The Pour Fool: "AB/InBev Buys SABMiller: Corporate Cluelessness as Fine Art."

AB/InBev Buys SABMiller: Corporate Cluelessness as Fine Art, by Steve Foolbody (The Pour Fool)

There are times when I stare into the sky with humble earnestness and ask the biggest, most important question of all.

The Pour Fool and I -- were we separated at birth?

I went to the "Bluegrass Beer Geek" page at Facebook and posted the link to this amazing essay, prefacing it with this:

"The Pour Fool is a living, breathing deity."

Alas, only one reply was offered amid the hundreds of "see my latest big haul" photos.

"By 'living, breathing deity', do you mean 'child with too much free time and a keyboard, but poor Google skills'?"

No. I mean this.

This final point is the one I want everyone to remember: it is very possible, even likely, that we current American beer lovers - those who honor the ideals of "Drink Local", independent ownership, small business growth, individual achievement, choices, and better beer - can and should(!) be the generation of drinkers who drive AB/InBev into its eventual niche as a quaint remnant of the infancy of American brewing and a small curiosity section at the end of your supermarket beer aisle. Beers like Bud, Bud Light, Miller, Coors, Pabst, etc., will never disappear entirely because there will always be people who prefer them and that's as it should be. But the relative quality and economic consequences of those beers do not merit their being perennial Top Dog in the American beer marketplace. I'm asking, flat out, that people who truly love and care about craft brewing NOT, ever again, create a stylistic exception which says that a cold Bud Light on a hot afternoon or on your beach weekend in Cabo is allowable. I'm requesting, plainly, that you not reward those brands which sell out to AB with your dollars and your implied approval of their puppet status. I'm asking that you actively seek out locally or domestically-made substitutes for those "summer beers", those insipid Pilsners that are the mega-brewers' only working offering, from the rosters of your local brewers...and they're out there. The majority of American brewers, these days, offer at least a couple of hot-weather beers and many of those actually are Pilsners, but Pilsners done right, with flavor and body and hops and craftsmanship showing with every sip. I'm asking you to simply remove all the corporate beers, the mass-produced, cynical, watery pablum beers from foreign conglomerates, from your worldview. Ignore the entire end of your grocery store cooler that's devoted to the idea that we're all the same and that we value repetition and sameness over Choices and variety.

"Why do we covet what we don’t have?"

It's rare to find a conscientious, balanced self-examination -- from anyone, anywhere, and not just from a better beer fancier. Humans don't do introspection particularly well. Having offered this disclaimer, it strikes me that Cresant Smith's essay at LouisvilleBeer.com is worth noting.

Beer Chasing

 ... The “hunt” switch was on and humming in my head. I had to find the best beers out there. Find the good stuff I couldn’t get at home.

Cresant's thoughts are worth reading in their entirety, so please do. Her words caused me to think back on my own introduction to beer. Without going into great detail, it was different, and it probably can be explained as a generational thing. Coming to better beer during a time of relative paucity, both of available choices and information about the wider world of brewing, was different for me than for those of any age who are coming to beer now, and are comparatively inundated with options.

I definitely was in favor of traveling to find better beer, and did. However, apart from isolated exceptions, it never occurred to me to become involved in a trading culture -- at least as a civilian. I suppose there's a strong case to be made that I did take part in such a culture, just via my original pub business and normal wholesaling channels. Where did my private interest end, and my mercantile instincts begin?

These days I read about intriguing beers and ponder how I may obtain them. I am not alone in this obsession. But Why? Why do we covet what we don’t have? Why do I, and so many others quest for the uncommon beers? Maybe it is the desire to be one of the cool kids, just like back in the day when you wanted the trendy toys? Do we need to prove that we can hang with the “big boys”? Are we trying to impress our friends with the most “ticks”, is it to show-off, the variety, the novelty? Do we want the validation of just consuming that hard to come by beer?

For me maybe it is a little bit of all of those.

And then there's this.

Generally, I just want to try something that sounds good and that I haven’t tried before. Although there are many satisfying beers that are readily available in KY, I am not satisfied with only drinking those. I crave variety and I suppose I like the challenge.

It's funny. I crave variety, too, and find plenty of it locally and regionally. I find more than I can drink, given how much I drink these days. But the challenge means almost nothing to me now. Perhaps we can conclude that for at least some enthusiasts, it's more about the challenge than the beer?

Kudos to Cresant for her writing.

The Diary of Our Own Jimmy Bracken: "Oh, Mr. Putty tat. Don't you wike me anymore?"

I harbor no illusions when it comes to the give-and-take of discourse. If you hold strong views and have the ability to state them coherently, there'll be disagreements, and you'll make enemies. It's all part of the game. At times, the other guy musters the better argument, and that's just fine.

Then there are those "WTF" times when you're advised to smile and walk away, because the primary thrust of the argument being directed against you is that you're literate.

Don't hold your breath expecting me to apologize for being literate. It won't happen.

Yesterday was one such time for shrugging. To make a long story very short, a frequent critic returned to one of his favorite subjective themes: NABC brews sub-standard and boring beers. His objective evidence? That'd be the fact that ... that ... well, that in his opinion they're sub-standard and boring.

I can't speak to the absence of objectivity now choking beer enthusiasm like so many invasive weeds. We've somehow raised an entire generation that wishes to pose as a priestly caste, although without the first notion of objectivity apart from that of Kolsch being "bad" only because it isn't IPA. The noteworthy aspect of yesterday's discussion was that it was about localism in beer, digressing relatively quickly owing to the usual beer narcissist's knee-jerk objection: BUT YOU CAN'T FORCE ME TO DRINK BAD BEER.

Wouldn't think of it, although it depends on what the meaning of "geek" is. Let's move on to the keynote speaker. He wrote:

I wish NABC would be a force in the local beer community, but it just seems to fall to memory of what it was. Instead of competing with a force such as AtG, it seems Roger just wants to complain about the people in long drawn out sentences as if they are the problem and not what is going into the bottles.

It's an utterly fascinating sentence, this: "Instead of competing with a force such as AtG."

We need to be a force, and they need to be a force. Of course, force isn't defined. As I've noted previously, reducing the better beer world to the rote screenplay of a WWE bout is indicative of something, and perhaps many things ... though not better beer.

It seems to me that we're in the business of competing for consumers, not against each other, and the wonderful thing about consumers is that they come in all sizes, shapes, colors and levels of interest. Accordingly, there are markets for beer of a similarly diverse range in terms of variety.

It's why I like session beers, and why we at NABC are tying to keep four of them tap all of the time. We do it because people are drinking them, and as capitalists, we then are compelled to make more. That's really the purpose of the exercise.

One way to look at this might be that given AtG's customary single (and invariably solid) session beer, we've already "competed" with them and won. Personally, it's nonsense and I don't agree -- because there isn't any competition, between us. We do different things in route to a common purpose. What interests NABC at present is widening the scope of better beer, not just for the self-possessed cognoscenti, but for ordinary people who develop an interest in better beer and are ignored by the likes of my correspondent.

I could go on, but it's futile. Maybe if there is time, I can log in at RateBeerComments.com and hammer the bejesus out of his.

Shock and awe: "Blind taste test: Indiana's best beers might surprise."

Love it.

Just plain love it.

Oaken Barrel is one of the oldest breweries in the state of Indiana, and because of its proximity in Greenwood, south of Indianapolis on the way home, I manage to stop in a couple times a year. Everything about Oaken Barrel is first-rate, and yet any poll of expert "beer geek" opinion as to the relative merits of Indiana beer probably would exclude it.

That's because Oaken Barrel isn't chic and fashionable. It's beers aren't rated highly enough at RateAdvocate. The beers aren't shipped halfway across the country by a boutique wholesaler.

And yet, when a true blind taste test of hoppier pale ales and IPAs is organized by the Indy Star's Neal Taflinger, Oaken Barrel's dowdy, available-for-years Gnaw Bone Pale Ale is the winner.

Louisvillians, note that by "true," I mean just that.

Unless institutional bias, pre-conceived notions and built-in prejudices are stripped away, the taste test is not really blind.

I'm happy that Oaken Barrel (and the venerable Mad Anthony) get recognition normally withheld from them by the usual trend-chasing arbiters. It's also confirmation that a newbie like Daredevil can hit the quality mark right out of the box ... and that all of this goodness can be affirmed in a remotely objective measure. Imagine that.

Blind taste test: Indiana's best beers might surprise

... I know which beers get the most buzz, but brand loyalty has as much to do with sense memory, marketing and peer behavior as the product itself. I wanted to know how casual craft beer drinkers would rate Hoosier Pale Ales and India Pale Ales (IPA) in a blind tasting.

The Diary of Our Own Jimmy Bracken: Wrestling, better beer and the yawnable thumping of chests.

A former professional wrestler by the name of James Hellwig died recently. Apparently he was known by a stage name, as the Ultimate Warrior.

"Stage" name is appropriate, because as Wikipedia points out in the article entitled professional wrestling:

This article is about wrestling as a form of rehearsed entertainment.

Professional wrestling (often shortened pro wrestling, or simply wrestling) is a mode of spectacle which combines athletic and theatrical performance. It takes the form of events, held by touring companies, which mimic a title match combat sport. The unique form of sport portrayed is fundamentally based on classical and "catch" wrestling, with modern additions of striking attacks, strength-based holds and throws, and acrobatic maneuvers; much of these derive from the influence of various international martial arts. An additional aspect of combat with improvised weaponry is sometimes included to varying degrees.

The matches have predetermined outcomes in order to heighten entertainment value, and all combative maneuvers are executed with the full cooperation of those involved and carefully performed in specific manners intended to lessen the chance of actual injury. These facts were once kept highly secretive but are now a widely accepted open secret. By and large, the true nature of the performance is not discussed by the performing company in order to sustain and promote the willing suspension of disbelief for the audience by maintaining an aura of verisimilitude.

For a very long while I've known, and accepted, that when it comes to popular music, I've missed the entire era of rap and hip hop -- comprehensively, from the very start to right about now. There is no antipathy; merely omission, and as a generally intelligent adult, I understand that having no knowledge of this pervasive musical genre means that I'm hopelessly out of a powerful cultural loop, utterly detached from a powerful shaper of those younger than me -- for two decades or more.

It's fairly clear to me that a 35-year-old has been influenced heavily by such music, whether overtly or subliminally, even if I'm oblivious to it.

What I didn't grasp, at least until recently, is how significant the World Wrestling Federation (WWF, now WWE), progenitor of the "championship wrestling" of my own youth, has been when it comes to the cultural outlook of a generation now also defining beer geekdom.

I note this for various reasons, chief among them the preening, strutting and exhibitionistic entertainment ethos exemplified by wrestling of this contrived type. Chest-thumping may be the literal, historic contribution of outdated Tarzan movies, but surely this act of masculine boastfulness was perfected by the forever calculating WWF. In the current age of short attention spans of shortened (perhaps obliterated) attention spans, it's the preferred marketing strategy of many breweries.

Better beer and championship wrestling. Maybe there's something to this observation, and maybe not. The connection is not my cup of tea, NABC's Hacksaw Jim Dunkel notwithstanding, but something I've grown accustomed to seeing. I suppose I need to make peace with it; either that, or get riled up, start yelling, and thump my chest. Maybe wield a folding metal chair, or a tire iron.

Seems silly to me.

The PC: Tastes of paradise can shatter mirrors.

(Published at LouisvilleBeer.com on January 13, 2014)

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Tastes of paradise can shatter mirrors

I’m not in the habit of compulsively re-reading books, even those of the highly influential sort.

Of course, there are exceptions:

• The early beer writing of Michael Jackson
• “The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History,” a sobering tome by John Barry
• Jim Bouton’s ribald baseball tell-all, “Ball Four”
• “A Confederacy of Dunces,” the classic New Orleans comic novel from John Kennedy Toole

Another is “Tastes of Paradise: A Social History of Spices, Stimulants and Intoxicants,” by the wonderfully named Wolfgang Schivelbusch. He is not a Groucho Marx character from Duck Soup, but a German-born cultural historian operating from a decidedly (Karl) Marxist perspective.

The limitations of satire.

Thanks to RC for this link to a perfectly reasonable article about the concept of "best." It follows a recent conversation with a specialty package store clerk, who told me that someone had driven two hours to procure a bottle of rare and highly rated beer.

In certain significant senses, both of these examples illustrate that Craft Beer Nation is in fine, ruddy health.

However, we need to recognize that there are occasions when the excesses of beer geekdom are so very surreal as to render satire entirely impotent. After all, satire relies on a sense of perspective for its effectiveness. When no one's wearing clothes, the emperor's nudity no longer bears noting.

Is this really the best beer in America?, by Jim Galligan (MSNBC)

 ... Depending where you live, you should be able to find most everything on the Brewers Association list, but it might require a beer trade or two to get your hands on many of the beers from the RateBeer or Beer Advocate lists.