"It's just beer"

I agree, I tend to find myself "nerd raging" sometimes, but no matter what hobby or interest a person practices, they must temper their emotions and take a bigger picture perspective. While "Its just beer" is a biting broad brush phrase, it still gets that message across.

 

I think it's fair enough to encourage your mate not to brawl at a football match. No regrets there if it were me.

 

Dude, It's just Priest. No wait, I don't mean that!! You did good.

Agreeing with @rollom ... if someone here got into a fight over beer, the "it's just beer" card would probably be warranted.

 

Relax, it's just beer

 

To play devil's advocate to this, I think the type of people who let sports consume their lives REALLY let sports consume their lives. I have acquaintances who allow sports to affect their lives in ways I couldn't imagine beer doing for me. I've never been upset for multiple days about something beer-related like some people I've seen be upset about the outcome of a football game that they had no stock in and no control over.

I get what you are saying about the general principle of it but I don't think the beer crowd is anywhere near as irrationally consumed by their hobby as the sports crowd.

 

I use that term in regards to my buying habits all the time. Obviously no problem with me using it as a stress reliever. By saying it to other people it is equivalent of calm down. Not the most polite reply, but this is the internet and "it's only beer" is pretty tame comment for the internet and even this site

 

Well said.

Well said.

 

There's no right or wrong answer really..Some people are incredibly passionate about beer as a hobby and will travel hundreds or thousands of miles to get something really rare and other's could care less and veg out on a couch with a Bud..but being snobbish to either point or anywhere in between is kind of ridiculous..we all have different tastes..if someone thinks it's just beer..then that's fine..it's just an opinion.

 

I guess what I have to say has largely been said, but there is another side to "It's just beer." which is that its not worth taking seriously: "its swill meant to get the hois pollois drunk at football tailgates." I have never heard a wine person say "It's just wine."

Beer is special and should be treated with respect in terms of glassware, serving temperatures, quality ingredients, and quality practices. I do take my beer seriously hefe's should be in weizen glasses, higher ABV in tulips and snifters. That being said I never want to seem overbearing about my taste to my friends (although I am frequently a butt of their jokes), because I don't want beer to be like wine and other luxury products like watches and cigars. What I love about beer is that I can walk into a grocery store and purchase world-class beers for under 10 dollars. The same cannot be said for much else in life.

 

People who take things too seriously--no matter what they are--and who have no real perspective regarding what they are doing are an annoyance and make perceptions the way they are. I don't begrudge anyone their "whatever" they waited in line for; it's the attitude that somehow surrounds a lot of it. I find people who take themselves and their involvement in a hobby too seriously in the wrong way.

 

Yes

 

The OP should just hang up his gloves in the beer chasing games if he needs to justify in his mind "it's just beer" over and over. You wouldn't have thought that if you made an account on here. Fact is, you gotta pay to play, that's true for anything in life. You don't want to put the work in, then you are going to end up with the beer on the shelf at your local 7-11. I am a straight shooter, I tell it like it is on here. I have the means to chase most the rare beers but usually I end up locking horns with a certain beer brewed near my hometown in Shiner Texas.

You need realistic goals OP, just go for the beers that you actually want to try, not everyone these guys on here are hyping up. You know, flavor profile, what do you personally like? Chasing down beers is a fun activity if you got the stomach for the hunt.

 

I often wish this is how it worked in the beer world. Jack up the prices to meet demand. I'm surprised it hasn't happened yet to be honest.

 

Anyone who is a participating (read as: commenting on forums) member of a hobby site for beer officially loses the ability to say "it's just beer" in response to other, non-dysfunctional behaviors that indicate the same kind of interest and passion in beer that participation in a hobby website about beer might indicate.

Caring about glassware or bottling/packaging dates, being interested in intricate details about the look/smell/taste/feel of a beer, spending time/effort/money to access a desired beer, etc.--none of these things are dysfunctional behaviors within the context of spending time/effort on a hobby that you love. If someone is saying "it's just beer!" in regards to those behaviors and they are also passionate about beer, they are severely lacking in self-awareness.

All that said, when I see the phrase "it's just beer", it tends to come in two forms:

1. From someone who doesn't care about beer but feels the need to pass their own judgement on the fact that you do. This might be your BMC loyalist who thinks craft beers are "funny" or "weird". It also might be a spouse or acquaintance who just doesn't really have any interest in any kind of beer. For these people, I simply shrug my shoulders and smile. Not everyone has to share my passions/interests, and even when the phrase is said in that condescending way (the BMC loyalist), it's simply not worth my time to care.
2. From a fellow beer enthusiast who is saying it in response to someone who has let their own passion for beer get the better of their common decency. This might be in response to a jackass who feels that the appropriate response to disappointment is to bang on the doors of a business chanting "CIGAR CITY SUCKS". Or someone who posts a thread complaining about bottle limits on a sought-after beer at his local shop. Or even something as simple as the douchebag who shows up at a limited beer release or tapping and instead of getting into the back of the line, finds someone he/she knows up near the front of the line and does the classic "Chat and Cut" approach to get in the door earlier.

As far as I'm concerned, the latter is exactly why the phrase "it's just beer" was coined in the first place. Be passionate about beer, but remember at the end of the day that you should still see yourself as an advocate. An advocate is one who publicly supports/recommends a given cause. For the most part, it's implied that your advocacy is for something outside of your own personal wants/desires, even though the cause you support may benefit you as well. But the point is that the cause > your personal interest in the cause. An advocate is aware of the fact that other people besides himself stand to benefit by the furthering of the cause in question and acts accordingly. The behaviors I cited as examples in #2 all place the individual first--ahead of the brewers who make the thing we all love so much and ahead of the others who love it as well.

I have a feeling Franzia drinkers might say that to the person who spent a grand on some highly sought-after bottle of wine...

 

I love craft beer. No, I don't wait in lines mostly because crowds annoy me.

But, you just compared beer to Rolexes, cars, and the World Series.

You don't consume those and piss them out 10 minutes later.

It IS only beer..

 

Time = money. Standing in line is no different than paying extra for something, unless you have more money than you know what to do with.

 

I don't get mad at all....I get even.

 

Unless you're super rich, you're not allowed to have hobbies.

 

Sounds like the problem isn't the attitude that 'It's just beer', because it is just beer, so much as the tone people say it with. In my experience when people judge the hobbies of others they are really trying to excuse themselves for not caring as much. (Which they don't really have to do at all, not every hobby is for everyone.)

But almost everybody has something they spend ridiculous amounts of time and money on. People stand in line for every new Apple product even if it's only incrementally more useful than the one they bought six months ago. People buy season tickets to sports events. People spend more money on clothes, jewelry and makeup than most BAs spend on beer. People buy luxury cars when you can get equally useful cars for a fraction of the price.

And a lot of the reason they can justify that then look down on hobbies like beer is the basic assumption that a person should go to lengths to project their social status, and luxury cars and expensive technologies project social status better than expensive beer. So what they're really doing is rejecting the values of any person who doesn't live their life around their perceived placement on the social ladder in the eyes of the abstracted opposite sex.