Franconian Beer Message Board
Gosh! |
| Posted by Nick B. on 2016-02-28 06:22:01 |
| That was a lot of back-n-forth, just now got around to reading it. First off, I would say that the term "craft" beer was indeed coined by contract brewers like Jim Koch and Pete Slosberg, to describe the good beer they were having brewed at the big old, bad macrobreweries. They couldn't be called "microbrewed" or "brewpub" beer. This term then got spread out by common usage to cover all the new sort of beer that was not like the bland, industrial adjunct lager from the macros. I've been rolling my eyes at it for >20 years now, it's just simply unnecessary. Call the good beer "beer" and that other industrial adjuct crap "crap". Anyway. We Oregonian homebrewers certainly had easy access to all sorts of hops and yeasts in the early 90's, never brewed with a kit myself, having started right off with an extract recipe of that Elbo Nertke Brown Ale or whatever Charlie P's recipe is. There were two homebrew shops in 45,000 person Corvallis, a couple in Salem. Hop plugs...there's something I miss from back then. Blasted evil pellets... On post-post-post-modern keg invading the UK. Of course what's happened is that young people just want to be different to their parents. Nothing new there. Their parents drink UK lager or "boring" cask ale (setting aside the fact that cask ale apparently actually started getting more diverse starting in the 90's, so "craft" in and of itself), and so, hey, look at this keg US stuff. Nothing evil about this except the gassiness. And again on the idea of how a nation's beer culture should remain locked in some original form. What then should US brewers be allowed to brew? Brewers of German descent may brew traditional German styles, whereas those of British extraction may brew British styles? What about me and my German/British/Czech extraction? Guess I can brew whatever I want. Or do we exempt the US? On criticising or stereotyping people abroad. I think Americans are maybe just not used to being stereotyped as such. I learnt very early on living abroad that we do take ourselves, our beliefs, our politics, very much more *personally* than, say, Germans do. There are stereotypes for every nationality, I suppose. There was a group of African guys on the RE from München - Nürnberg last night. They were drinking those gigantic cans of FAXE (lager) and having a great time, being very outgoing and touchy-feely with each other, constantly smiling, you know, the way Africans are stereotyped to. Americans and baseball caps. Germans and their complaining of crappy bread and digestive troubles whilst travelling abroad. Dutchmen being even more direct than Germans about how to do something correctly or not, but also being more tolerant of other ideas. Britons (note spelling Barry!) getting plastered on litres of bland Münchner helles. Well, I suppose they're not alone there. Fun stuff. |
| Followups: |
 Gosh! by Barry on 2016-02-28 08:23:21 |
| Gosh! by Barry on 2016-02-28 11:33:01 |