Putting an End to Insults and Infighting
Words have consequences. Even if those words are as obtuse as “that’s not craft,” they can damage friendships, and that kind of thing is ripping up the American brewing industry. It’s time to consider the potential damage.
I remember a lot of nasty stuff being said about beer over my lifetime. In the early years of the 1980s, much of it centered on comparisons to some breed of animal piss and the inevitable question of, “How do you know what that tastes like?!”
Then small breweries started hitting the market, and mainstream beer drinkers taunted us for drinking “that microbrew shit” or “yuppie beer.” That was all just about being different from the herd, and the herd’s defensiveness. We were beer drinkers, but there was something not right about us.
But it was when the alternative beer market got big enough to divide against itself that things really got ugly. Contract brewing was the first big divide. If you weren’t making the beer yourself, it was no good. Brick-and-mortar brewers hung a lot out there, putting up the money and learning curve. But contract brewers jump-started the category, and they were helping to keep the older regional brewers open. I looked on that as an overall positive, but some folks loudly argued against them.
Closely related were the “fake beer companies.” That was originally leveled against the big brewers, who brewed beers “made” by new companies with different names. They were vilified as lying about their origins. The best-known survivor of that time: Blue Moon, a Coors product, but you’d never find “Coors” on the label at the time.
The practice trickled down to the newer brewers, and things got confused. In late 1994, Boston Beer developed a line called Oregon Ale & Beer, with a somewhat cloudy origin story, and the brewers of the Pacific Northwest were furious. This guy didn’t even have a brewery, and he was using their identity to sell his beer! The Oregon Brewers Guild and the Washington Small Brewers Association paid for an ad that proclaimed “Local Microbrewers Incensed at Imposter.” A lawsuit was brewing when more “pseudo-craft” beers released by Anheuser-Busch brought the small brewers to their senses. And no one seemed to recall that fanciful names like these had been a common practice in American brewing since before Prohibition.
When Blue Moon finally started selling big in the early 2000s, beer aficionados freaked out. They called it fake craft, “crafty” and worse. I just wanted them to try it in a blind tasting and see if they really hated it, or what it stood for. But argue the quality of the beer with a brewer, and it would inevitably come down to, “They’re taking the food out of my family’s mouths!” Really? More than other brewers, more than distillers?
Astonishingly, quality became divisive, notably at a 2014 speech delivered by Paul Gatza, director of the Brewers Association. “While the top end of quality continues to improve,” he said, “there are some cracks with new brewers.” That touched off an angry discussion of how sincere the BA was about supporting new, small brewers and whether this represented barrier-building on the part of established brewers.
Then there was the wave of buyouts in 2015-2017. Medium-sized, independent brewers across the country were bought by Anheuser-Busch InBev, by Constellation Brands, by Heineken. Consumers felt betrayed by formerly independent brewers and spurned the beers. Brewers boycotted events run by these brewers.
Was it related when the most ardent of consumers increasingly had no time for large, established alternative brewers? As I write this, Smuttynose is up for auction, Mendocino has closed its taproom, Speakeasy hangs on by a thread, and sales of Boston Beer are down, while there are lines at small breweries, where limited runs of beer sell out in a matter of hours. New breweries can do no wrong; old breweries are ignored.
I think it is related. People want to be different, just as we old-timers did when we stepped away from the Budweiser tap. People want new and fresh. But the market has become confusing. Breweries seem to open and close and change hands daily, ownership is nebulous, and the defense is hyperlocalism. When you walk in a small taproom tucked in the back of an industrial park, with rough furniture and a concrete floor, it’s a pretty sure thing you know who’s brewing the beer.
I’m not angry about that. I’m not actually angry about anything, for a change. I just want good beer, and honestly, I don’t care where it comes from. I like my small, local taproom. I like Sierra Nevada. I like beers from several of the “sellout” breweries.
What I don’t like is the nasty crap we’re slinging about brewers. Don’t like their beer? Then just say that and move on. Don’t insult them, and don’t insult me if we disagree. This is beer, not “death before dishonor”-level stuff. Have a couple, maybe try something old instead of something new. But leave the hate for politics.
Lew Bryson has been writing about beer for more than 25 years and is the author of Tasting Whiskey. On Twitter @LewBryson.
Very nice piece, I share each and every word. But let me connect to your comments about “just wanting to drink good beer” (which, again, I share), and I’ll try playing the role of publicans/beer-shop owners who stop buying beer from those “sellouts”. Their reasoning goes as follows: if they go under a multinational (or become global beer companies – e.g. Brewdog), they move to production or start changing the recipe of their established craft beers, or more generally the quality of the raw materials (barley malt, hops) goes down to save money and increase profits (after all, it makes sense to expect these moves by the new owners), which brings down the quality of the beer. The latter doesn’t taste the same anymore, then I don’t buy it anymore. There are so many emerging craft breweries that make a good job and need support…
So my question is: how much truth there is in this kind of statements? I believe they’re partially true: on the one hand, I also don’t believe recipes or the “love” craft beers were originally brewed with are not the same after ownership changes and there’s simply a brand name to exploit as much as possible. On the other hand, in many countries (such as Italy, where I’m from) these new ownerships allow even small bars that know nothing about craft beer and typically have one beer provider only to be furnished also with some good beers, just because they’re provided in “packages” by the multinational distributor. Also, differently from the past, when big breweries used to buy out small local breweries to kill them, now multinationals have a clear interest in keeping them alive to cover a market that they can’t reach with their industrial products. So the multinational-owner craft beer can’t go “too” bad, in order not to lose all the reputational capital they bought with acquisitions…
You bring up an argument at the center of this debate, and you clearly understand that there is no clear answer. That’s GREAT!
First, the argument that large brewers will use cheaper ingredients or cheaper processes is weak. Why would they spend millions on a brand and then immediately do something that will destroy the value of that brand? The big brewers generally buy the best malt and hops on the market, if only because they buy in such large amounts that they get a better price on them. They may use lower-quality ingredients in their discount brands, but it would make no sense for them to deliberately brew craft beers to lower quality, when they bought them because they can sell them for a higher price. However…the processes may change, if only because the equipment is different. Brewing on a 500 hectoliter brewhouse is different from brewing on a 5 hectoliter system, and sometimes the scaling will change the flavor of the beer: it’s not something they want to have happen. After all, why would they?
Are they brewed with the same “love”? Brewers generally agree that the production people at large breweries are just as passionate as craft brewers. They may be stopped from brewing any crazy beer they want by supervisors, but they make the beers the best they can.
Let me put it another way. I know a brewer who works for a company that was bought by a huge brewer. He’s worked in small breweries for over 20 years. He loves making great beer, it’s what he gets up to do every morning. He tells me that his new bosses just want him to make great beer, the same way he made it before. And why not?
Now, are there exceptions? Yes, but even then…do we have to tell people who continue to drink those beers that they are ignorant, that they are drinking bad beer? I don’t think so. As someone said on Twitter today (and I retweeted): “When someone says they are enjoying something, resist the impulse to shit on the thing they are enjoying. Life is short.”
Thanks for the thoughtful comment!