The Speech

I love beer and find myself regaling far too many people with tales of beer loved and lost.
Most people like the watery American standards that have to be served at the freezing point lest the consumer realize that they’re drinking something that tastes like water would taste if you rinsed out a real beer bottle. Others think that Amber Bock and Kilian’s Irish Red are big beers that push the envelope. That’s OK. There was a time when I thought the same way. Granted that was before the craft brewing revolution picked up steam, but still, I was there.

Rather than allow myself to become a beer bully, I figured I’d focus my energy and passion for that timeless concoction into this blog. Then I can stop making people feel bad about drinking things labeled “Lite”. It’s not their fault they have no taste.

The one place I’ll won’t keep my opinions…yes that’s supposed to be plural…to myself is when I’m in a brew pub. To me there’s nothing quite as offensive as walking into a place that takes pride in making its own beer and ordering up a Coors. I know, you’re thinking that Coors was once a craft brew too, right? Well you’re wrong. The personality and passion that went into the original products have long since been watered down to appease the nubile palates of college kids. Today it’s all about the marketing. Beer? People will drink anything if somebody sexy tells them to.

Even if you want to convince yourself that Bud, Miller and Coors are all real beers the fact remains that you’re in a brew pub. Do you go to Morton’s and have Sizzler deliver your steak? Then why would you walk into Barley’s and order domestic swill? It’s just plain rude. The mega breweries have reduced the brewing process to its simplest form and minimized their overhead by cutting corners. They use pelletized hops rather than fresh because it saves space, they use special blends of yeast that ferment faster and then they relentlessly filter their beers to make sure that anything resembling character is removed. Pasteurization + homogenization / bastardization = marginalization.

The brew master at your local brew pub nurtures small batches of beer. Small brewers take pride in exploring the world of beer and improving their products. They work with local suppliers and create unique brews that reflect their communities. How can you walk into a brew pub and order a beer that’s designed to have no identity? It’s like going home and passing on Mom’s meatloaf in favor of a Big Mac. Even if mom’s meatloaf turns out to be a little dry she still made it with love, right?

Of course brew masters rarely disappoint. They won’t put something on the bar that they aren’t proud of. The only reason most brew pubs offer domestics mega-brews is because their hoping that the knuckleheads who order Bud will at least try a sample of one of the house beers and have the epiphany.

The other big beer mistake is Euro-brews. Heineken and Amstel are not good beers by any stretch of the imagination. College kids are tricked into thinking they are because they're supposedly exotic, that's why everybody claims to like Coldplay. Heineken is consistently skunky because it sits in green bottles and Amstel is just a European attempt to market Budweiser under a different label. Coldplay is like a watered down version of U2 with a gelded facsimile of Sting fronting the band...they're pretty skunky too.

Talk about German beers all you want and rave about English ales until people sing God Save the Queen but at the end of the day the best beers in the world are brewed right here in the USA by craft brewing companies. Craft beers are so good that the big European brewers have sent analysts to the US to sample craft beers and crack the mysterious code. The problem is that when the Euro-brewers think they have the craft market cornered, somebody, like Allagash, ages an ale in a bourbon barrel and the whole revolution starts anew. Even the Trappist Monks of Belgium could take notes from some of the brewers here in the US. Hoppin' Frog makes a great Belgian style ale and Ommegang’s selection of beers is better than anything I’ve had from across the pond. Unibrou also makes some very interesting beers that challenge the Belgian imports.

Even the stalwart stout of the beer world, Guinness, has stiff competition from upstarts who thumb their noses at tradition and load their stouts with aggressive flavors. It’s hit Guinness so hard that the company is scrambling to figure out a way to balance its tradition with some of the new techniques like using more finishing hops to spice things up.

The world of beer is huge. There are bars that have 100’s of different beers on tap and you won’t see a Coors or a Miller emblem on any of them. Why would anybody waste time on the same old swill?