Category: BeerAdvocate Mag

Thinking Small: Sessionistas Fight To Redefine American Beer Culture…

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It’s David versus Goliath, only in liquid form. Often framed as extreme versus session beer, two sides of the coin, mortal enemies fighting a cage match for consumer attention, the debate over beer alcohol levels is playing out in barrooms and liquor stores from San Diego to Boston. The narrative often involves a clash of drinking cultures, with brash upstarts promoting hop bombs and barrel aged beer mammoths while a few quiet warriors work to promote a new world order of beer, filled with three and four percent alcohol ales and lagers.

On its face, the comparison of big and small beers offers an attractive dichotomy, a true exercise in contrasts. And after pumping the extreme beer balloon to its swollen limit, the mainstream media now stands ready to burst the engorged alcohol behemoth in favor of the next big (or little) thing. With articles promoting the trend-worthiness of lower alcohol beers splashing across Advertising Age and the New York Times, it’s easy to get swept up in the rah-rah spirit behind the session beer movement. Experience, however, suggests that it’s going to be a while before Americans toss aside their regular IPA’s and stouts and openly embrace the idea of lower alcohol beer.

In choosing the ‘session’ banner, American promoters have knowingly wedded themselves to a beer culture that is entirely foreign to this country. The British concept of session drinking involves the consumption of many rounds of lower alcohol beer over an extended period, say five or six beers after work. In adopting the session moniker as opposed to simply calling their efforts a campaign for lower-alcohol beers, these brewers face target consumers who are not given to long stints in the pub or hours of uninterrupted drinking. Our drinking culture is goal oriented: have a beer to accompany a meal or fill a short window of time after work and before a commute. Most drinkers don’t sit around and have a half-dozen beers before heading home and with craft beer prices in many markets approaching $7, 8 or even $10 a pour, regular ‘sessions’ would be bankrupting.

Beyond incompatible consumption levels, transferring the concept of session beer to the United States has hit other hurdles. Born in the pubs of England, even hard core sessionistas have a difficult time actually defining what they mean by session drinking. Is 4.5 ABV session worthy or must it be 3.5 or lower? Often obsessed with the numbers, the side of session beer that promotes balance and flavor harmony is lost in the process. Belaboring such beer minutiae escapes or disinterests most drinkers. With a history punctuated with terms of government enforced moderation and prohibition, Americans have a difficult time relating to such beer confines. Most American drinkers don’t have experience in purposely selecting lower alcohol products in order to sustain a lengthier drinking session and have simply viewed alcohol as a means to a socially lubricating end.

The state of our beer culture is influenced by our purveyors and producers. Local drinking establishments don’t put a premium on courting the session drinker. Whether based in concerns related to promoting over-consumption or sheer laziness, most bars don’t list the alcohol levels in the beers they serve unless mandated by law. The consumer looking to undertake a true session is left asking the busy bartender about lower alcohol options or doing their own advanced legwork. For their part, American brewers have also not focused much attention on producing low enough alcohol beers to provide a sufficiently sizable point of differentiation from other brands.

Despite recent headlines, American beer culture has a long way to go before lower alcohol drinking gains a true foothold. We have adopted a totally different world view from that of the British session beer experience, which simply isn’t transferable to or in tune with our local beer and drinking culture. To be sure, promoting lower alcohol yet flavorful beer options is a worthy mission. But calling it session beer in the United States is a little like calling three tables in a restaurant back alley a German beer garden.

-Article appeared in Issue 53 of BeerAdvocate Magazine.

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The Good Old Days of Craft Beer…

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A new era of craft beer is dawning before our very eyes. While craft brewers celebrated continuing good fortune at their annual conference in San Francisco, brewery owners, executives, and accountants in St. Louis, Chicago, and Belgium were putting the finishing touches on a deal that would send shock waves through the beer industry. Whether you think the headline should be “The Killing of the Golden Goose” or “A-B InBev Signal Defeat,” we can all be sure that things won’t ever be the same again for craft beer.

Passionate enthusiasts often have a difficult time accepting that, at its core, craft beer is a business. While the community aspect of craft beer is a wonderfully inviting quality, brewers ultimately run their operations, not as non-profit beer funhouses, but as companies with bills to be paid. Brewing remains an incredibly capital intensive business and one grows more expensive as the industry’s production numbers continue to explode.

Two years ago, I warned in these pages that the expanding reach of small craft brewers into far-flung regions of the United States was not sustainable. While beer lovers from Indiana to Rhode Island were understandably elated at the chance to sample beers from Dogfish Head, Great Divide, and the Shelton Brothers’ international portfolio, few appreciated what such an incredible selection actually signified for the industry.

Sending a few pallets of beer far from home to little known distributors in distant states was easy money. As local demand continued to soar and popular beers ran short in key markets, many craft brewers were left with the disheartening but necessary prospect of pissing off a lot of newfound fans in these remote states. And while Three Floyds and Dogfish Head may be the biggest names in the market withdrawal game, it’s time to brace yourself for the inevitability that many of your favorite brands will eventually have to pack up and move back home, leaving you with nothing but distant memories of hops and malt and a taste for the past.

I know it’s not a popular view, but the Great Beer Retreat is actually going to be good for the industry. We are entering a new era of craft beer, one in which selection around the country may shrink but where local beer will grow increasingly strong and entrenched roots. And that is exactly what craft brewers need to compete in the cutthroat world of beer.

This kind of strategic retreat is a sign of strength and not weakness for craft beer. Look no further than New Glarus Brewing of Wisconsin for reassurance of this point. Founded in 1993, the brewery grew steadily, expanded into neighboring Illinois and even sent some of its specialty releases to a few other states, including Massachusetts. By 2002, the brewery decided to exclusively focus on its home market. Nearly a decade later, New Glarus still only distributes beer in one state and it’s grown to become one of the nation’s biggest craft brewers.

While we’ve been blessed, perhaps even spoiled, with unbelievable selection, consumers should actually appreciate losing a few brands. Dedication to local markets will define the next generation of craft beer, which will result in lower shipping costs, fresher beer, more direct attention from the brewery and its staff, and deeper and stronger distributor relationships. So while disappointment is understandable, craft beer will be better for it.

One brewer recently told me that these are the good old days. And indeed that’s true. Unless you live in major cities on the Eastern Seaboard, change is coming for you. Craft beer will never be the same again so enjoy this golden era. Even with the inevitable advance of major change, one thing remains clear: great, local craft beer isn’t going anywhere.

-Article appeared in Issue 51 of BeerAdvocate Magazine.

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Boring Beer Must Die…

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With slowly creeping hop levels and increasingly complex degrees of barrel aging, the very definition of beer has evolved if not mutated into some improbable beast of flavor and fancy in recent years. But this era of spiraling expressionism has led to the rather unfortunate development of a new, particularly pernicious kind of beer snobbery.

The archetypal articulation of this newfound contempt rests in the wholesale dismissal of classic and traditional styles of beer. From all corners of the beer world, a mantra grows more familiar by the day: out with the old, in with the new. Recently, one well-regarded American brewer advised his comrades and aspiring brewers that “[t]he world doesn’t need another world-class Kölsch or a world-class pale ale. The world needs more innovative beer.”

In my opinion, I believe such views couldn’t be more off-base. I believe that better Kölsch beers, pale ales, pilseners, and other classic styles are exactly what the craft beer industry desperately needs. For a long time I thought of craft beer as representing a 10-80-10 ratio: 10-percent of the available beers were world-class, 10-percent were terrible, and the overwhelming bulk represented varying quality degrees. After more reflection and perhaps a maturing of both palate and mind, I think I overestimated the number of truly world-class beers. In the course of a year, I have to admit that perhaps only a dozen beers really capture my attention. These beers don’t usually dazzle me with the now ubiquitous shock and awe campaign of power and strength. On the contrary, the beers that impress me tend to involve mind-blowing simplicity and subtle but characterful flavors.

In contrast to the prevailing view, I think we need less focus on innovation and more concentration on brewing less boring beers. In many breweries and brewpubs around the country, a malaise of beer tedium has settled over the taps. Caught in a paradigm straight out of the early 1990s, where even the blandest craft beer offering stood as a shining ray of hope compared to the monotonous macro beers, these brewers never bothered to update their beers to capture more expressive qualities. Countless prosaic brown ales, ambers, hefeweizens and other styles share entirely similar, artless, and sometimes clumsy recipes. As a result, many local brewery and brewpub experiences yield a wide assortment of drinkable if uninspired and soulless beers.

As consumer tastes continue to develop, India pale ales made entirely with Cascade hops are the liquid equivalent of basic cable. Sure it’s a step up from three network stations broadcast over the air, but we now live in a radically different age. It’s time for craft beer to move past the cassette tape era. It’s time for brewers to consider new hop and malt varieties and source better ingredients. It’s time for the training wheels to come off our everyday, regular, and traditional beers. This evolution need not result in the banishment of all amber and brown ales as relics of the past. Quite to the contrary, brewers need to take a hard look at their respective portfolios and look for ways to improve their beers, whether that be adding a light smoke element to a porter or actually doing something about that shitty, knock-off Kölsch you’ve been unceremoniously brewing for years.

Just because the American craft beer industry produces a lot of beers in traditional styles doesn’t mean they’re anything near world-class in quality. While often treated as a throwaway offering here, Kölsch is an elegant and charming style whose subtle beauty is rarely if ever captured in America. Our brewers have certainly proven themselves adept at innovation and novelty. It’s time to look inward and prove a talent for the fundamentals of brewing. For existing brewers and those who follow them, know that the only shame in brewing traditional beers is doing them poorly or without care or thought.

-Article appeared in Issue 49 of BeerAdvocate Magazine.

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Another Lament On The State And Future Of Beer Writing And Blogging…

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With April will come the 50th issue of BeerAdvocate Magazine. Quite a feat for any publication but especially one in the notoriously fickle niche of beer. Over the last decade, we’ve seen beer magazines come and go, some glossy, some very basic. The market remains a difficult place for beer publications (and at least one glossy magazine is currently teetering on the edge of calling it a day), which makes the BeerAdvocate model such an impressive feat. And more good things are set to come, with a substantial expansion of editorial pages planned, something that is nearly unheard of in print publishing these days.

For BA’s 50th issue anniversary, I had originally intended to write about the state of beer writing in the United States but, as often happens, I became sidetracked into a different but related topic area. As the topic corresponded in part to the state and nature of this blog, I figured this was as good a place as any to offer the thoughts.

I often find myself reading books by wine, spirits, and food writers. I have collected hundreds of them and browse a few every month to see how the other half lives, works, and writes. And in truth, despite receiving subscriptions to many of the beer magazines, I rarely do more than quickly flip through them. This is because most of what passes for beer writing in the United States revolves around simply giving the writer’s personal views of a product. Perhaps I am a particular type of media consumer, as I have suggested before, but others’ views of beer at the micro level do not interest me in the slightest. I just don’t have a need for the 1,000th review of Boston Lager or even the 5th review of the latest White Birch offering.

The other type of beer content that we often see, both on-line and especially in the so-called beer rags (Celebrator, Ale Street News, and the bi-monthly Brew Newspapers), is the announcement of upcoming beer releases and events. These offerings aren’t so much writing as calendar additions and press releases set to full sentences. These serve the purpose of alerting consumers, whether they be simple craft beer enthusiasts or more likely beer tickers, to the upcoming availability of a seasonal or special release. It appears that such content, which I’m not sure can properly be classified as beer writing, is growing in popularity (or at least volume) on the web. Too often such announcements simply turn into another episode of “Pining for Pliny” and celebrating rarity for its own sake. In the sub-culture of beer nerds, such content definitely has a place. Again, I’m just not interested in it.

To be fair, product reviews and announcements also constitute a marked portion of wine writing (but oddly not of spirits writing), yet the medium has somehow evolved beyond the limitations of the review and invited a broader investment of time, circumspection, and perspective. The world of wine especially has invited writers, both enthusiasts and professional, to develop their own voices. In the world of beer writing, there is far too little opinion offered (and I don’t mean regarding a particular product’s body or aroma), especially backed by any experience or individual voice. The world of wine writing offers this in spades and captures a great deal more of my reading time even though I probably drink fewer than a half-dozen glasses of wine in the course of a year. I don’t particularly enjoy wine but I have become surprisingly conversant in varietals, producers, and debates over various issues in the industry due to the breadth and quality of wine writing.

A few months ago I got into a fair amount of trouble for some comments I made on the subject and exercise of blogging about beer. And while I had intended the comments to relate to my own experience in the medium and not so much to that of non-professional writers, it struck a particular nerve with these bloggers. Over the last few months I have attempted to spend more time reviewing the work of citizen beer bloggers. The result, sadly, is not a more profound understanding of the medium but a reinforced confidence and parallel to my views on beer writing as a whole. I’ve simply not come across many unique or distinctive voices in this new online community of writers. It tends to be more of the same sort of repetitive and highly personalized content experienced in the wider market of beer writing available to consumers.

With this said, I should highlight a few writers whose sites offer something a little different from the usual beer content.

I have long respected the increasingly professional work of Ron Pattinson over at Shut Up About Barclay Perkins. If you enjoy reading about beer history, politics, and a lot of old, insider numbers, his site is well worth the time spent digging in to each subject.

I also think that many writers need to take off the beer blinders directing their focus solely to product reviews, the white noise of beer writing. The bottles, cans, and pints we enjoy came from a place run by actual people, but you wouldn’t know it by the writing about the beers. One area in which wine writing (both online and in print) puts beer writing to shame is in its avowed dedication to providing the narratives and back-stories of the vintners, growers, and owners behind the wines. We rarely do this in the world of beer, instead preferring to name-check celebrity brewers or re-interview the ten most familiar names.

This is an area where citizen beer bloggers really have the opportunity to shine and provide a service to the industry they cover/write about/lavish praise over every day. I read every brewer, brewery owner, or publican interview that I come across on the web because I want to get to know the people behind the brands and places whose names I see in press releases, tweets, or on Facebook. For those bloggers who do not have a background in writing or journalism, personality profiles provide the easiest way to get your foot in the door and to develop the skills necessary to provide a beneficial service to your readers. And while brewers may not always be used to telling their stories, they are a near-uniformly friendly lot and would be foolish to turn down any chance to publicize themselves, their brands, and establishments, even to new writers.

The folks at The Full Pint do this well in their Brewmaster Spotlight as does Drink Craft Beer in its Interview section. I wish these sites did more of this type of content. Another creative (and effective promotional) interviewing tactic is the Beer Wench’s Beer Blogger Interview series. People want to read about other people, not just products they don’t have in front of them and may not be able to buy.

For those content to simply regurgitate press releases and new product announcements, I’d suggest looking at the model being developed over at BeerNews.org. If this guy ever figures out what he actually wants to do, I think we could see some exciting things there.

I’ve also enjoyed some quirky blogs, including one dedicated to understanding the science of beer flavor. Appreciating the underlying foundation of beer and flavor is always a challenging and worthwhile pursuit for the dedicated beer enthusiast.

I also continue to worry about the creep of advertorial beer writing. There are now dozens of sites across the Internet that somehow manage to convince breweries to pay to have the site’s owners review their beers. While I have long decried this practice, craft breweries, in some apparent desperation for attention, seem to be supporting this unfortunate beer shill business model.

I remember being genuinely excited when I first experienced the RSS beer heaven that was Real Simple Beer Syndication. Confronted with hundreds of beer blog entries every day, I thought for sure that some distinctive voices would result. Over the years, I find myself coming back to the professional beer writing set (not that its members are all top-notch either) for readable content. Perhaps the retread nature of so much beer writing was initially necessary as beer writing established itself. For whatever reason, the wine world has also long attracted talented writers of literature and non-fiction, daring to try and capture their passion for the grape in a new writing form. But more than 30 years into craft beer movement, the industry is still sorely lacking such commensurate writing talent.

I’ve also lamented that people covering the beer industry, like Minnesotans and clothing store clerks, never deign to offer a critical or constructive word to those around them. Beer writing is often one long, seemingly endless love song to craft brewers despite some obvious age spots appearing in the mirror. Beer writers, especially citizen bloggers, shouldn’t hesitate to fill this void with their own viewpoints, when supported in their content.

It’s time for beer writers (both professional and enthusiasts) to take the training wheels off their pens, pencils, and keyboards. It seems that we have all been content to merely step in the footprints left by the pioneering beer writers, especially Michael Jackson, despite the entirely new world of beer that we inhabit. I am hoping to witness a new era of beer writing because, in part, I believe that it is essential to the broader growth of the beer industry. When done right, such writing should serve as a catalyst for the growth of the industry, both philosophically and production-wise.

I remain thankful for the opportunity to contribute to a publication such as BeerAdvocate Magazine, where dissenting opinions are tolerated if not encouraged. And I hope to continue to offer a hopefully different and distinct perspective to the world of beer.

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Becoming A Beer Critic…

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Lovers of craft beer are a passionate bunch. They heap praise and adulation on their favorite brewers, cheering each new release at events, beer fests, and on the Internet. Novelty is often their call to arms, scarcity making the game even a little more fun. But dare to raise a question about a favored brewery’s latest beer or the quality of a particular brewpub’s lineup and prepare to witness passion turn quickly to fury.

From its earliest days, better beer in America has suffered from a certain inferiority complex, resulting in serious territorialism for its followers. After generations of sameness lulled consumers into a deep-seated distrust of anything not light-golden hued and simple in character, cracks began showing in the collective beer drinking foundation. A slow pool of better beer fans trickled forth and with a zeal usually limited to witness protection programs, each new convert shed the skins of their former beer drinking identities, never to speak of their previous lives as macro drinkers. A sub-set of this new generation of better beer drinkers eventually catalyzed into a group fiercely loyal to their heralded beverage.

In writing about craft brewing for the last decade, I’ve been fortunate enough to sample the world’s best beers, often in their hometowns with the brewers by my side. And while my passion for great beer remains as strong as the day I first realized the difference between Guinness and an American-brewed foreign export stout, I’ve also tasted some less than stellar beers and encountered some unfortunate craft beer environments.

When I write about these experiences in magazine articles, in my books, or on-line, I frequently catch hell from the better beer rah-rah set. They frequently tell me that I’m being disloyal, doing a disservice to the cause, and that I should focus on the positive. They worry that my words of criticism will somehow hurt craft brewers overall as opposed to encouraging under-performers to improve their operations. And I can understand if not accept their concern. My job as a writer, however, is not to act as a craft beer cheerleader. A certain critical eye comes with the work of informing people where their money and time is best spent.

Beyond journalists, I also believe that developing a healthy skepticism among consumers wouldn’t be such a bad thing. Frankly, the craft beer industry is tough enough to handle a little criticism. While brewers, beer bar owners, and other industry players often bristle when hearing anything besides glowing praise, beer is better for the constructive words offered. Take freshness dating as an easy example. Many large brewers continue to ignore the interests of consumers by failing to code date their packaging, leaving would-be buyers with moments of uncertainty and hesitation before reaching for their next six-pack. The occasional situation of stale beer could be substantially remedied if more consumers complained to the offending brewers.

Developing a point of view or perspective is an important step in the maturation process of any craft beer drinker. Most consumers start by thinking that all beer tastes the same before one beer shatters that resilient myth. From there, we tend to focus on a single flavor set, be it malty ambers, roasted porters, or hoppy pale ales. Breaking free from that flavor hegemony takes us from adolescence to our teenage years. The true next stride to adulthood, in my mind, comes with the ability to think critically about the beers you taste and to take stock of craft beer as a broader concept.

As a beer writer, I love to try new beers, meet passionate brewers, and clink pints with fellow enthusiasts. But I also take seriously my role in helping to encourage the progress of craft beer, in all manners of speaking. Whether it’s telling a brewer when a beer tastes off or asking for more session beers at your pub, I think consumers who’ve achieved true craft beer consciousness should help their favored drink move forward.

–Article appeared in Issue 47 of BeerAdvocate Magazine.

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