ON THE AVENUES: Pardon me as I hoist this middle finger in the general direction of anti-local “craft” beer unconsciousness.
A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.
After a dozen years of stasis, the Southern Indiana brewing community is rapidly expanding.
In Jeffersonville, Red Yeti’s fermenters are being filled, and Flat12’s taproom on the riverfront is coming soon, with the Indianapolis-based company’s on-site brewery to follow in 2015.
New Albany’s Donum Dei near NABC on Grant Line Road should be open any minute, and the Wrecker project on Market Street is somewhere on the horizon. NABC’s two breweries are separately licensed by the state of Indiana, and so Floyd and Clark counties (population 190,000 combined) might soon have six breweries, which is fairly significant on a per capita basis.
This welcomed growth spurt revives an old question: Has “craft” (or “better”) beer actually changed the consciousness of America’s beer-drinking mainstream?” Note that it isn’t clear whether mainstream consciousness ever
should be the desired outcome in any such consideration, much less one involving beer.
Overall, certain aspects of elevated better beer consciousness can be easily verified. Availability is wider than ever before, and most Americans live in close proximity to a post-1980s generation brewer, even if the average measurement is skewed by bountiful Michigan as compared to threadbare Mississippi.
Tellingly, America’s copycat multinational brewers are quite conscious of “craft” beer’s escalating popularity. By means of imitation and outright, unrepentant piracy – these being the only recourse for corporate regimes cruelly deprived of any semblance of a creative gene – mass-market mockrobrews (Blue Moon, Shock Top) and zombie craft beers absorptions like Goose Island, Blue Point and 10 Barrel now are routinely positioned to distract and obfuscate.
Obviously, there is much work left to be done in fostering better beer consciousness, particularly given the persistent examples of cognitive dissonance in the “craft” beer consciousness we have now.
A prime example of this incongruity is the unwillingness of so many self-credentialed craft beer enthusiasts to differentiate between "craft and crafty." The
emerging cult of solipsistic beer narcissism cravenly averts its eyes from Trojan Goose’s shelf-space-seeking zombie drone strategy even though it ranks as the most patently obvious bait-and-switch maneuver since door-to-door driveway resealing, and exists only to shift money from the delusional to faraway corporate shareholders.
The solution is
localized better beer consciousness, which is nearer than Leuven to home.
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To me, the most disquieting aspect of consumer behavior as it pertains to better beer, and the phenomenon that Southern Indiana’s newcomers soon will face, is what I like to call anti-local “craft” beer unconsciousness.
Spitefulness of this magnitude is doubly annoying given my core daily interest in situating the better beer movement as a component of economic localization, thereby reorienting the beer revolution to its genuine founding point of origin.
Better beer hardly exists in a vacuum. An understanding of localism in non-beer terms comes first, and is the foundation upon which the local “craft” beer ethos rests. Perhaps counter-intuitively, this principled bedrock foundation is one of constant movement, because shift happens.
Shift is perhaps the single, fundamental tenet of emerging local economies. In my own household, having acknowledged the efficacy of buying local as factually measured by indices proving that localism keeps more money in one’s community, we practice an ongoing, incremental shift toward local sources of goods and services, whenever it is practical.
Shift is a process, not an all-or-nothing religious crusade, and when it comes time to have a beer, the concept of shift means putting this principle into liquid practice by patronizing local and regional breweries as often as possible. And yet, for some consumers, “local” and “inferior” remain synonymous terms. Why is this the case?
Interestingly, quite apart from local beer, there is a contrasting reaction to “buying local” when we speak of the retail sector: Hardware, groceries, clothing, floral arrangements and the like. I hear it often:
"But wait: You cannot compel me to spend more money than I wish to spend."
Sorry, but this dog won’t hunt. Numerous studies have addressed the perception that buying local entails higher expense to the consumer. Price variances typically are not as profound as imagined, if they exist at all. What doubters probably mean to say is that they cannot be compelled to surrender the big box, exurban shopping ease of finding all consumables under one roof – and that’s a far different topic, one falling outside my parameters.
However, when it comes to beer, independent small brewers seldom hear objections about price. “Craft” beer enthusiasts of all stripes usually grasp the fiscal implications of high quality ingredients, smaller economies of scale, and artisanal methods. Rather, a different and far less readily explicable form of pushback occurs in the context of local beer and brewing.
How about some locally brewed beer, guys?
“No, because you cannot compel me to drink poor quality beer. Only the best for me, you know."
This reply never fails to befuddle me. I’m a trained BJCP beer judge, and after thirty years in the beer business, I’ve been around the block a few times – just ask my liver.
My beers of choice these days invariably are drawn from “everyday” beers as made by small, local breweries, and I’m invariably reminded of their tasty suitability. On those rare occasions when there is a quality problem, I’m constructively honest in identifying it, and if possible, proposing a solution. Without dialogue, there cannot be a community.
Without community, very little about “craft” beer interests me, because better beer consciousness isn’t me against the world.
It’s
us against the world.
Unfortunately, the quality of local beer is never quite enough for the cult of solipsistic beer narcissism. Localism by definition cannot ever be “sexy” enough to justify a variant of devotion sated only through insularity, exclusivity and the next greatest adrenalin rush. Local beer is attacked on the basis of poor quality, but in reality, it is being damned for being a provincial affront to a faux cosmopolitan, masturbatory values system.
No straw men are being erected here.
Beer snobbery is a self-inflicted malady and a debilitating influence, from which I continue to recover, every single day. I used to be just as bad as them. Happily, consciousness is subject to evolution, and so is conscience. When I look back at my career in beer, I see periodic epochs of the same self-indulgence I’m freely skewering here, but narcissism never was my gig, and beer expertise isn’t about hoarding.
Rather, it’s about sharing, teaching and community-building.
The glib and disdainful attitude that local beer cannot ever be good enough represents both misplaced elitism and condescending snobbery. Beer as we know it does not exist outside societal, historical or ethical contexts. Better beer consciousness exists within a place and a community, and if we wish our community – any community -- to prosper, we must begin by acknowledging its locality.
Southern Indiana’s growing brewing community makes us different, but it also helps us to define ourselves. They’re not competition; they’re brethren, and I’ve got their backs. When the solipsistic narcissists talk their inevitable smack, I’ll be right here to answer it.
That's because deeply-held principles are punk-proof.
