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.

Diary: Hopslam and Hoptimus, sans "versus".

Just the other night, I had the unexpected opportunity to sample Bell’s Hopslam Ale and NABC Hoptimus side by side. I know too much for it to have been a blind taste test, but it didn’t need to be, seeing as Hopslam and Hoptimus are so very different from each other even if both are lumped into the “Imperial” IPA category.

Hopslam is released once a year by Bell’s, a brewery in Michigan. Hoptimus is available year-round from NABC, a brewery in Indiana (my brewery, of course).

Hopslam uses different hops (six varietals and Simcoe) than Hoptimus (Cascade). Hoptimus is deceptively drier, and Hopslam is malty sweet.

They both cost a lot to make, and neither is cheap on a store shelf.

My verdict? They’re both good, but markedly different.

Do you like basketball or rugby? Maybe both, depending on the mood, although beer and sports aren’t the same animal. Sports possess an objective system of measurement called “keeping score.” Beer has a wonderful tendency to lapse into flights of the subjective, fueling stories and irreconcilable bragging rights, which is why beer is good while viewing sports.

Hopslam and Hoptimus. Enjoy one, the other, or both.

Diary: Swill, inferiority, and the irony-free priestly caste.

My diary entries are designed to accommodate venting without excessive rhetorical polish. They may or may not go on to become columns.

It was asked by a neophyte who might be expected to know better, "Should I drink local swill just because it's local."

Clarification was requested of her, which yielded this: "Swill might have been too harsh, but if I prefer the taste of Hopslam to Hoptimus, should I drink the inferior Hoptimus just because it's local?"

There followed a digression, in which I was asked whether trade sanctions should be imposed against non-local beer. I yawned at the predictable over-simplification of the sort that usually occurs when previously unused muscles are stressed, and gave it a stab.

No, I'm not saying there should not be out of town beer.

Rather, I'm making a snide aside with reference to the inevitable hosannas that greet the arrival of beers from elsewhere; most recently in Louisville, these would range geographically from Mississippi to Georgia to Oregon.

Yes, I still try lots of different beers in a year, and objectively speaking, perhaps one of every ten of these is genuinely memorable -- which is not to say they're inferior swill. To the contrary, most are quite nice, and nationwide, craft beer quality is pretty darned good overall ... but outstanding examples of any particular style are few and far between. Even rarer are instances of objectivity when it comes to judging them, What we see instead are outbursts of Beatles-at Shea pandemonium and a few more notches on Rate Advocate.

I'll take the fresher IPA from nearer to here, rather than subscribe to the notion that the ideal nirvana-like state for beer appreciation is reached when beers traveling thousands of miles by 18-wheeler pass one another on lonely interstates, racing in opposite directions.

That's because building localism interests me. Trucking companies and circle jerks do not.

But really, I can't help adding that the knee-jerk use of words like "swill" and "inferior" assists greatly in making my point, and points to a desperate need for gadflies now that a new orthodoxy is being erected. In any espousal of economic localism I've ever uttered, not once have I suggested that one should stoop to drinking inferior beer. What I have consistently suggested is that determinations of inferior vs. superior are often being made for every other reason except objective comparison.

Thirty years into beer as a profession, and it's increasingly clear to me that while people think they're being objective, they're mostly being subjective. If we couldn't see the packaging, didn't know the "official" ratings before lifting the glass, and tasted all these various excellent beers blind -- local, imported or Martian -- we'd discover very few differences in those ordained as chic and others derided for being local. It would be highly instructive, and as Lord Cornwallis once observed, the world would be effectively turned upside down.

But I am grateful for all comments. It is my intent is to solicit them. That's because my overall aim is to promote thinking, the paucity of which among today's beer enthusiast is cause for consternation.

Psst ... your subjectivity is showing, and I note this fact purely objectively.

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.