There are no more excuses for ignorance. We’re not talking about becoming an expert, but rather getting informed with the basics and understanding beer and the core brewing process.
When we launched BeerAdvocate magazine back in January 2007, we were tired of the growing amount of fluff journalism and ass-kissing in the beer industry. Where was the critical thinking and brutal honesty, the constructive criticism and irreverent poking?
The concept of a beer week is simple: Celebrate, and hopefully bring awareness to, a city or state’s beer scene. In the US alone, we estimate that there’s well over 100 beer weeks, and that figure is rising.
With all of its successes, this nation of craft beer should not define itself through its larger corporate rivals. It’s time for a new generation of craft beer slogans, focused on promoting the positive characteristics that the industry symbolizes.
It is illegal in Massachusetts to bring a beer to a patient in a hospital. In Texas, drinking more than three sips of beer at a time while standing is against the law. There are scores of pointless, strange edicts on the books, but the good people of Mississippi aren’t laughing about a particular law regulating
Beer and religion have walked hand in hand for thousands of years, from ritualistic brewing in ancient Turkey to the Trappist monasteries of Belgium. And just like born-again Christianity rose from the ashes of burned-out spiritual lives, so did craft emerge from a beer culture that had pretty much dried up.
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 complaints and expectations about beer are reaching whole new levels. And the snobbery and superiority factors among craft beer lovers over macro drinkers are becoming shameful and embarrassing.
It’s pretty amazing these days to see how far women have come in the “male dominated” beer industry. There are more female brewers, homebrewers, sales people and overall fans of beer today than ever before.
Sparking an interest in craft beer is all about the right beer at the right moment, the one sip that radically transforms the imbiber’s way of thinking about beer.
Personally, we agree the world could use more session beers (good ones, of course). We just don’t feel it’s necessary to bash extreme beers in order to achieve this.
In undertaking your missionary duties as foot soldiers in the better-beer brigade, remember the keys to beer evangelism: Don’t judge or push, and always have fun. Happy converting.
Not to be confused with the beer geek, who is simply super passionate about beer, the beer snob is stuck in the cycle, taking their passion too seriously and to a level that’s actually counterproductive to spreading the good word about beer.
