A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.
My last three curmudgeonly columns have been devoted to a personal beer history of sorts. Their basic framework was borrowed from an essay I wrote roughly twenty years ago, in which my consciousness at the time was harnessed, perhaps inexpertly, to explain why I no longer cared to drink mundane, pedestrian, mass-market (read: the usual shitty) beer.
I disavow none of it, though not unexpectedly, the intervening two decades have taken me to a different place. It is a transition in progress. While my aversion to the ordinary remains as strong as ever, and there exists no urge to return to the days of bottle-baby, longneck coddling, minimum-alcohol-delivery devices, I find the current state of “craft” beer appreciation to be the cause of a profound disillusionment.
Insofar as I possess a soul, it is in a relative state of annoyance, if not outright torment.
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Interestingly, on one occasion in 2008, I dipped into the cross-disciplinary stream in search of explanations for my long, gradual detachment from mass-market swill, not to mention the formative period of my “career in beer” spent assisting other beer drinkers to overcome their attachment to the BudMillerCoors hegemony.
At the time, it occurred to me that something similar to the "Five Stages of Grief" was appropriate. Take it away, Wiki:
The Kübler-Ross model describes, in five discrete stages, the process by which people deal with grief and tragedy, especially when diagnosed with a terminal illness. The model was introduced by Elizabeth Kübler-Ross in her 1969 book "On Death and Dying". The stages have become well-known as the "Five Stages of Grief".
I modified the five stages of grief to pertain to the tragedy of swill consumption.
Denial: "It just can’t be happening that my ice-cold Bud Light no longer lights my fire."
Anger: "Why me? It’s not fair that Roger made me drink that good, expensive beer … and now my Silver Bullet tastes awful!"
Bargaining: "Just let me enjoy one more evening at (insert name of preferred dive bar, meat market or sporting venue) so I can give my Miller Lite a proper, respectful goodbye."
Depression: "I’m so sad, why bother drinking beer at all, good or bad?"
Acceptance: "It’s going to be all right, and swill is no longer a part of my life. Thank you, Roger."
What prompted this 2008 rendering of the five stages of grief was an experience in a local eatery. I was seated at the bar, and looked to my right. There sat a man I knew. For a great many years, he’d been coming into the Public House, loudly praising the beers, and drinking as many as one per sitting.
However, on the evening in question, he was hoisting a bottle of Miller Lite, and doing so in much the same fashion as the actors in the brand’s television commercials of the same period, in which the manufacturer of this eternally insipid, vaguely beer-like liquid encouraged Lite’s many “fans” to adopt a Mussolini-era fascist salute to celebrate the many medals the brand recently won in an international beer competition, wherein the corporate entity’s longtime sponsorship of the contest in question had led to the creation of category guidelines precisely describing the negation of anything approximating beer flavor – this being the exact “style” best assuring Lite’s many medals.
And so there I was, at the bar of the local eatery, with my lapsed customer seated less than ten feet away, spiraling downward like a victim of Baron von Richthofen's triplane. It might have been an awkward moment, except that he steadfastly looked away every time I tried to make eye contact and say hello.
Knowing that the key to most successful conversions is to hate the sin and love the sinner, I wasn’t offended at all. Rather, it was flattering, but not without a pang of weird conscience that maybe, only now, is coming back to roost.
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I’ll never stop feeling amusement when confronted with predictable spectacles initiated by the unbeerable lightness of American bearing, as when the Harley rider in full leather costume regalia entered the Public House, asked for an Alpha King, and refused to listen to my well-intentioned explanation that he might not like such assertiveness. The motorcyclist was back within moments, demanding a Spaten Lager.
Only at closing did I discover the nearly full pint of Alpha King, hidden in a corner behind a lamp.
At the same time, while loving better beer as much as ever, I can neither comprehend nor stomach today’s chest-thumping, trend-chasing, pretentiousness-sans-principle brand of beer enthusiasm. It is two miles wide and a centimeter deep, generally practiced in a narcissistic vacuum, and has quite effectively rendered the very term “craft” superfluous. What was formerly known as “craft” beer is in a non-intellectual, pack-think stage of development. It makes me crazed and sad.
But this isn’t the most depressing part of it.
That distinction is reserved for the knowledge that I must claim a measure of personal responsibility for the formless, disconnected beer snobbery that now has me running for an unoccupied commode.
Exactly how and why my beer narrative became sidetracked remains to be considered. Perhaps I mistakenly believed my own press clippings. It’s also true that beer fashions change, and so have I. All revolutions mutate and evolve. Pendulums swing back and forth. Sit out a few dances, and the band may eventually play a song more to my liking.
One thing’s for sure.
While recapturing youthful glory isn’t a very good bet, the cessation of food service at Bank Street Brewhouse leaves me with a clean slate of sorts. BSB is a lump of clay. It needs remolding, and so do I. BSB is now free to be a place to talk with people about beer, to educate, to learn, and to find a few of these errant threads. NABC’s second location may have not succeeded as an eatery, but it may yet find its niche.
Doing so just might require me finding mine.
Finally, the path forward is becoming clearer.
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