What a great paragraph over at Max's place this morning:
...there's a problem. After having read much of what brewers publish on the internet I've got the impression that many of them don't seem to know too much about beer. Yes, they do know how to make beer (which is the most important thing), but take them out of the comfort of the brewhouse and they start uttering bollocks like "all our beers are brewed according to the German Purity Law of 1516" (while they make a wheat beer with oats) or introduce their new "Trappist" beer, as it such thing was a style (it isn't) or say that "Ales are like red wine, Lagers are like white wine and Lambic like Cava". They can hardly educate anyone if they don't know what they are talking about. Are we lost?
The whole post is good so take a moment and then come back.
Not that I have all that much to add but it does raise the question about the value of knowledge in a trade that is not primarily concerned with knowledge. See, we have had a large dialogue across many webby platforms - and even a bit now in the pro printed form of beer writing - that is a bit more investigatory and a little less about just praising the beloved. But it is not pervasive and will not own the discourse anymore than good beer will ever sell more than popular beer. People rightly like their beer a lot so there really is not much of a market in challenging notions or rooting around otherwise. Which is fine. Beer is a part of our societies, a form of pop culture that does not need all that much explanation or even exploration to do quite nicely, thank you very much.
Does this make us "lost"? I think Max and I agree that the answer is not really. No more lost than a casual fan of this sport or that who is unaware of the finer points of sports management and the maintenance of the physical infrastructure of arenas and sports fields. Do I really need to know which experimental strain of grass is being tested to make a better outfield to know if that fly ball to the corner should have been caught by the player who slipped on the way to try and catch it? Like the team owner and manager, I expect that someone is thinking hard about that but don't care much myself for the particulars.
Is this a slur against brewers? ATJ grapples with this in a way, too, but this morning I my answer is "hardly". I expect my interest in beer and brewing is not only niche to most drinkers but niche to most brewery staff and owners. They have work to do. Brewing and selling beer. As we know, it really does not matter what is on the label or even was in the mind of the brewer at any given stage if the result is tasty and well priced.
Comments
Bailey - February 27, 2012 9:55 AM
A supplementary question: some homebrewers seem incredibly learned but don't, apparently, have as much credibility when it comes to debate as professional brewers. But aren't professional brewers just homebrewers with capital?
Jim - February 27, 2012 10:02 AM
To the supplemental question: No, professional brewers are brewers who brew for a living. People whose livelihood depends on what they do and how they do it. Imagine it for a minute. There is a world of difference.
Bailey - February 27, 2012 10:11 AM
Jim -- OK, but (a) lots of pro brewers started as homebrewers and (b) lots of homebrewers would make great pro brewers if they had capital. I don't see that they metamorphose into a higher form of life once they get a van and a logo.
Jeremy - February 27, 2012 10:58 AM
@Jim - "People whose livelihood depends on what they do and how they do it. Imagine it for a minute. There is a world of difference." So is the guy in the big company IT department who spends all day solving the same “idiot user” problems inherently more knowledgeable than the amateur enthusiast who spends 99% of his waking hours hacking and messing around with computers? Sure, the stakes are higher for the guy who puts food on the table doing it, but that doesn’t automatically mean he’s better at it. I’m sure we all know homebrewers making beer that is better than a lot of what is coming out of licensed breweries.
I think there are a ton of beer enthusiasts who know more about beer, beer history, even fermentation than many brewers. There are also brewers who have encyclopedic knowledge. Does their level of knowledge matter if they are putting out awesome beer? Not to me. Do I care if the baker can give me a history of different types of yeast and wheat strains? Not really, as long as his bread is delicious.
The only time it starts to be an issue is when a professional who thinks they are knowledgeable but are not encounters an amateur who is (or vice versa), and one of them decides it is important.
Alan - February 27, 2012 12:57 PM
[Not the tack I thought this set of observations would take but, sure, go with it...]
Pivní Filosof - February 27, 2012 12:57 PM
As I say in the paragraph that follows Alan's quote brewers could talk about what they know, i.e. making beer. Which is (one of the reasons) why we aren't lost.
Alan - February 27, 2012 12:58 PM
Exactly. And thanks for the simultaneous comment!
Martyn Cornell - February 27, 2012 3:21 PM
Historical knowledge is entirely irrelevant to great beer. Just as knowledge of the minutiae of brewing science is entirely irrelevant to the appreciation of a great pint. I certainly wouldn't argue that someone who knows who Henry Parsons is, or how different ratios of black to brown malt alter the flavour and mouthfeel of a pint of porter, enjoys their porter more than someone who knows nothing of all that: clearly that's cock. It's <i>fun</i> knowing that stuff, but mostly pointless.
Craig - February 27, 2012 7:18 PM
Should I comment about absolutism, here, or is it too soon?
...yeah, too soon...
Alan - February 27, 2012 7:42 PM
I think you exercised your right to write absolutism to a rather full degree already.
Pivní Filosof - February 28, 2012 1:20 AM
@Martyn, I see this from a different angle. Knowing how a beer is made won't help me enjoy it more, but will help me understand why I like it, and that accumulated knowledge will help me make more informed decisions in the future. About the history, now that is irrelevant.
Jordan St.John - March 1, 2012 4:08 PM
I may be able to help out a bit on this one, being a beer writer who's actually attending brewing school in order to learn as much as I can.
Here's the thing you have to realize about brewers: If you were to combine all of the knowledge of all of the brewers in the province of Ontario, you might end up with supremely knowledgeable brewer. As it stands, the average amount of information that each brewer possesses has to do entirely with their likes and experiences just like anyone else.
Imagine you're a doctor specializing in podiatry. I don't know why you would be such a thing except that there's decent money to be made staring at feet. You have strengths. You are great with fallen arches. You can help with a plantar's wart. You can cure an ingrown toenail with a swift scalpel movement. Unfortunately, if someone needs a triple bypass done on their heart, you're no help whatsoever.
Same thing being a brewer. Even the really talented guys are usually only really talented at a couple of things. Maybe they make a pale ale. That's what they do five days a week. They develop a feel for the thing. They're in there mashing and hefting bags of grain and figuring out why the pumps don't work. It's actually incredibly specialized work. They're not making beer. They're making a beer. One. Maybe two.
It's probable that they know a lot more than they're able to enunciate. It's just that a lot of the knowledge is experiential and sense based. That doesn't mean they're idiots. It means that they're not writers or public speakers. That's all.