I remember when I first got into craft beer, that evangelical feeling of wanting to help spread the word about good beer and help get people off the macro train of boring and bland lagers. We all went through that judgmental phase, looking down on folks drinking mass market beers and feeling better about our bitter IPAs and bold Imperial stouts as almost a testament to better living and character. It was nonsense of course but I still see the trends out there, albeit the pendulum has swung around a little and some beer folks now pride themselves on being better because they drink lagers and bemoan the rise of the hazy ipa as the dominate force in craft beer. Is it because when nobody drank ipas and they did, it made it feel special and now that more people are enjoying ipas, they need to find something more iconoclast to lord over the regular folk? It seems to me there is an inward looking, almost gatekeeping need to separate from the masses, no matter what they like. I used to be part of the community and was deep inside that mindset of always trying to convert people to what I perceived as better beer and supporting local businesses. But as I've grown older, been around the movement for more than a decade I've come to find so much of what we thought was improvement was just a way to feel part of something unique and special. Perhaps it was, but I'll tell you everyone I came up with in talking about beer has left the game, stopped posting or writing about beer or stopped drinking it all together. The Me Too moments a few years ago have fizzled out to not much concrete action indeed some of the worst offenders continue in beer today, some even bigger than before. The consequences of terrible behavior lost in the marketing of semi okay beer and a whole lotta complacent people who either don't know or don't really care...they just wanna drink a couple beers in a taproom and forget the world for a while...can't blame them for that, the world is a shitty place and if you took time to research every business you buy from , you'd probably starve before you bought anything.
What does all this nonsense mean? I don't know to be honest, I have a seat outside the arena most of the time now, a privilege for sure, I can distance myself from the whole damn thing, but I still wonder why people who love beer would want to look down on anyone's choice of style to enjoy. The limitless variations of what beer can be may be what drew you and I into it, but maybe someone else just likes those sours or hazy IPAs and that's as far as they want to go. Good on em, happiness is what you find when you discover the thing that actually brings us it. We need to stop trying to gatekeep peoples choices in beer and be happy we have such a diverse range of offerings. Complaining a taplist is IPA heavy everywhere just tells me you haven't been everywhere because at the 9 breweries in my hometown of Hamilton alone, each one is distinct and lined with a ridiculous amount of choice including an all barrel funk Brewery that just opened last year. There is room for eveey style, but for the love of Hops, the folks who've been here the longest need ro remember why they cared to get involved in the first place.
Beer for the people.
Cheers!
Polk
July 18th, 2024
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