This weekend seems to be quiet on the North American beer blogging scene, perhaps with good reason - and a reason beyond the change in weather that saw a blizzard move though a week ago and the low 20's C here at the east end of Lake Ontario that might drive any sensible person away from the computer. The annual Craft Brewers Conference is on in Austin, Texas and many of the pro beer writers (a category not in a way unlike pro bass fishermen) are there. Many are attending including Jay who is posting from the heart of continental fine brewing.
It makes me think, this Saturday night, about the place of me and he. You see, I am not there. He is. And, just as much as he ought to be there, I shouldn't be - however pleasant the company would be, however attractive the scene. If I am anything, I am only the sound of one beer being sipped: one a day, day after day, week after week. That is only how this particular art is received. I only have met a few of the people who brew this craft beer we love and even fewer of those who write about the brewing and the drinking of the craft beer we love. So, if I could be with anyone, it is not really those folk I want to first be with. I am more interested in who is Stonch, Knut and Donavan and our ilk: those who open and then experience what others have created.
I think of we happy few from time to time, we writing beer fans, and I think of us not as part of the trade. We are not so much as the target in the market sense but, really, as ultimately the fundamental point of it all. We are the audience before whom the play is played out. The people who think not so much of how to fill the glass but are necessarily there to experience and judge the correct emptying of it. I may be a fan but I am also the guy with the opener.
The more I think about it, the more I think we are all at the Quinte Hotel, the sensitive ones aware that there are flowers in the glass.
Comments
Stan Hieronymus - April 22, 2007 3:47 PM
Alan,
I was at the same table with Jay for the closing banquet last night and there was an empty chair you could have had.
It reinforced what I saw scores of times over four days: "those who open and then experience what others have created" include brewers themselves.
To me that certainly is one of the attractions of writing about brewers.
Alan - April 22, 2007 9:10 PM
While I am inordinately against gurus, it is not that I am not uninterested in brewers but it is such a luxury in that few beer drinkers will have a real relationship with brewers. While we can generally spot an uninventive, boring or lazy brewer, we do not really know them through their works. We only learn of the works themselves. The interesting thing about beer - and perhaps distinct from any other craft or art - is that the act of individual personal consumption <i>is</i> when the craft is realized. But as you say, perhaps among the most intelligent of consumers are the best of the brewers themselves.
Stonch - April 23, 2007 5:39 AM
Perhaps we need a beer blogger convention some day?
Alan - April 23, 2007 12:01 PM
That would be fun but, like transporting beer, expensive. Like the Big Brew held by the US homebrewers organization, however, there could be a linked event. I have a circle of beer lovers here and I suspect you do too. There could be hubs of activity that are linked through a website reporting back on the global convention taking place everywhere, right where each person lives.
Donavan - April 23, 2007 12:30 PM
I don't have a consistent approach to writing about beer, but for the most part I tend to go in quietly and keep a low profile and write about the beer/brewery/pub from the perspective of the guy in the street. There are a few exception because I can't avoid meeting brewers indefinitely. I expect that "being known to the brewer" is an occupational hazard of being an amateur beer writer, but that's certainly not why I write about beer.
By contrast I recall that Pete Brown managed to score interviews and special tours on just about every continent in Three Sheats. He still managed to capture the everyman experience, but covered the insider angle also.
I'm sure a beer blogger conference could be piggy-backed as a special session during one of the bigger events. I'd be game for any model. One way to do it cheap would be to desinate a hotel/lodge/B&B etc near a staged festival. Meet-up, do the festival, then have a blogger BS session back at the hotel/lodge/B&B.
Stan Hieronymus - April 23, 2007 9:14 PM
Stonch - At the Jerusalem, right?
Alan - April 23, 2007 10:25 PM
Now <i>that</i> would be good. How do we get sponsors to pay for the flights?
Donavan Hall - April 23, 2007 11:12 PM
New York to London is fairly cheap. I'm there. What's the date?
Stonch - April 24, 2007 4:54 AM
Yes Stan, there's a back room at the Jerusalem that would do the trick nicely ;-)
I hear NYC gets nice in Spring though...
Stan Hieronymus - April 24, 2007 11:08 AM
Stonch - I checked out the back room last year. It doesn't take long to see the whole pub ;>)
Donavan - Albuquerque to London costs a little more :<(
Besides, I can tell that Stonch is itching to try American beer.
Alan - April 24, 2007 11:42 AM
We need an IT solution even if we bring Stonch over on a beer tour of the USA.
Knut Albert - April 26, 2007 6:18 AM
Thanks for the thoughtful words, Alan. I tend to do as Donavan, go in quietly and be someone just off the street. But sometimes I e-mail a micro brewery and interact a bit more, and sometimes I get chatting if I turn up on a quiet afternoon and the guy behind the bar sees me taking notes. The micro brewers here in Norway know my name (and some my face), and there is the occational sample or t-shirt coming my way. I have a special relationship with the Panil brwery in Italy, but that's about it. I pester some importers/distributors here in Norway, but they probably think I am more of a nuicance!
I am active in the forums at ratebeer, which is fan based. Some of us have tastings after hauling home rarities from around the globe, and it also a network where you can find someone to have a pint with when you are travelling.
What I like with beer blogging is that I can be enthusiastic (most of the time), but I can also write pieces putting down what I feel are stupid moves in the beer world. The destruciton of the legacy of Young's of London, for excample. If I did this for a living, I would have to be more polite. Nor to craft producers who don't get their products right. But to Diago, Carlsberg, Heineken and the other members of the Axis of Lager.
I get feedback from (small) brewers. They google their beers and find my blog. I enjoy that.