Wednesday Weekly: "To Heck with Rants (Part Two)"

Continued from here: Wednesday Weekly: "To Heck with Rants (Part One)"

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NH: There’s also a nouveau riche thing going on with craft beer. It seems to be all about ostentatious display of IBU’s, ABV, etc., etc. It’s the whole Double Black Barrel-Aged IPA, beer mad lib thing that is completely boring to me. Communities like Beer Advocate advocate that phenomenon more than they advocate the full spectrum of beer appreciation. And just like the arms race brewers have to out “extreme” each other, dudes who review beers do the same thing.

RB: There is no such thing as bad publicity when it comes to turning heads. Yet again, I refer to the educational mandate that we all ignore only at our peril. You say you’re not in favor of the reviewers, or the brand of preaching practiced at Beer Advocate? Fine, then start your own damned church, but don’t withdraw into a shell and decry all comments, because turtle shell marketing can’t help craft beer at all. AT ALL. Everyone on the inside has had our issues with entities like Beer Advocate, but just look at the work these entities do to attract potential patrons to our side of the street! Besides, recently I’ve been using Beer Advocate and Rate Beer quite a lot to compare and contrast their respective takes on beer style definition, not so I can flaunt my nouveau riche attitude (i.e., I’ve been around this for more than two decades without striking the mother lode), but because is it helpful to me as I seek ways of educating prospective adherents.

Have I mentioned the importance of education?

NH: No longer is it good enough to say that a beer has a citrusy aroma or a grapefruit hop nose. Now, it’s grapefruit “pith.” Really?! Pith?! Come on….save the pretentious “notes of vine-ripened figs, off-set by a pumpernickel bread crust and grapefruit pith” for the wine world! It’s friggin’ beer, people! ”I hand wash my chalice with spring water, an Indian cotton wash cloth and handmade soap and and store it on a pillow made of the finest crushed velvet between my tasting sessions.” Beer is social and beer is fun and sometimes drinking one out of a red plastic cup is perfectly awesome!

RB: For those unfamiliar with the straw man fallacy, it’s when one places the weakest possible argument in the mouth of his or her opponent, then happily dashes the artificially weak argument to shreds. Do some beer tasters take it too far? Of course they do. Does a better understanding of how and what we taste assist our appreciation of anything we eat and drink? Of course it does. Beer’s better consumed from a glass, and yes, red plastic will do in a pinch. Know the rules first … and then break them with equanimity.

NH: I’m also cynical about the whole “celebrity brewer” thing. And I know quite a few wanna-be celebrities in this area and they make my stomach turn and my eyes roll!

RB: I hate to be a kill-joy, but something needs to be said here: If you are brewing professionally, using a brewery system that presumably cost more than a few bucks, it’s more than technical expertise. It’s show business, and we’re all performing at one level or another. You need to get used to it. There are celebrities in every field of human endeavor, for the simple reason that people demand them, period. Quit whining and pick a shtick – before someone else does it first.

NH: The whole beer-food pairing thing is pretty lame, as well. Beer isn’t wine! Don’t have a geuze with nachos. “Ah…but I find that the notes of figs and grapefruit pith are the perfect complement to a braised leg of lamb and fingerling potatoes.” Give me a break… As a pub brewer, I suppose I should be more into the pairing thing, but I think it’s pretentious, ridiculous and adds nothing to the beer culture, except for pushing it ever closer to the wine world.

RB: “As a pub brewer, I suppose I should be more into the pairing thing” – stop right there, Nate. Apologies, but while it remains that as a brewpub owner myself, I’d never seek to prevent an employee from expressing opinions, I’d have you out in the woodshed over this section of his rant.

Why talk about beer with food when you own a brewpub? BECAUSE PEOPLE LIKE THAT, and it assists in marketing, and it helps convince people to step inside the tent, and if you’re brewing for me and can’t wrap your arms around doing what comes naturally with beer and food, okay, but you had best learn to be better damned actor than that. Beside, it’s the wine world’s job to come closer to beer, not the other way around.

NH: Let’s see…what else am I cynical about? Craft fans seem to ascribe a false virtue to the small brewers and false vice to the big brewers out there. We laud some brewers’ success and vilify others for theirs. And the argument usually, and ignorantly, falls along the lines of “the big guys don’t care about beer, only profit.” And, “I know Sam Calagione and/or Greg Koch makes beer because he’s passionate about it.” Try opening a brewery in San Diego or Wilmington and see just what a couple of swell guys Sam and Greg are! Craft fans have taken up the mantel that they are fighting the big guys out there. In reality, however, Mercury Brewing is competing more fiercely with the likes of Wachusett than they are with Anheuser-Busch. But, David versus Goliath is a much easier and intriguing tale to tell if you’re a small brewer, even if it’s not entirely correct.

RB: Nate, you’re absolutely and spectacularly wrong with the gist of this assertion, which is understandable for someone who doesn’t believe in marketing or related evangelism of any sort, because if you don’t believe it’s fitting and proper to try to convince a mass-market drinker to switch his or her approach, then you’ve no choice except to believe that craft brewers are fighting one another for market share, not taking it from the big multinational boys.

That’s illogical. The big boys control 90% or more of the market, and that’s growth territory for craft beer for decades to come. How have we, as a segment, even come this far? By doing all those things Nate Heck so vehemently dislikes. How do we make further inroads? By doing all those things Nate Heck vehemently dislikes.

Is a pattern beginning to develop?

The ultimately puzzling nature of Nate Heck’s rant lies in the fact that he seems to have paid no heed to any side of the craft beer business and marketing equation that exists outside the confines of the brewhouse, and as a result, he’s missing just a few very important components. If everything he’s cynical about were to be taken away from craft brewing, both he and I would be having this dialogue while standing behind the counter of the convenience store, where we both would be working, then breaking for a few MGDs out by the dumpster, probably without red plastic cups.

That’s all I have to say about it. If you wish, you can call me a nasty beer evangelist … and I hope to meet Nate Heck some day and try his beers.

Out of a glass, please.

Wednesday Weekly: "To Heck with Rants (Part One)"

(In two parts to make up for last week's blank spot)

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It has taken me more than ten days to write this column.

Seldom do I worry very much about how my words might be taken out in the world, but this time, a disclaimer seems merited, because I don’t want anyone to think that I’m overly denigrating Nate Heck, a brewer somewhere in the Eastern United States, and a fellow I’ve never had the pleasure of meeting.

I’m not knocking Nate, just disagreeing on a few central points, and perhaps learning something about the nature of capitalist division of labor – and my part in it – in the process.

You see, I’m mentioning Heck’s name here only because a few days ago, he managed to spark one of those brief Internet furors that flare into “trending, and then disappear into the cyber ether, way faster than you can drink a pint of gently carbonated cask Bitter (an overview is here).

Evidently, the brewer Heck was asked a question, responded with a long-suppressed rant, and subsequently the beer world (more accurately, those beer enthusiasts hanging out on-line) lined up to debate his rant’s numerous bullet points, because as rants go, it was a real beauty.

It will surprise no one who knows me that I’ve had some measure of experience inciting riots, perhaps less lately than in the past, when the beer world was so much smaller and it was easier to cop a profile on the fly. Consequently, I’m the last person on the planet who’d criticize anyone for speaking his or her mind, Nate Heck included.

But after reading his thoughts, what bothered me was that they kept on bothering me, and I couldn’t put a finger on why this was so. Something he said in his rant got to festering under my skin. What was it? A few dozen beers later, it has become slightly clearer to me.

Both Nate Heck and the Publican obviously give a damn about beer. No arguments there.

However, he’s a brewer, and I’m a brewery owner.

At first glance, you’d think this wouldn’t matter very much. Most of the time, it doesn’t. Vast and pervasive tracts of daily workplace experience are shared by brew house artisans and management, and yet ultimately, there is a difference in perspective; nothing like a chasm, but a difference nonetheless, and one perhaps best illustrated by my chosen job description.

My business card says “Carnival Barker,” not owner.

Whether I’m good at it or not, and I’ll freely admit that it’s a coin flip of a call on some days, my job as brewery owner extends beyond signing the paychecks, donating my house (more than once) for use by the bank as collateral, and sometimes even deigning to provide overall direction to the daily operations.

(If not for co-owners who do much of the dirty work, it’d get ugly.)

For better or worse, I’m also NABC’s central pitchman. Not only that, I’m the chief educator as well. In my opinion, if I’m the owner, and I’m not pitching the product and educating, I’m not doing my job.

Furthermore, if there is any one thing I’ve learned after twenty years, it’s that selling better beer stands alongside love and war, in the sense that all’s fair while undertaking it. Any tools you have to market your products, don’t hesitate to use them.

From the beginning, even when my natural shyness was sometimes a crippling impediment to overt public advocacy, I’ve thrown myself out in front crowds and curves, and tried my best to talk people into taking a peek inside our tent -- and if they like what they see and taste, to spend a bit of their hard-earned money while they’re here.

Because: No money coming in, no business … and no freshly brewed craft beer, either.

And so yes, while much of what Nate Heck “cynically” ranted makes sense, it makes less sense when you consider the inconvenient truth that if craft beer does not succeed as a business enterprise, it will not continue to exist as a generous gift to us from governmental subsidies, or materializing afresh after the wave of a magic wand from the Wizard of Good Beer.

We have to sell beer and grow the segment.

That’s the way it works, folks.

Here’s what Nate Heck wrote (in italics), followed by my response (in bold). In the spirit of the dialogue, natch.

NH: I have spent most of my adult life making beer. I love what I do and of course, I love beer. However, it seems like over the past few years, something has changed and I’m still trying to wrap my head around what it is exactly. I guess I’m cynical because I see a lack of appreciation for the history of brewing. Lots of people seem to think that craft brewing started when Sam Calagione started DFH, and believe that “Beer Wars” are the gospel truth about the beer industry and that Stone Brewing doesn’t market their beer.

RB: If people have misconceptions about history, whether history is taken to refer to brewing, the American Civil War or ancient Sumerian numismatics, the only way these misconceptions can ever be addressed is through education, a pursuit that rewards patience and constant repetition, among other necessary qualities. As with any teacher who is instructing in any discipline, enthusiasm about the subject matter is vital. Take the initiative, and take information to the customer.

NH: And that is also something I’m cynical about…the evangelical aspect of craft beer. People feel they have to convert the unwashed Bud drinking masses. Beer is not some binary thing. You can enjoy an ice cold PBR AND like Russian Imperial Stouts…at the same time! *Gasp!* The blasphemy!!!

RB: Teaching is evangelistic. I appreciate where Nate is trying to go, but his mistrust of evangelism is bizarrely short-sighted. Take away the evangelistic aspect of craft beer, and watch as market penetration declines (not increases) exponentially. Take away the evangelistic aspect of craft beer, and shed numerous jobs, perhaps even the ranter Heck’s own paid brewery position. Take away the evangelistic aspect of conversion, and lose much of the entire point of brewing different (better, more diverse) beer in the first place. Craft brewing is a business, but the beauty is that it can be a lifestyle, too. Evangelism and marketing are two ways of referring to the same process, whereby we invite those outside the tent to step inside and try our wares. It sells itself, but only up to a point.

Continued here: Wednesday Weekly: ""To Heck with Rants (Part Two)"