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Beer As Myth. Myths R Us.
Posted by Maureen Ogle, November 15th, 2006
10 Comments
Filed under: Guests.
Most Fridays during my sophomore year of high school (about a million years ago), I dressed in green and gold (the school's colors) and attended that day's pep rally for whatever sport was in season. I wasn't interested in sports and understood nothing about the action on a football field or basketball court, but I went anyway.
Looking back, I realize I was engaging in a middle-class kid's version of joining a gang: School colors, pep rallies provided me with a place where I could hang my hat and my identity. The teams' victories and losses dished up what amounted to a small series of myths — albeit small, localized ones — around which my group could coalesce.
That memory bubbled up in my brain these past few weeks while I traveled the country talking to people about Ambitious Brew and reading the reviews of the book.
Some people, I realized, would never accept what I'd written because it undermined their particular myths; the ideas and beliefs that sustain their corner of the world. No matter how rigorously I documented the book's more contentious claims, their myth carried more weight than my facts.
The most controversial part of the book concerns the use of "adjuncts" such as corn and rice during the brewing process.
According to conventional wisdom, Big Brewers began these adjuncts to their beer after World War II. Why? So that they could lower their production costs (the idea being that corn and rice "stretch" a bushel of barley the same way that a cook might add pasta or rice to hamburger to make it go further).
Having slashed their costs, the brewers could sell the beer at a higher profit and screw consumers, who were forced to drink watery swill instead of rich, malty beer.
That's the "myth" of Big Brewing. It's near and dear to the hearts of many people who drink so-called "craft" beers — those ales and lagers pure of heart and malt made by honest brewers in small batches in small, quaint breweries. To drink craft beer is to spit in the eye of Big Brewers like Anheuser-Busch, the Antichrist of craft beer lovers everywhere.
Drinkers of craft beer also believe, fervently, in another myth: That they've won the battle of the beer. As many of them told me, "everyone" drinks craft beer now, and microbreweries are springing up like mushrooms.
Just one problem: neither myth adheres to reality, at least reality as measured by facts, evidence, and documentation.
American brewers began adding corn and rice to their beer in the 1860s and 1870s, not the 1950s. They did so not because they were trying to cut costs (although that's an issue for any manufacturer), but because they were trying to brew a particular style of beer using domestic ingredients.
As for craft brewers: They account for a mere six or seven percent of the beer sold in this country. The other 94% comes from Big Brewers. Anheuser-Busch alone accounts for about half the beer sold in the United States, and one brand of its brands, Budweiser, accounts for eighteen percent!
So much for the idea that "everyone" drinks craft beer.
But many craft beer drinkers don't want to hear this. They need to hang on to their image of the craft brewer as the David who is out to slay Goliath. They want to believe that Big Brewing is evil. It's their version of wearing school colors and cheering at pep rallies.
I don't blame them! Life is messy, complicated, and unpredictable. We all need something to hang on to.
Hence the attraction of something as powerful as religion, and something as seemingly trivial as MySpace.
Both provide places and ideas where people can hang their identity. Where they can find safe harbor in the comfort of ideas that take on the power of myth: Life makes little sense, but I've got god on my side. I'm not sure who I am or where I'm going, but I have lots of "friends" at MySpace and it's the hippest thing happening and take that! you old fogies who don't understand me!
So, too, the passion for craft brewing. Supporting craft beer means supporting small entrepreneurs and local business. Craft beer allows drinkers to express their sense of aesthetics and distance themselves from the masses.
That's all good. Unfortunately, the power of myth also means that no matter how much evidence I offer that contradicts a particular piece of that story, some people won't accept it. I'm wrong. They're right. End of story.
I hasten to add that none of this is meant as criticism of them. I know that my own obsession with exploring the American experience derives from my own need to connect to something.
And the people who are passionate about craft beer are an essential component of the craft brewing industry. If they lose interest, the craft beermakers won't stay in business, and we'll be back to where we were in the 1970s: a handful of giant brewers making a handful of brands of identical beers.
So we are myth and myth is us, and myth is good! Let's have a beer.
Books mentioned in this post
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Ambitious Brew: The Story of American Beer
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Ambitious Brew: The Story of American Beer
Maureen Ogle
Interesting post! The beer situation isn't all that different from any industry, I guess: there are always niche lovers who protect their interests like a wagon train circling the women and children, firing their rifles at the evil Big Industries and the dreaded, generic Mainstream encroaching on them.
Whether it's independent films, small press publishing, indie booksellers, or craft beers, the song remains the same.
Ironic that you mention MySpace, which has now become so mainstream that most of the members are of the over-30 crowd, while the youngsters who made it popular have jumped to their "own" thing, like FaceBook.
I might quibble that the high school clique correlation wouldn't be the types who cheered on the football team so much as the "outsiders" who listened to the Cure, dressed in all black, wore Goth makeup, and huddled in small groups, smoking clove cigarettes, under the mistaken belief that they were bucking conformity by conforming to a supposedly "nonconformist" ethos.
But that's merely a quibble.
OK you state all that like fact but where's the evidence you claim you have? where did you get these so-called 'facts' ?
Are you calling me out, Hank D.? You trying to make fun of my high school persona or something? Look, men can wear pale makeup with black eye shadow too, and Robert Smith really WAS a god — and Siouxsie was his goddess — and we made a DIFFERENCE in the world, all right??
To Randy Dean,
Uhh...you are aware that the reason this author is blogging here at Powells.com is because she is a historian who wrote a history of american beer? You might want to read the book.
Well Ms. Ogle most folks can't pay $7 a six-pack for so-called craft beer so they go with cheap light weight swill. So I don't ascribe to your mythbusting thesis as described. The alcohol content is low and aside from the big brewers' headliner brands you can get a 12-pack for five bucks. Keystone is particularly good from Coors. And besides if you have a shot of Wild Turkey with it who cares? Maybe whiskey is your next effort? Lot's of Americana there and perhaps the only thing left we actually make here.
Mark, you may want to take a look at AMBITIOUS BREW, which focuses on beer made here in the United States.
The last two chapters examine the microbrewing "revolution" of the past 30 years and the rise of a new kind of domestic brewing industry.
But, as I noted in my blog entry (which I think you must have misunderstood): only about 6% of of the beer sold in the US comes from these so-called "craft" breweries.
The VAST majority of Americans drink beer from A-B, Miller, and Coors. Drink those 12-packs that cost, as you say, five bucks.
Also thanks, Venkman, for your comment. You raise an interesting issue about the similarities between craft brewing and other "niche" industries. I think you're dead-on in that comparison.
Thanks to all of you for your input. Another example of what makes Powells so special!
No I understand that perfectly, they want it because it's cheap. If rich microbrews cost five bucks they'd buy those, but it's cheap that wins the market as with most mass-produced items, not "watered down." I don't think that's what you're saying.
Wait, wait. You're conceding that the mass domestics use rice and corn in their beers, just that they started the practice a lot sooner (and for different reasons) than commonly believed? Ouch. Talking about damning with faint praise.
Also, if so many people love cheap, light beer, why does Coors make Killians, SABMiller make Miller Choco Lager, A-B RedBridge etc., etc. Beer is stuck. People's tastes are changing and even million dollar ad campaigns can't hide it
i think this arguement is ridiculous.
i don't care about the use of adjuncts.
DogFishHead (an Excellent craft brewery!) uses all sorts of adjuncts, and their beers are very well crafted.... granted they use creative and different adjuncts to give the beer flavor instead of using rice as filler..... but still they use adjuncts.
i am a beer lover, but not a snob at all... i'm a yuppie hating scumbag, and proud of it.
i just like beer to taste good.
people who drink pissbeer (bud/miller/coors) drink it to get a buzz, anyone who says they enjoy those flavors is just as full of shyte as the brainwashed teens who claim to love the sound of every song Mtv tells them is cool.
as far as the rising of the craft brew industry, i'd say both sides are wrong.
on one side, more and more people discover tasty craft brewed beers every day, so to say it's obsolete is b.s.
and the fact that the big companies make 94 percent of the beers distributed does not take into account the fact that they all (as piper said) are starting to make craft brews.
however, on the other side of the coin, it is ridiculous to say "everyone is drinking it".