One of the most drearily frustrating things about the beery discourse is all the belief floating around. Not the opinions or personal experience or subjectivity. No, those things are fine. Given that we share a hobby that is essentially about infusing one's corporeal form with a mild intoxicant - because it is tasty and intoxicates mildly at a reasonable price - one should expect and even celebrate that the experience is interior as well as social. But there is that extra step. Do stamp collectors suffer from it? Do they crap on coin collectors and their coin collector ways? It's the need to give oneself and one's view of the hobby the little gold star that says "you and all you enjoy are the best-est!" It's the game call of the homer sportscaster. It offers the depth of the party loyalist whose vote is never in question ever. And it strikes at the oddest times because no one warns you that the discussion ended way before you entered the room.
Is it just the grogginess speaking or is it also because pure pastime has been infected additionally with adamance of cause? Is the effect of all this misplaced passion that we end up with the corrosion of simpler pleasure? It sure does seem sometimes that the social gets fairly anti-social when this solvent is the only bond between folk. Do the birdwatchers get like that? Does one always get nicknamed "Hoover" for sucking all the fun out? Probably. Frickin' bird nerds.
Comments
Pivní Filosof - October 15, 2012 2:32 AM
The "cause" thing, that has tired me too. The other day I read in an pretentiously serious article the phrase "the war against crap beer". What a load of toss! As if the world would suddenly be a better place if everyone started drinking craft beer (or something equivalent for a given region).
Alan - October 15, 2012 11:29 AM
Good discussion with the artist formerly known as Stonch on this point over at Twitter.
Velky Al - October 15, 2012 12:57 PM
PF - this kind of reminds me of the night I met my best friend. It was in Prague and we both fancied the same bird, after a bit male feather flourishing a la peacock, my mate said something to the effect of 'fuck it, it's only a girl, let's get drunk'. I feel the same way sometimes when people are spouting off about this, that and the next thing beer related, 'fuck it, it's only beer, let's get drunk'.
Bailey - October 15, 2012 3:34 PM
I'm not very interested in wine. That's my credibility shot.
Craig - October 15, 2012 4:10 PM
Frickin' bird nerds. I just tweeted that. Taste the irony.
Gary Gillman - October 16, 2012 2:30 AM
Alan, I think it is a by-product of wine connoisseurship. (The whole beer culture is, except instead of aping it, it assumed its own form finally). But the dogmatism comes from their way of looking at it, the prescriptive element. Just as wine writers wrote books describing not just what was available, but also what was best, beer writers did the same - Jackson was the first - and finally beer bloggers did and commenters on those blogs. It can go too far, but it's the mark of the enthusiast. Beer became " a subject". It has been happening to whisky for some time too.
Before the Jackson era, people liked beer and ale or they didn't. This was described by an expression, now obsolete in the sense it was originally used, "he is a beer drinker". This implied not that you knew top-fermentation from bottom, but simply that you drank an undifferentiated thing called "beer". You drank what everyone did, a group of brands tasting very similar. The odd person might favour Heineken, or another import, or express eccentricity by drinking a mass market porter, or bock when it came out in the summer, say, but that was it.
It was never sub-divided beyond that. But then Michael wrote to this effect: "why is it felt acceptable to order a 'beer" in a restaurant; would you say, 'give me a plate of food please?'".
Apres Jackson, le deluge.
Gary
Gary Gillman - October 16, 2012 2:39 AM
Sorry Alan, I meant the spring, the old mass market brands usually had a bock, you would remember that I think. I know Molson did. It was a light tawny colour and had a slightly different taste to their regular beers. This was big stuff in the old days. But nobody said, this is better beer than any other, or all beer should taste like Heineken, the campaigning part you identified was absent. (That is why CAMRA's name is so interesting from a historical standpoint).
I do recall though the odd beer-tasting party. People did this in the early 70's. You might have a bock if it was the season, a Labatt-made Guinness, an ale, a lager, a Heineken or Tuborg, and perhaps an American beer someone brought back from a trip. Piels say, or Schaefer. I used to do this college.
Gary
Gary