Why the old beer conversations are new again

Why the old beer conversations are new again:
At the risk of repeating myself . . .

A) If you want to start a heated online conversation then making beer rating the theme seems to be the way to go. Witness the dust up at Beer Advocate that was followed by commentary in
718
722 beer blogs. Or the 57 comments (so far) following Stephen Beaumont’s Sh*t Online Beer Raters Do (But Shouldn’t) post.

Several of the comments in the second focus on serving size. Well, I checked and it turns out NEW BEER RULE #3: You must drink at least two servings of a beer before you pass judgment on it is almost four years old.

B) Yesterday Alan McLeod wrote about the arc and width of beer. His essay drew upon several blog posts and a multi-contributor Twitter conversation. Give it a read to to make complete sense or settle for the conclusion.

When industrial brewers – or, for that matter, any
brewers who believes that beer should only taste as they conceive – demand our obedience we are being asked to believe. To believe there was a mythical big bang of flavour when it was truer and more perfect is to believe that you are not a participant in the process.

The latest from wine columnist Matt Kramer seems relevant here.

Today, if you want to experience a wine that is at all different from anything that might be understood as “mainstream,” you have to drink “small.” Put simply, big wineries are all about predictability.

I’ve written about this phenomenon before, suggesting that today’s wine landscape is divided between what I call “wines of fear” and “wines of conviction.” True, small wineries can be fearful and make their wines accordingly. But mostly they don’t, while big wineries almost invariably do.

And, by golly NEW BEER RULE #4: The god of beer is not consistency seems to apply. (And I will be sure to file this in the Beers of conviction category.)

It makes me think I should be writing about something new. Except for many people only recently more interested in beer these topics are new. And there are new revelations within the conversations for and from those who’ve been chatting away a while — witness the Twitter exchanges Alan refers to.

Certainly, there are new areas to explore. In fact, as soon as I hit publish here I must return to examining why two people can smell the same dry hopped beer and one will describe exotic tropical aromas and the other cat pee.



HERO DYD