Earlier this week, I was involved in a beer discussion thread at Facebook, and it proved to be quite good. Agreement may have been elusive, but that’s what makes the game worth the flame. The worst aspect of it is that we’re having the conversation electronically, and not in a comfortable pub with good beer, snacks and a convivial atmosphere.
One thought emerging from the chat, at least in my saturated noggin, is that there isn’t any such thing as a “monolithic” craft beer culture. Once upon a time, perhaps there was. Now there are several craft beer cultures, and while they have components in common, the respective spheres don’t entirely overlap. It strikes me that these respective craft beer cultures boast differing root or principal values, contributing to elaborate belief systems undeniably pursuing better beer, but disagreeing on what the pursuit of better beer actually entails.
Some values are physiologically determined and are normally considered objective, such as a desire to avoid physical pain or to seek pleasure. Other values are considered subjective, vary across individuals and cultures, and are in many ways aligned with belief and belief systems.
The following cultures are not intended as exhaustive, but as a basis for further exploration.
A homebrewer/craft culture that principally values being able to analyze, recreate and “brew it yourself.”
A trader/swapper culture that principally values the mechanics of the chase and the joy of collecting.
A ratings/priestly culture that principally values the presumed exactitude and objectivity of language in quantifying pleasure, and wielding it subjectively like a tire iron.
A localist culture that principally values the personal, grassroots experience of places and people.
Specifically, at some point in the earlier thread, it was said that beer from the Louisville area isn’t of sufficient quality because it tends not to interest traders in other places, and consequently, if we brewers are interested in building a more valuable locally-brewed culture, we’d be wise to borrow whatever tricks are wielded by breweries elsewhere, because these methods obviously have higher value, seeing as they generate more interest among the network of traders.
I see this as the tail launching the dog into outer space.
To my knowledge, every local Louisville area brewery does a thriving trade at its own tap room or restaurant, and when I drink locally brewed beers in these venues, they generally taste perfectly good to me. I’m not a rube, and I’ve been doing this for three decades. So, what (and where) is the disconnection?
Is it that folks going to brewpubs and enjoying fresh local beer are incapable of proper value judgments – or else they wouldn’t be drinking beer of inferior quality? Or, is it because the attributes principally valued by trading and swapping reflect a different value system than the typical localist’s? Are their different belief systems at play?
Verily, fascination with the far-off is as old as humanity. In his book, Tastes of Paradise, the social historian Wolfgang Schivelbusch reminds us that when the spice trade commenced in Europe several hundred years ago, the “need” to obtain spices from the Orient was far less about their supposed usefulness in masking rancid food, as is often imagined nowadays, but because the spices themselves were quantifiable measures of status according to the prevailing values of the age.
In essence, back then, anyone who was anyone just had to have these spices – or, risk not being anyone, any longer. Possession of Oriental spices was a symbol of status, and key to their value was the basic fact that these spices were from somewhere else – exotic, expensive and hard to obtain, and therefore infinitely sexier than the local norm. It wasn’t necessary to explain it. It was understood, and the peasants knew full well that status was conferred on those in possession of the requisite symbolism.
All this is well and good, but what I’m prepared to argue is that nothing about any of this can be termed objective, as insisted oft times during the thread. In fact, what I'm coming to question is whether there is any such objective reality in these considerations, and how truly objective it might possibly be, when from the very start the trader/collector (and often, the beer “geek”) offers as "objectivity" a set of prerequisites clearly influenced by rampant subjectivity.
In short, once the cultural subdivision or label (as above) has been imbued with a value system and embraced, don’t the adherents begin playing to their respective and subjective value systems? After all, once one becomes part of a club, one starts obeying the club's directives. If one can merely flash an image of a sought-after beer and induce salivating on the part of the audience, without once being obliged to explain or provide greater depth of insight as to why the viewer should be salivating, haven’t we passed joltingly from the realm of better beer into the laboratory of Pavlov’s canine?
I don’t have all the answers. But the questions are quite entertaining, and the entertainment value is immeasurably enhanced by vitriol … and squirming.
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