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FOOD FIGHT

WINE & FOOD

To drink a beer called Maple Bacon

Coffee Porter is to say: Im better
than you
How fussy fans of artisan brewing brought hipster
snobbery to the everyman world of beer-drinking
Brendan O'Neill 4 June 2016

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I can forgive most hipster sins. The beards. The preference for vinyl records in an era
when you can have a million songs on a gadget in the arse pocket of your jeans. Even that
cereal caf. But so long as I live I will never forgive the hip for what theyve done to
beer.

Theyve spiked this most democratic drink with snobbery. The craft-beer movement,
manned by middle-class pseudo-blokes who would rather go to Raqqa than step foot in a
Wetherspoons, has brought the fussiness of the wine-sipper into the unfussy world of the
beer-drinker.
Beer snobs are easy to spot. They might use the word balletic to describe footballers.
They will convulse if you say, Lets have a Bud. And theyll bore you stiff with tales of
their experiments in home-brewing.
Microbreweries, defined in the US as producing fewer than 15,000 barrels of beer a year,
first emerged in Britain in the 1970s and spread to America in the 1980s. Theyre
generally a good thing: the more beer humanity makes, the better. But hip haters of
anything inauthentic have now moved into microbrewing and made it artisan. Which
used to mean things made by hand but now means things plebs dont buy that are
therefore good.
Theres been an explosion in wackily named craft beers. Arrogant Bastard Ale, anyone?
A bottle of Hoptimus Prime? Because whats the point in having a beer if you cant
Instagram its zany name, with the hashtag #craftbeer, natch, so that other likeminded
loathers of mass-produced booze can chortle over it between sips of their lovingly
fermented tipple. (They really do sip their beer. Its the most annoying thing about them.)
As for the flavours. The basic combo of starch, yeast and hops that kept humans happy
for centuries isnt enough for the beer snob. His beer has to be fruit-flavoured or nutty.
Theres a Doughnut Chocolate, Banana and Peanut Butter Ale. Not making this up.
Imagine ordering such a poncy concoction in a normal pub your face would be as
likely as your Instagram feed to be decorated with a bottle.
As with so much hip consumerism, the craft-beer irritant really wants to distinguish
himself from Them: ordinary people who eat at Maccy Ds, shop at Primark and
brace yourselves drink Stella Artois. That Stella is referred to as wife beater tells you
all you need to know about beer snobbery: we clever consumers of micro-beer just want
to satisfy our super-alert palates; they, the downers of pints of yellow slosh churned out
by a corporation, are made mad by their chosen poison.
Its not authenticity these weirdly consumerist critics of consumer society seek its
exclusivity, the feeling of belonging to a switched-on gang who, unlike the rest of us, can
resist the lure of the chain pub and its cheap pish. To drink Maple Bacon Coffee Porter

(seriously) is to say: Im better than you.

I hate this snootiness because beer is the everyman drink; after water and tea the most
popular drink on earth. Prince and pauper alike neck it. In the Middle Ages, when water
wasnt always safe, peasants turned to cheap, trusty beer for hydration. Now theres a
beer called The End of History costing 500 a bottle. Probably because the bottle is
inside a dead weasel. Really. These people.
Microbreweries, micro-restaurants (a restaurant with one table): why the obsession with
smallness? Big is more beautiful. Here are three mass-produced beers far better than any
craft beer Ive tried: Wife beater itself; it may have a fast-disappearing head and look
like urine but it delivers a beautiful kick of malt. Samuel Adams, a malty and sweet
vision in amber. (First brewed by one bloke in his Boston kitchen in 1984, now churning
out five million litres a year. To the purist, its a sellout.)
And finally Brooklyn Lager. This fancies itself as a hip beer, and is drunk by people who
love hip beer. But, considering it now produces 250,000 barrels a year and is available in
more than 20 countries, its well and truly one of the big boys. Made to a pre-Prohibition
recipe, its smooth, caramel-ish, and you can almost taste the bustle of early 20th-century
Brooklyn, when beer exactly like this was being guzzled, not sipped, by all: the great
classless social lubricant.
TAGGED

artisan beer, craft beer, Hipsters, microbreweries, porter, snobbery, Stella Artois,
Wetherspoons

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