Is Craft Beer Cringe Right Now?

Rock and Roll didn't become popular in a vacuum. Lieber and Stoller wrote for Big Mama Thornton and the Coasters.. Pat Boone sang covers of Little Richard. To say flatly that the cultures were different seems to deny the common experiences of Americans from different social groups, even recent immigrants. The fact is that black contributions to R&R are significant. The question of who deserves the bulk of the "credit" can be debated.

 

I dunno, maybe I'm totally out of the loop, but as far as I am aware black Americans never excluded anyone else from playing or profiting off of any music.

Did you even look at a dictionary at all? Are you sure you even know what "appropriation" means? It's not a secret word

 

Bold statement. The kind that indicates you are no longer talking with any kind of knowledge about said topic. I would refer to Japonisme, the 19th century trend as a starting place.
Something else that is cringe about the American beer drinker is their tendency to bloviate. Which is about 6 pages of responses to the OP.

 

The article defines cringe as a “straight white dude who possesses no self-awareness” and peak cringe as breweries who think they have a “free pass to ignore desperately needed DEI improvements.”

Examples of recent cringeworthy behavior in the BA community include:

• The majority of the responses in this thread failing to even mention (or even notice?) the article is largely about racism, sexism and homophobia.
• A good number of the replies that do have that basic level of awareness describing concerns the article raises as “wokeness” or “hatred of straight white men.”
• The recent rise in transphobic posts on the site, including intentional misgendering, debates on who is and isn’t a “real woman,” dog whistles and more.

I’m sure we can all come up with more examples contemporary BA cringe — but, yeah, the reporter and Gen Z don’t know what they’re talking about.

 

In a 2022 study Pew Research found 60% of Americans believe gender is determined by sex assigned at birth. That’s the majority of the country. So if the majority of the country believes gender doesn’t change, why would we blame this on craft beer?

 

absurdly low percentage of individuals who are evidently able to think/react instinctively.

american humans have devolved into sheep.

sad.

 

I don't think it's craft beers fault in some vacuum, but the younger generation is increasingly diverse and tolerant, so seems like craft beer can work on being more inclusive or become increasingly niche. I'm a millenial, and I've been to some rare places that are black driven (i.e., Harlem Hops, a top NYC craft beer bar black owned and heavily patronized by the local black population), and as a white guy the first time I went I definitely had to mentally adjust to standing out. Everyone was super friendly and wanted to talk beer/cultural stuff whatever, like any good spot, but it is a different feeling walking into it the first time. I imagine it as the other way around the feeling could be even more intense (as a white guy I'm not worried about bigotry or paranoia etc the way minorities walking into a white dominated beer bar/brewery might be).

Beyond that I thought breweries liked money. Is that not the case? Corporations in general don't do DEI etc for ethical reasons. They want trans peoples' money and talent pool. They want black peoples' money and talent pool.

Of course the reality is conservatives are trying to develop some separate cultural/economic sphere of generally inferior products, like at the daily mail, so yeah I'm sure some places will try to fill that niche rather than reach out or make a quality product/experience in some conservative dominated areas.

 

No one is challenging craft beer to that. But, if you want to bring that belief into a conversation with some of it involved. I have both worked with, and been friends with a variety of humans who will challenge that. Either by birth because hermaphrodites do exist, or by choice. Thus. I can laugh at you and say that you are just being ignorant. This belief, and or the arrogance it comes with is cringe worthy. And it has turned people off. Because, it is taking an oppressive stance.
I'm drinking a brown ale. Americanized.

 

Your post prompted me to actually read the article, which I had previously only skimmed. I would generally concur with your points, made independently, but the author of the piece seems to focus mainly on social media commentary and what Gen Z thinks about beer culture. I think some of the reactions in this thread (mine included) are based on not giving a shit about either of these things.

Yes, beer needs to be more diverse and inclusive if it hopes to grow—anything done within the culture that is actively hostile to communities of color, LGBTQ+, women, etc. is just shooting itself in the foot. Some breweries/beer spaces choose to be more actively welcoming to these groups; others, not so much. I’m a live-and-let-live kind of guy (and yes, a bearded straight white male when I neglect to shave, which is most of the time)—so I think if places that make and serve good beer are not actively doing things to make themselves exclusionary to non-typical customers, then that should be enough. If they want to do more, great. Now I’ll admit maybe this is my privilege talking. But I don’t think other subcultures are necessarily any more welcoming to “outsider” groups than beer is. If beer is “cringe” because many of its most active devotees are a little weird/out of the mainstream, then guilty as charged, I guess.

One personal analogy I can think of, to try to see past my privilege, is my experience years ago being a stay-at-home dad when our daughter was between ages 0 and 2 (she’s 17 now). I would take her to community centers and other organized “parent/child” activities—it was good socialization time for both my daughter and me (anyone who has been an at-home parent for any length of time knows how lonely it can be). Most of the other parents at these events were moms. Was I treated differently as one of the few dads there? Of course. Was I instantly welcomed into the groups? Not especially. Did I expect things to be any different? No. I was doing what I needed to do for myself and my daughter—and as long as I wasn’t treated as a complete outsider, made to feel unwelcome, or faced with active hostility, I was fine with it. I understood that the moms probably wanted a space to talk to each other about their experiences with other moms, and I respected that. I took what I could from the experience but I didn’t expect more. The moms were all nice to me and some were curious about how my wife and I had reached the unorthodox arrangement (probably less so now) that we did—we found some commonalities about parenting and other aspects that were different for moms vs. dads. But at the end of the day I remained mostly an outsider within the stay-at-home parenting community, and I was OK with that. It was a couple years of my life and an experience I wouldn’t trade for anything, but I had never planned for it to be more than that.

So back to beer, as far as I’m aware no brewpubs are actively discriminating against non-straight-white males. If they are then that is shameful and it needs to stop. But how far out of their way do they have to go to be perceived as “welcoming”? What exactly is wrong with beer geeks getting together in a public space and doing their thing if they aren’t harming or insulting anyone else? How is it different from other subcultures, like wine drinking, book clubs, or gaming?

 

The history of systemic barriers to financial security black people have faced in this country is the elephant in this room. Craft beer is like golf and cycling, it's a hobby that requires leisure time and disposable income, which white people have more of on average. Gen Z's affinity for virtue signaling and hand waving over systemic injustices seems misplaced here; fix the problems that limit black socioeconomic mobility, and we will see better black and latino representation in historically white leisure activities. Until then, it seems a bit tone deaf to be bending over backwards to beckon underrepresented communities into a world of $20 four packs and alcohol-related health problems. Participation in craft beer culture may reflect privilege, but it doesn't come with any societal advantages, so any accusations of gatekeeping by white people is ridiculous. DEI efforts should focus on including underrepresented communities in the institutions that have boosted white socioeconomic status, namely well paying professions and educational opportunities.

 

There has been cringe craft beer for a very long time.
Stone's "arrogant bastard" attitude, misogynist imagery, poop and fart jokes, etc. Not that these things are always bad, per se, but cringe, yes.

Also, I agree; I don't say "craft beer" much anymore. It's a distinction no longer necessary to make. Breweries like Boston Beer Co. have become a macro brewery, very few of the OG American breweries are still independent, and beer styles besides the usual macro adjunct lager fare are commonplace. IPA, stouts, and pilsners are available in nearly every bar and store.
It's all beer--only the styles and corporations differ.

 

When have the majority of Americans ever been wrong?

I also suspect that if you check the cross tabs on that poll, you’ll find that younger generations are better informed.

You should Google “ratmagnet.” You’ll find dozens of examples of breweries discriminating against women and people of color.

(The fact that so many BAs continue posting their beers is another example of cringe.)

Yes, the systemic barriers to financial security that Black Americans, other people of color and women face are serious problems directly related to who owns the majority of breweries in this country. That said, none of the examples of cringe I cited require wealth redistribution to address.

 

Lol! Todd came onto Beer Talk, poked the bear and left.

 

The author of this article should have cited those stories as actual examples of cringe worthy behavior. Instead, she chooses to simply point at the lack of diversity and the perception that the industry "isn't doing enough" (which is only "proven" by citing the lack of diversity) to alter the racial and gender make up of itself as the cringe aspect.

That's what I see a lot of people responding to. The authors comments on race and gender in brewing amount to saying "there's too many straight white guys, that's cringe". That's a pretty brain dead take, from my perspective. There's no way that I can imagine that a female beer writer isn't aware of the many stories contained in the ratmagnet threads so I'm lead to the conclusion that it's not those specific behaviors that she is offended by so much as the mere fact of the demographics.

The rest of the cringe aspects are just people taking something seriously that others view as unserious. I get that, I've definitely felt that way towards people who care deeply about things I see as trivial, but I think we can all recognize that that perspective is pretty immature and most people grow out of that attitude and learn to just let people nerd out about their stuff and leave them be. So I think that's why the racial and gender comments get the most focus in responses. There's a lot more wrapped up in that than "kids think their parents generation are dorks".

 

And made us all "cringe"!?!

Cheers!

 

I Googled it but a lot of the info appears to be on social media sites for which I have no account, but I get the point. Like I said, if this is happening then it is shameful and it needs to stop. I condemn it unequivocally. I don’t hang out at breweries very often, but I’ve never witnessed any kind of harassment or discrimination. The ratio of men to women is typically 6 to 4, maybe 7 to 3. Mostly white but not exclusively. I generally don’t ask people about their sexual orientation in such environments. So again, this kind of behavior should be called out and everyone should be made to feel welcome in these spaces. If some people do not feel welcome then the beer community needs to do better.

 

I agree with a lot that. Doesn’t mean that many of the responses to the article aren’t still cringeworthy in and of themselves.

Hundreds of women in the industry have shared their accounts of it happening, so you can probably drop the “if” and continue on with the unequivocal condemnations.

 

Sure, just let me know as a consumer what more I can do. Is there a list of breweries that are known to engage in such practices so I can be sure not to support them? Otherwise I guess I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do with any of this. For some people, apparently, simply being a 54-year-old straight white male with facial hair is cringe, and there’s nothing I can do about any of that—except shave, maybe.

 

Some very shallow thinking in the "mind" of a taster who believes "In my mind, if you have to develop a taste for something, you don’t like it." Hard to believe all tastes have to be immediately loved to avoid cringing! What if you really like tasting bitterness? And is beer really "liquid that’s just supposed to accompany fun"?! Ooof! I may be an old white straight beer snob, but I believe snobbery is more worth cultivating, developing, understanding and appreciating than cringing at difficult stuff and going for the fun and easy.