#a lot like beer. they tested the concoction recently and discovered it was more like meth

[david-watts]

combine the fancy flavoured salt and the cheese knife I bought myself. I feel fancy actually

[nerdyfoodandbeercollector-blog]

Beer Snob, what’s in a name?

If you haven’t noticed yet, I kinda have a thing for beer. Don’t worry, it isn’t like I make it obvious or anything (look at the signs: this is a beer and food blog. I am often wearing brewery swag or a flannel shirt, the quintessential beer employee uniform. I send you a lot of pictures and snaps of beer. Did I mention this is a beer and food blog?). Even though I am (not) quiet about it, it is something I have become passionate about. I pride myself in being a true beer snob. 

But what does that mean? I don’t try and push super heavy beer down your throat. I don’t go around knocking red solo cups of piss water out of your hand. I don’t openly bash people’s choices when they order, and I don’t go around correcting your pronunciation of “brettanomyces” (it is pronounced BRETT-an-Oh– you know what, just call it Brett). Well, I guess it means, for me at least, that I tend to like a lot of different styles and I like to appreciate and enjoy all sorts of different flavors. It means that I care about the “craft” of brewing and not just its finished product. It means that I think beer can be a great unify-er, bringing people from all walks of life together. It means that I care about the amount of work, sweat, tears, and (sometimes) blood that goes into making even a small batch of beer. It means I try to deconstruct the flavors that make a beer and appreciate each one as well as the whole. It means I am passionate about good tasting beer.

From as far back as I can remember, my family has enjoyed drinking socially. My parents like wine, they like beer, they even enjoy the once-and-awhile nightcap. My dad would get excited about sharing a new bottle of red he discovered from his local shop (and since all dads are the first hipsters, I am sure it was a bottle you’d never heard of before). My step-dad, who is Dutch, loved and still loves his Belgian beers. My grandparents enjoyed their light, American piss-water (Bud was always the preferred can). And so, there was alcohol at almost every family dinner party my mom would throw and at most family dinners. But the goal was never to get drunk or to pass out. There was never a risk of someone needing a cab to get home. I believe that this instilled in me the idea that you can drink alcohol because you enjoy the way it tastes and because you want to highlight the flavors of a meal or to share a new bottle of something with friends and family. I learned that there were more important aspects of the beverage than just the alcoholic content (note, that still doesn’t stop me from looking at the ABV column on most menus first to get the best bang for my buck). And this isn’t to say I didn’t ever get drunk (of course I have) or that I wasn’t ever irresponsible (oh boy, this one trip to Russia…), it just means that from my parents, I learned how to truly appreciate beer. And I am grateful for that. 

Early on in college, I learned that the beer of choice often came in a 24 or 30 pack for $16.99 (think Coors, Bud, Miller, McGolden, and even the ever-elusive Beer 30) and the sole purpose of this beer was to drink a lot of it fast in the hope of getting you drunk, or at the very least, tipsy. While I liked getting tipsy, I needed to drink A LOT of that sparkling water-like beer to even come close. And I couldn’t taste any of the ingredients, so what was the point? I decided that I wanted, and would eventually come to love, beer that actually tastes good. Imagine that! Ingredients picked to play off each other and balance each other; beer crafted, not just as a cog in some big company’s machine. There’s something about drinking a delicious, layered, well-designed beer and enjoying it for what it is instead of looking for 30 tasteless beers to drink fast enough to get tanked before your sister’s recital (don’t ask).  And so if I was going to drink my bread instead of eating it, then I decided early on that I was going to get picky enough to make sure I chose the calories I actually wanted. And I never looked back.

But while my level of interest in beer only increased as I became more passionate about supporting local breweries, I never got the itch to brew my own beer. Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing more rewarding than trying a beer you made in your mom’s shitty soup pot and actually thinking, “hey, this isn’t half bad!” And it can be pretty cost effective if you get into it enough to brew beer regularly. And, I am told, after a few times, you get the process and rhythm down that you can be brewing every few weeks as if it is second nature. So why haven’t I truly taken the plunge?  There’s just so much cleaning involved! The slightest bit of dust or bacteria could ruin hours of work, and I just can’t handle that kind of pressure, I guess. Having helped a few friends and then brewed a beer myself a couple of times, I have an increasing amount of respect and admiration for brewers, both professional, master brewers and the novice home brewer.

Recently, I was lucky enough to design and help brew my own beer at Sisyphus Brewing. And so, the “Orange You Glad You Like Chocolate” stout was born. But it was during this experience that I got to see what it was like to be a brewer for a day.

“It’s a lot of waiting around,” says Nick Walby, the new head brewer over at Sisyphus.  “Some days, most of what I do is just sit and wait.” Indeed, after grinding the malts and adding them to the mash, and then starting the boil, most of our time was spent sitting and talking about soccer (he’s an Arsenal fan, I’m a Liverpool lad). Sure, we were able to check out some of the other beers sitting in fermenters or bright tanks, and we cleaned as much as we could, but that was pretty much it. So not only do brewers have to practice and test making new recipes from scratch or be meticulous about how they want to transfer the fermented beer into a bright tank, but they have to find a way to keep themselves occupied while they wait for their concoction to finish boiling. Of course, that comes with its own set of tasks, too. “We have to make sure to add the hops at certain periods during the boil. That’s how we can determine things like bitterness and hop flavor.” This might seem so basic, so straightforward to some, but during my time as a Brand Ambassador, I learned that a lot of people don’t know what exactly goes into making a beer. And even with me, someone that knows the process very well, it was a completely different experience to do it first hand at an actual brewery instead of in a friend’s garage. Here, I got to really see the impact that adding each ingredient at each stage has on the final product. I suppose, then, it makes sense that brewers just gotta keep practicing and experimenting with different flavors and ingredients until they come out with the product they envisioned. And since brewing takes all day and fermenting takes weeks, you can see that you need to have patience. “Patience might be the most important ingredient, and not everyone has that. And what makes it even harder is that sometimes you have to keep thinking about 10 different things at the same time to keep track for the rest of your day.”  So while the work day is broken up by a lot of downtime, you’re never truly not working. “It can be a grind.” I’ll say. At least when you homebrew, you have your own home to keep occupied. “It can get a little lonely, I suppose, but that’s part of the job sometimes. Plus there’s always something I’m sure I could be doing.”

I guess it takes a particular person and a lot of practice. While I enjoyed my experience immensely and it helps me appreciate the beers I drink and the breweries I visit all the more, I feel like, at this stage in my life, I’m all about drinking it, writing about it, and talking about it than I am about brewing it myself. I’ll keep my beer snob hat until the day I die.