Over the long weekend, I took a bit of time to get caught up on some online reading, getting to beer blogs I enjoy and haven’t gotten around to hitting in recent days or weeks. During my perusing, I read a piece by Toronto-based beer writer Jordan St. John at his St. John’s Wort blog.Jordan posts less frequently than many, but his posts are longer and always thoughtful and reflective. He has a gentle, self-deprecating tone to his missives that I particularly appreciate.

I mention this not to give him a shameless plug (but I guess it is that, too), but because his latest post (which you can find here) lingered with me for the rest of the weekend. Clearly he got me thinking. He wrote about the nature of craft beer as a business and the challenges of being a beer writer. To exorcize the post from my brain, and thus allow me to get on with my regular week. I thought I would jot down some of my reactions and considerations in response to his piece, and thus possibly add to the “echo chamber” he discusses in the piece.

St. John is correct when he reminds us that craft beer, despite the passion underlying it, remains a business. The men and women devoting themselves to making great beer must also SELL that beer, placing them squarely in the market (as opposed to hobby) end of the spectrum. He correctly mentions that craft brewers can be more interpersonal and human in selling their product, but he does seem to reduce their efforts to smaller scale versions of what the big guys do. And he is right to a point. But I think he misses and important shift that occurs when you move from mass-produced, multi-national beer to locally-handed crafted. The marketing methods may look similar, but there is a qualitative difference. And, I believe, at the core of that difference is an element of community. Craft brewers, at least those still rooted in a specific geographic location, develop a link to the people in their community that is impossible through tv ads, Facebook promotions and t-shirt giveaways.

To explain my point, let me offer a non-beer equivalent. I am a longtime patron of the Strathcona Farmer’s Market in Edmonton. I go for a variety of reasons – a commitment to buying local, the quality of the food, etc. But something else happened over the years as I toted my bags full of carrots, peppers and hummus down the aisles every week. I built relationships – personal relationships – with the vendors (who are, mostly, also the producers). They ask about my kids, I ask about theirs. They talk to me about how the poor summer affected their crop or about some tweaking they did with their recipe. My point is not that I am somehow special to them; I am one of hundreds of people whom they talk to every week. My point is that the relationship that develops between a local producer and their customer is different than that of a bigger player.The clerks at my regular grocery store also know me, and might greet me by name – but there is something different about that connection. It is less direct and there is less investment.

I don’t think you have to know the people personally – to bring us back to beer – for that connection to happen. Knowing that you drive by the brewery every day on your way to work, or a friend of a friend is related to a brewer there, or whatever the connection. That is the difference that becomes embedded in local craft beer that is missing in larger companies. I am not trying to romanticize small business – they are doing it to, in part, make a profit – but the reality of their situation both requires and encourages a different kind of connection.

St. John is also right when he reminds us that beer is a commodity. It is. Most things are in our society. He also mentions that, as a professional brewer to-be, he sees the difference in crafting a beer that you care about. I think he doesn’t do enough with that observation. A person’s relationship to the product they are making does make a difference in how we should perceive the final product. Artists sell their art. It might be a thousand copies of “Dogs Playing Poker”, or it might be a painstakingly crafted sculpture. The end product remains a commodity, but the energy, the commitment and passion that goes into it does transform that thing.

One of the features of modern capitalism is that the division of labour estranges workers from the labour process and the product of their labour (a feature called alienation).  As a homebrewer I retain a deep connection with the entirety of the process. At the other extreme, a worker watching the bottling line has little connection to the art of brewing. Craft brewers find themselves somewhere in the middle. They lose their freedom to work when they wish, brewing whatever they wish, but they do retain a visceral connection to the ingredients, the process and the end result in a fashion that I believe is not shared by corporate brewers (but I could be wrong on that point).

A final thought. Near the end St. John shifts to look at beer blogging and writing. I am intrigued by his analysis. I often find myself reflecting on similar issues. Beer writers have a funny relationship to their craft. I find myself in a constant place of contradiction and tension. I am aware of the weight of my words. There are people out there, at least a handful, that take my opinion on beer seriously. And so when I write that I love a beer, or hate a beer, that has effect. I have received numerous reports – admittedly anecdotal – of sales of a beer jumping slightly following a positive review (I do not know if the opposite happens, though). This gives me pause about how to balance my role as craft beer promoter and beer reviewer.

Complicating things are that my editors tend to prefer more positive reviews, as they say no one likes to read negative reviews all the time. I solve this a bit by selecting beer that I can speak positively about, most of the time, but it doesn’t remove the conflict.

On top of all of that is my personal need to maintain my integrity. It is important that my words be honest and written in good faith. This sometimes runs headfist into my goal of promoting good beer – for not every craft beer I drink do I enjoy. How to handle that disappointing new release from that brewery I respect? Or what if the brewery is a new upstart and struggling for a toe-hold?

I have no easy answers on how to navigate these conflicting roles. I have developed a few strategies. First, I try to describe the beer as eloquently as I can and as “straight” as I can. I may then add some observations about my preferences (“more this”, “less that”), but work to place my opinion in context of both its strengths and weaknesses. Second,  I have resolutely rejected any kind of rating system (three out of four stars, etc.), as this encourages inappropriate comparisons (“the beer last week was 3 1/2 stars, which  means he liked that one better”). I believe these practices arise out of my primary rule: respect the beer in front of me. I try to treat every beer at face value, judging it for what it says it is, rather than what I want it to be. Do I succeed? Certainly not all the time. But, hopefully I achieve some measure of that goal each time, sometimes closer than others.

I am a privileged man. I get to write about beer every week. But with privilege comes responsibility. And that is the key lesson I try never to forget.

However, today, I appear to have forgotten the lesson of brevity, and thus should end this long winded post.