Writing About Beer

A few recent comments and feedback received through this website have made accusations about me hiding behind the anonymity of the Internet for my unsupportable attacks against innocent craft brewers. Of course, I find such comments almost comical as I have never made any attempts to hide my identity or contact information, which are both easily available through some competent navigation of this page.

However, these objections do raise a somewhat valid point about beer-related content that is published online. With the advent of free blogs, blogging software and online social media, we find ourselves now saturated with craft beer content on all levels—the good and the bad, the interesting and the tedious and the ignorant, those we agree with and those we rail against. How should craft beer consumers choose whose efforts to spend time reading?

The first and primary requirement should not be about the brewing-centric content at all but about the quality of the writing. Craft beer consumers are quick to discount beers brewed with obvious flaws, or even those they simply consider mundane, yet week after week eagerly follow some absolutely horrible compositions that get posted online. The written language may be a dying art in our modern age, but it is still a skill to be practiced and perfected. Demand at least the same level of proficiency from your reading material as you would your own food and drink.

Another requirement of online substance should be originality. This online medium has made it too easy to repost and link to other meta-content rather than working to create one’s own. Too many beer blogs are not blogs at all but rather collections of connections to other material online, some news items and some of other beer blogs, and some not related to the brewing industry at all. A proper publication (even those online) should have a focus, and should be more than rambling content. If you demand original and distinctive in your craft beer choices, demand the same in your craft beer reading.

Naturally, those writing about craft beer should have at least some working knowledge of the brewing process, some knowledge of the industry and relevant ordinances, and some knowledge of how to properly evaluate the final product. Experts and amateurs alike find voices in online outlets, and both coexist on a stage that levels the grounds for the known and the unknown. Just as some extremely learned professional brewers are unable to compose a simple thesis, you also have talented amateurs that may never have entered a homebrew shop.

Perhaps the most problematic requirement regarding writing about beer is in its evaluation, as this seems the most widely prevalent theme chosen while being the most resistant to objective quantification. Many websites have sprouted that allow even casual users to compose a few lines about particular beers, and many participants choose to go beyond this and construct diaries online to journal their tasting notes. And when everyone’s palate and preferences are wide-ranging, how does one evaluate the evaluators?

Independent style guidelines do exist that are written and moderated by experienced committees both amateur and professional, and these are good as a starting point and as references. Ultimately, the value of someone’s craft beer review lies in their ability to adequately identify the ingredients, convey the flavors they can detect and support their impressions of said beer. A good evaluation should be less about whether you concur with the assessment and more about whether the author has effectively analyzed the beverage and effectually communicated that impression to the reader.

Whatever you choose to read online, regard it as intellectual consumption the same as popping a cap on a craft beer bottle is gastronomic consumption. The goal should not be to always read substance you agree with but instead authors that make you think and extend your opinion, understanding and appreciation of the world that is craft beer. And if you happen to learn something along the way, you are so much the better for it.

Glassware Matters

Most fans of craft beer collect branded beer glassware like stray dogs. Shelves are filled with all shapes and styles of beer glasses, most with brewery logos etched on their sides. Such brewery paraphernalia has become the currency of the craft beer market, bought and traded as often as the beers made to fill them.

Of course, every brewer will want you to drink their beer out of their particular glass—that is simply basic business marketing. Many will also claim that their glassware possesses specific design elements that can enhance the drinking experience, and bring out the flavors of the beverage to their fullest. But how much of this is true and how much is just promotional hype? Is specialized glassware even needed at all?

To start, you should always consume your beer from a clean, room temperature glass. Your palate can only detect five different flavors, which means that the majority of your tasting is done through the aroma. (This is why food tastes bland when you have a cold.) Sucking a beer through the narrow neck of a bottle robs you of much of the flavor of that beverage.

Pouring a beer into a glass also stirs up the carbonation in the beer, releasing even more aromatic elements as the head is formed as well as slightly oxygenating the drink. Think of pouring beer from a bottle to a glass the same as decanting a bottle of wine. No one would swill a wine directly from the bottle, and neither should you treat fine beer with any less respect.

Proper glassware should also only be kept at room temperature, or at the most lightly refrigerated. Serving beer in frozen mugs does nothing but crank down the dial on flavors, as cold suppresses the taste the same way that warmth facilitates it. In addition, a glass with frozen sides will only freeze the water out of the beer, leaving thin ice chunks floating in a beer that dilutes as they melt.

However, contrary to the multitude of glassware designs foisted upon consumers today, only two types of glassware are truly necessary to enjoy the vast majority of beer styles available. First and foremost is the basic tumbler or shaker pint, the standard serving vessel for most pubs and restaurants today. It is heavy, sturdy, functional and durable, and easy to replace if broken.

Many variations on this basic design can be found, such as the tulip pint glass or the nonic. The basic design is a roughly cylindrical shape that widens slightly at the top; thick sides are a plus but any further filigree or design elements are irrelevant and contribute nothing to the drinking experience. This is your basic, everyday, serviceable glass for most beer styles.

But for your more aromatic beers, one additional glass is necessary. This type would be your basic tulip stemware, which could also be a snifter, a goblet, a thistle or even a wine glass. This glassware is far more delicate, with thinner sides and a more intricate intent, and should be cared for accordingly. Breakage is common, and some particular items are not so easily replaced.

This tulip stemware has two attributes the basic, ordinary pint glass does not. The material is thinner than most glasses, which will allow the warmth from your hand to gently warm the cold beverage included therein. Many aromatic beers, especially the high-gravity barleywines or imperial stouts, only reach their full flavor potentials at cellar temperatures—temperatures about 10° to 20° warmer than the common storage medium of the refrigerator.

But the most important attribute of the tulip stemware is the shape itself. Unlike the pint glass—which is wider at the top—good stemware should narrow slightly at the rim, creating an overall bulb-like shape to the glass. This allows the aromatic nose to be better contained within the glass and sampled with a deep breath prior to each sip.

Anything beyond these two styles of glassware is vanity. There is nothing wrong with collecting many interesting and varied beer glasses, as we all have shelves lined with such beautiful brewery swag. But there should never be more than two that do not collect dust—the pint glass and the stemware—because there is no proven functional benefit beyond these two designs.

Don't Be a Ticker

The term railfan or railway enthusiast is used to describe an amateur hobbyist interested in commercial and industrial rail transport. These fans indulge their passion for trains by rail travel, building websites and gathering in groups with like-minded train buffs. They read books, write books, collect photos and other material related to rail engines and transit systems around the world.

Some individuals are derisively called trainspotters (a British term) by other enthusiastic railfans. These trainspotters have morphed their hobby into an obsession, and are usually regarded with contempt by other members of the practice. Trainspotters are more concerned with the competition than the content, taking great efforts to “spot” each and every type of train without a care or appreciation for the subject that other railfans feel they should.

The American craft beer scene has given birth to their own version of trainspotters. Called tickers for their penchant to tick beers off a largely arbitrary list, these obsessive fans of beer often care more about their lists and acquisitions than about the product itself. They live in a constant state of competition, always striving to be the first to try a new beer and then post a review of it online for all to see.

Sometimes, tickers blend into a crowd but often they are not difficult to identify. At beer festivals or at any social gathering where craft beer is served, some can be seen with heads down, writing in notebooks, photographing labels or even collecting empty bottles to take home. Many have advanced from pen and paper to laptop computers or PDAs. Interactions with the general group at large are limited.

Tickers are also noted for writing full and detailed reviews of beers from the smallest of samples. Gatherings are specifically planned for new and rare beers, and bottles are passed around so that every person can taste just a few ounces of a new beer. These activities are only fueled by online rating websites like Rate Beer and Beer Advocate and their competitive point systems.

Addressing this last point first, many believe that a craft beer cannot be adequately judged short of a full serving, or without an adequate volume to consume. Some beers change their nature through the course of a full glass, and some mature for both good and ill as they warm. An otherwise tasty sip may turn cloying with a full serving, or an off-putting sourness may turn pleasant after just a few ounces. Many flavor elements may not be immediately apparent or detectable with only a brief sample.

Craft beer is an inherently social beverage, and it should be treated as such. It is to be shared and enjoyed among comrades, exchanging opinions about the tastes and discoveries of the flavors. It is not meant to be consumed apart from the group but instead as part of the group. Conversation enhances the enjoyment and appreciation of craft beer, not ignoring others to scribble meaningless notes in a futile competition.

This is not to say that reviewing beer is bad, or these beer review websites are responsible for this behavior, or that small samples do not have their appropriate place. There is nothing wrong with jotting down a few tasting notes. However, our beerfan hobby should not turn into a mocked obsession, alienating other craft beer fans and reducing this pleasant drink to mere ticks on a list. We do not want this to be the image of craft beer taken away by those outside the subculture. Craft beer is meant to be savored, experienced, appreciated and shared.

Don’t be a ticker.

The Purpose of Reviewing Beer

Along with the growing popularity of craft beer comes the rising number of fan-based websites and personal blogs. These websites range from online diaries to sophisticated collective ratings systems, from very private first-person accounts to semi-professional and certified beer judges to encyclopedic communities of beer reviewers.

If you have spent any time at all looking up the details of your favorite craft beer, then you are probably familiar if not already a member of many of these websites. Two of the most prominent are Beer Advocate and Rate Beer, both of which have complex scoring scales and product rankings. Others include the Oxford Bottled Beer Database, BeerPal and dozens of other home-spun efforts to emulate the largest of these. With the low threshold of scripting and database tools available on the cheap, new beer-rating websites are developed all the time.

To the interactive websites, we can add the personal beer blogs. These run the full gamut of quality and experience, from the novice just discovering craft beer and stringing together dangling participles with blurry digital photos to the seasoned craft beer consumers, homebrewers and judges to the professional columnists and writers for whom their blog is just another media outlet for their work. But what is the purpose behind all this online beer rating, ranking, wrangling and reviewing?

Some of these websites, especially the larger ones, have developed into both online and actual public communities of like-minded craft beer hobbyists. A few have even gone so far as to develop rivalries and conflicting factions, with their published “best of” lists being picked up by the general media investigating this craft beer phenomenon — which are all topics for another time. However, our focus here is on the purpose of actually writing a personal review of a single craft beer.

First, more writing is always a good thing. In our digital age of e-communication and a thousand channels of pap on the television, it is good to focus on our language skills again. Writing (about any topic, not just beer) is an exercise for the brain. One should work out their mental muscles no less than their physical muscles, and a goal of a sharp mind should be just as important as the definition of your abs.

Along that same argument, writing a review of a craft beer forces you to really think about that beer. Instead of gulping down a beverage, or even slowly sipping one of your faves, you are required to pay close attention to the sensations coming from your palate and translate these signals into understandable prose. You will have to analyze aromas, flavors, textures and even colors that are ordinarily amalgamated parts of the complete craft beer product.

With the analysis, you must also bring your personal beer experience. You attempt to isolate tastes and aromatics and connect each of them with brewing ingredients, other beers, even foods and chemicals. You make links with events, places and memories, both associated with the beer or with unrelated yet similar sensations. Some craft beer reviews can be turn out to be surprisingly personal.

In short, reviewing craft beer makes you think about what you are consuming, which in essence is the entire motivation behind the craft beer movement. Bland products are fit only for a quick, cursory consumption, and are so by willful product design. But if you are spending your money and adding those calories, there should be more to it than just a forgettable experience. Make sure to leave a record of that.