I Write About Craft Beer

When I first watched the ‘I am a Craft Brewer’ video I felt an immense sense of pride. This video expressed so simply why I love beer and want to drink it and I felt that I was a small part of that magic. I watched the video again last week and was moved by the message once more. For me it’s a love letter and a thank you note in one; it’s thoughtful, emotional, meaningful and perfectly written, saying both ‘I love what I do’ and ‘thank you for loving what I do’. The follow up to this was an ‘I am a Home Brewer’ video, taking much of the same script but making it their own, in their garages and kitchens (this video couldn’t be a better symbol of itself and of how homebrew relates to craft beer). Watching these again inspired me...


I write about craft beer.

I love craft beer. I am passionate about craft beer.

I love writing about craft beer.

The market is dominated by large breweries who care more about how much they are selling and not what they are selling. I want this to change. I can be a part of helping this change.

Ask me why I don’t buy their beer and I will tell you. I will say it loud and proud that I support small brewers, that I support local brewers, that this beer was made by hand, lovingly crafted. Ask me why I don’t write about multi-national faceless breweries and I will tell you that I don’t drink their beer.

I care about craft beer. I am excited about what you’ll brew next. The choice of my next beer is so important. I can have anything I want and you give me that choice. You make it interesting, you make it exciting.

The internet is alive with passionate people wanting to tell others about their love of craft beer. We celebrate the innovation, independence, curiosity, collaboration and character of craft beers. We are a part of the beer family.

And as writers we are our own community. We support each other. I read what you write, you read what I write. I tell you when I think you’ve written something great and you tell me.

We do it alone, we do it with friends. We do it on blogs and websites, in papers and magazines, we use social media, we make videos, we talk about it; we do all that we can to tell others about craft beer so they can enjoy what we enjoy.

Some get up early, some go to sleep late. Most of us do it for nothing other than a sense of pride and a love of writing and great beer. I write about craft beer because I want to. I write about craft beer because it’s very important to me.

I write about craft beer because I can.

I’m not afraid to write what I think. I’m not afraid to promote, to enthuse or to challenge. I don’t care about the bad stuff, that doesn’t matter. It’s the good beer I care about and I want to tell others about it.

I am stylistically adventurous and categorically devoted to writing about great beer. I’m not afraid to be interesting and to write things that you won’t see anywhere else. I’m not afraid to be creative, innovative, different.

Tell me that I don’t write proper sentences, that this paragraph is too short, that some of these words aren’t real. I don’t care about that.

I write about craft beer and I can do that.

Beer is capturing the minds of the world and I am proud to be part of changing its reputation from lowly to elevated. I will illuminate the strengths of craft beer. I will stick true to my standards and my beliefs. I will educate those who seek to understand what the craft brewers have created.

Tell me I can’t be taken seriously because I write about beer.

Tell me that it’s stupid to associate eloquence to that liquid in my glass.

Tell me I’m wasting my time.

I am not wasting my time.

Together we can spread the message.

I am inspired by the beers I drink - by the beers you brew. I want to inspire with the words that I write. I want to educate others about great beer, tell them how it tastes, tell them why this is better than that, tell them why this beer is important.

I will drink good beer, lovingly made. I will tell others about it because I write about craft beer.

I write about craft beer.

So here’s a toast. To everyone who makes the beer so that we can write about it.

And to everyone who writes about it: cheers. We write about craft beer. Here’s to you. To us.

Beer with Character; Characters with Beer

I posted here about writing a novel and writing in general. Of the stages of writing, the early creative planning is my favourite part. It’s where the characters are turned into real people, where they grow and develop and pop out into 3D. I’ve been working on a new idea for a while now. It jumped into my head in the middle of a meeting one day at work and has been bounding around since then, getting bigger and more in focus. I’ve now sorted out pretty much everything – characters, names, places, tone, mood, plot, story, narrative – but there’s a few things that I want some help with as I start writing, a few of the smaller details. And guess what?! This story is about beer (here’s the gist: think American Psycho meets Sideways (the film, not the book - the book is unreadably bad) meets Perfume in a brewery).

Here’s some background. The story is essentially about two brewers. It’s (probably) based in North California. The protagonist is at The Wagon Brew. Co and the antagonist is at the Second Sunday Brewery. Both are micros. Both are adventurous brewers. Both have their core range of beers and seasonal extras and specials. Second Sunday is more established and award-winning; The Wagon is new and struggling to get started, especially with Second Sunday doing so well. I won’t tell you anything more about story just yet…

The Wagon Brew Co. is sorted and I know the plan for it. But the Second Sunday Brewery beers have not been finalised. The brewer’s name is Chase Burton. He’s a celebrated home-brewer who decided to start his own commercial brewery. The story begins as he is winning an award for best beer at a beer festival. His core range will involve the expected pale ales, IPAs, stouts, ESBs, plus DIPAs and imperial stouts. There will also be a few Belgian styles and ‘clones’, for which he is well known. There will also be some barrel-aging. And here’s where I need your help: I need beer names, I need beer descriptions, I need creative ideas for new beers. The brews can be strong or weak, pale or dark, lager or ale, one-offs or regulars, cask-only or keg or bottled. Just go crazy and throw a load of ideas at me but remember that this is fiction and not fantasy, so keep them real and possible but take inspiration from anywhere and feel free to experiment with different ingredients and styles. If any stick and I like it then I’ll name a character after you.

Inspire me!

Whenever I tell a mate that I’m writing they always ask if they are in it. I don’t know why. Oh and I posted the picture at the top to twitter this morning. I was working on the quick and early designs for The Wagon’s logo. If anyone has any ideas for what it could look like then let me know. And if Second Sunday inspires anything in you then shout as I haven’t finished that logo yet either.

Beer with a Story

There’s something about the creative possibility of big beer which excites me. I found this article in the New Yorker and this article by Michael Jackson about extreme brewing and Sam Calagione and they really are superb reads. If you haven’t already read them, and you love the creativity behind beer, then you must take a look at them. They aren't short, especially not the New Yorker, so get a beer and sit down and take the time out. They are fascinating, inspiring, exciting. They form part of the essence and ethic of why I love beer so much.

The articles show the heart of Dogfish Head brewery and the craft/extreme beer movement in general. The New Yorker is punctuated by the always-intelligent Garrett Oliver who provides the malt to Calagione’s hops while Michael Jackson grabs hold of the creative side of things. And that's what it's all about. It's not just about getting the hardest or the fastest on the extreme beer roller-coaster, it’s about creating works of art, and for some of Calagione’s beers it’s about rejuvenating ancient works of art.

Many of the beers have a story. The Palo Santo Marron, for example, is aged in a super-rare and super-expensive barrel ($140,000 expensive). Calagione explains the inspiration for the continuous hopping of the 60/90/120 Minute IPA series (the combination of a chef talking about seasoning food and a kids game). And he is recreating history with post-modernised nods towards past drinking - Midas Touch, Sah’tea, Pangaea, Theobroma and Chateau Jiahu.

I may be fickle and romantic but this kind of thing really grabs me. Maybe it’s a desire to understand past drinking, maybe it’s the scooper in me who wants to try everything going, maybe I just can’t resist the premise, whatever it is I feel an enormous thirst towards a beer with a story. Especially one told by someone like Sam Calagione.

But what do you think? Do you care about the stories behind particular beers or doesn’t it bother you? Can the story behind a beer make it ‘better’ or more appealing than it deserves to be? What about recreations of old recipes – good or bad? Does the article about DFH make you want to try the beers or does it have the opposite effect?

If I Were a Brewer...

…these are some of the fantasy beers that I’d want to brew.

A 4%ABV mild brewed with fresh cherries. Just because there aren’t enough 4% milds brewed with fresh cherries.

A 5%ABV oatmeal stout with a decently thick body, lots of chocolatey character and hopped with Santiam, Cascade, Crystal and a heck of a lot of Centennials. A chocolate orange bomb. I would also develop a 10%+ version of this.

A porter with peanut puree in, around 9%ABV, lots of toasty-bready-dark chocolate flavour and aged with fresh raspberries. Peanut butter, jam and chocolate sandwich in a glass. (And yes, I am aware of the Shorts Uber Goober beer which is similar to this and I really want to try it!)

Carrot cake beer. Somewhere between 6%-8%ABV, a malty base with lots of dried fruit sweetness (probably from the combo of pale malt and dark sugar), fresh carrot juice, some spices (cinnamon, nutmeg, clove), citrusy and earthy hops and fermented with a Belgian yeast.

A breakfast beer. Coffee oatmeal stout with blueberries, maple syrup and a smoky-savoury note from some smoked malts.

A quadruple-IPA. Super-strong and super-bitter (circa 15% and 150IBUs). Served with a teabag of more fresh hops in the glass for those who want even more bitterness (maybe I'd even develop a special dry-hop glass with a mesh compartment at the bottom to hold the hop bag).

A perfect lawnmower beer. 4%, best served ice cold and drunk from the bottle, a pale ale with plenty of sweet caramel and biscuity malt base and quenching citrusy-juicy hops. There should be so many of these beers around but I’ve yet to find one that I love.

I’d like to develop a mixing project quartet . They’d all be different (probably an IPA, stout, fruit beer and barley wine) called something exciting like 1, 2, 3 and 4 and the idea is that they're made to be mixed so that the drinker can create their own beers and experiment with mixing. For example, they might want to mix 1 and 4 to create a super hoppy barley wine, or maybe 2 and 3 to have a fruity stout. And if there were four beers to blend then there’s a lot of potential outcomes. Could be a fun and creative concept? And of course, the beers would work as single brews in their own right if the drinker didn't want to mix.

I’d perfectly combine Pliny the Elder and Ruination IPA to create Pliny the Ruinator!

As a homebrewer I would create perfect clones of some of my favourite beers so that I could drink them any time I liked. Or as a commercial brewer I'd want a regular range which included an IPA, a ‘house’ or best ale, a mild and a stout, with super-sized versions of all of them (for example, there'd be a 5% IPA and an 8% IPA, a 4% best ale and a 9% barley wine…), plus seasonals that include a Belgian-style ale, some barrel-aged experiments (including cherry brandy casks and calvados) and a fresh hop beer.

What would your fantasy (home)brewery make?

And if any brewery does any of these already then let me know. Or, if any breweries want to try these then go for it, just let me know when they are done so that I can try them!

Beer and Fiction

I don’t just write about beer. I own two pencils: one for beer, one for fiction. I’ve worked on a couple of screenplays and I’ve just started a novel. Generally I write fiction in the morning before work and I write about food and beer in the evenings. What I’ve realised recently is that the two are not mutually exclusive.

When I write fiction I’m creating whole worlds: entire cities of characters; moods, tones, emotions; plot, drive, pace, desire; laughter, tears, sex, violence; places, colours, sounds, smells, temperatures; heroes, villains, lovers. And I do this all with the words that I order on the page.

A lot of my beer writing comes in the form of tasting notes. Sometimes I write these up for the blog, other times they stay in my notebook for my own reference and because I’m a beer geek. But writing tasting notes is not just an exercise in beer geekyness; it wakes up my creativity: when I smell and taste a beer I have to connect something real and physical with memories I have of flavours and experiences and then put words to them. And I think about potential food pairing too, matching flavours, ingredients, combinations, textures, temperatures, recipes.

Beer writing is me experiencing something tangible that is in front of me; fiction is created within me. Yet both beer and fiction have colours and flavours and textures and smells; both require me to think creatively to be able to describe what I experience – real world or story world; both describe the sensations of the senses; both need to be written well to be best understood; both have my own style. Both allow me to flex my bulging writing muscle.

(Please Note: I am not a washed up drunk wannabe screenwriter or novelist who uses the title of ‘Beer Writer’ to excuse myself, and I never write when I’ve had more than one beer – that’s a slippery downward slope! It is perhaps worth noting that some of the greatest writers of all time have been tremendous drunks: Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Truman Capote, William Faulkner…)