Become a Campaigner for Better Beer

Every New Year, I make the same three resolutions. These are: (1) have more sex, (2) smoke cigarettes whenever I feel like it and (3) make the world a better place in which to drink beer.

I should explain that I have not smoked cigarettes for many years and was never a heavy smoker. I doubt I was ever addicted. I defied addiction.

Yet every time I decided to quit, the stress of knowing I must not break my own rule and smoke… drove me back to smoking. So I gave up giving up, condoned and celebrated my every lapse and eventually it fizzled out.

I always take a three-week vacation in January (there is no excuse for Britain this time of year), so it is the last resolution that is always the biggest challenge.

I have been campaigning for better beer all my adult life. If our children and grandchildren are to be able to enjoy great beers, you might consider doing the same.

In Europe, we form clubs and pressure groups where we can whinge collectively about the state of commercial brewing. In North America, your way, I think, is to try to live the ideal a little more.

For the benefit of beer generally, I propose some cultural trading. So here are my New Year’s tips.

1. Ban bad beer from your home
Friends, visitors, guests and children may prefer Lite, Ice or supermarket beers, but screw them. In your home, your rules apply. They need to adjust to your superior taste in these things and understand that compromising with mediocrity is not on your agenda anymore.

2. Only eat or drink at places that stock at least two adequately interesting beers
Even (maybe especially) if it is your annual workplace bash or a wedding, suggest everyone goes elsewhere. If your bosses (or family or old friends) appear displeased, explain that a place that does not know beer won’t know food either. If out-voted, volunteer to drive, drink bottled water throughout and adopt a fixed, disconsolate grin.

3. Educate others at every opportunity
Direct confrontation is unlikely to work but practice saying, “I am surprised, Raymond, that someone who [cares so much for the environment/usually shows such good taste/loves his country] would be satisfied by that [waste-of-carbon/tedious/foreign-owned multinational] beer.” Even presidents have to learn sometimes.

4. Victimize a couple of store or bar owners
Pick places that you know do not stock any imports/micros/specials and twice a week, for as long as it takes, go in and ask for a few by name. You will not need to part with any money until you succeed in grinding them down. All will cave in eventually, and when they do, prime beer-loving friends in the vicinity to go and fawn, while you find another victim.

5. Become learned
To persuade others that they need to take beer seriously, you need to take it seriously. So drink and read and travel beyond your conventional horizons to discover where and how beer fits into the wider world. The US has a particular beer culture that is increasingly well-established. Other places do it differently, but just as well.

This last is really my fourth regular (and only serious) New Year’s resolution: Understand more.

We have only one lifetime in which to experience this world. Few ever regret doing so, while many are eventually saddened by never having tried. Discover the meaning of the phrase, “Beer is an international language.”

Happy New Year, beer lovers. Wherever you are. ■