I recently gave a tour to some young (well younger than me)
people who were in the craft brewing industry. You learn a lot from speaking to
them. You learn what people on the cutting edge of brewing fashion believe. I
loved their passion and their interest in beer. Ten years ago style-conscious
people would have dismissed beer brewed on a small scale as something their dad
likes so it’s great that they are enthralled to “craft”. I didn’t expect to
find people with such a limited experience of beer with quite such certainty
about what was right and wrong and what was delicious and disgusting. A lot of
what they believe was true but a lot of the technical facts were demonstrably
incorrect. I learned that dried yeast was better than a managed liquid stock
taken through several generations. I learned that whole hops gave inferior
flavour and lead to off notes in beer because their flavour and bitterness were
less stable in beer than that of pellet hops. I learned that breweries making
less than 10,000hl per year are charitable organisations that only make beer to
give people a better life and that I am only in brewing for the money using the
word craft to con people.
All of this is
news to me and rather flies in the face of the knowledge I have gained from my
20 years of life in beer and brewing.
My tip for any aspiring beer aficionado either in brewing or
beer appreciation is to maintain an open mind and a palate receptive to all
kinds of beer. If you like it, it’s good if you don’t it’s not. Don’t feel ashamed
for liking a beer not favoured by the ironic haircut brigade. It was probably
brewed to taste nice rather than to prove a point, rebel against something or
break a record.
Don’t believe what brewery promotional information says when
it’s selling an aspect of the beer’s production as vital for making great beer
unless you have tried the same beer made in a different way. Breweries use
their point of difference as a selling point. It may be what they think makes
their beer good but it won’t automatically be a prerequisite for quality. Often
with small breweries it will be the only option (dried yeast).
Don’t separate beer from commerce unless it’s homebrew. No
brewery can expect to give their beer away and still be brewing a year later.
And you need marketing up to a Brewdog standard to get away with charging more
for beer than it’s worth. There are an increasing number of breweries who are
suggesting that they are rebelling against “the industry” or “commercial”
breweries as if there is something inherently wrong with brewing beer above a
few hundred barrels a year, labelling everything that they and their mates
don’t brew as mass-produced crap. Some may sincerely but misguidedly believe it
but some are publically maligning other breweries in order to further their
commercial interests. Anyone who cares about beer should find this
objectionable. I find it hard to believe that these rebellious ”punk” breweries
would torch their brewhouses if their sales grew to the point where they needed
to employ a sales manager or a company accountant.
I don’t have anything against those who believe the punk
brewing fallacy. I’m just disappointed that the wider brewing industry hasn’t
been able to give them a balanced view based on reality.
I know, I’ve said all this before. It’s just that I think it
needs saying. By all means drink with a critical palate but base this on an
open mind and an understanding of beer and brewing which goes beyond hype,
rhetoric and fashion.