics to express an opinion. \u201cIf we had a teenager and a film historian talking about Quentin Tarantino then the film historian would matter more,\u201d Klosterman says. \u201cIf we had a rock historian talking about Billy Eilish the teenager’s perspective would matter more. It\u2019s the only thing like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Perhaps it is not the only thing. Perhaps milkshake IPAs and pastry stouts are like that.<\/p>\n

I am left with three questions. How much should a brewer know about history to make a particular beer? How much should a drinker know to enjoy it? How much should somebody know before expressing an opinion?<\/p>\n

Ryan and Klosterman focus on popular music, but an analogy from classical music seems to work here. Nadia Boulanger, who tutored many of the leading composers of the 20th century, always started them with Bach. When Philip Glass went to study with her in Paris he had to learn a new Bach chorale each week. Once he\u2019d mastered a chorale, a hymn based on four voices, he was instructed to add four new voices to the original four in such a way that no voice repeated another and yet the all meshed seamlessly. That\u2019s immersion.1<\/sup><\/p>\n

A pub brewer in the United States is not going to start malting barley like at Ferdinand<\/a> or smoke their own malt like at Schlenkerla, but understanding history and process likely will change the beer they make. <\/p>\n

My questions obviously overlap. Brewers may be vocal fans. The line between a consumer who is interested in learning a measured amount more and somebody more deeply immersed is not firm. But perhaps something else Klosterman says will help a drinker decide which side of it they would rather be on. \u201cIf you (really) want to know about something you have to know about the things that aren\u2019t easy,\u201d he says. <\/p>\n

1<\/sup> Marcus du Sautoy, The Creatvity Code: Art and Innovation in the Age of AI,<\/em> 174.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week, Jeff Alworth struck a chord when he posted a list of \u201cfive breweries every serious beer fan should visit.\u201d Lots of interest on Twitter and Facebook. No surprise, I agree that, \u201cEven if you\u2019re just into the standard American craft lineup, your appreciation for those beers will deepen if you visit the breweries … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15911","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-beers-of-conviction"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4wTn-48D","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15911","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15911"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15911\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15914,"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15911\/revisions\/15914"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}