Writing about beer is like…

Writing about beer is like dancing about architecture. Can’t remember who wrote that, if anyone ever wrote it, or did someone write that writing about beer is like painting with concrete? I’ve seen stuff that says that writing about music is like dancing about architecture, but I’m sure there’s a similar reference to writing about beer, but I’ve got better things to do with the heedless rush towards extinction that we give the title life to check that out. Or maybe it’s just some clever dick that said it on their blog or somewhere.

I write about beer, write on beer, write with beer in mind, write with a beer to hand, drink beer and then write about it; I go to pubs and write about pubs and what people say in them and what they eat and what they drink and what the pub looks like; I write about breweries and what they look like and about the beers they make and about the people who work there and about the history of the brewery that stands wherever it stands. So I write about beer and am pleased and proud and punch drunk to write about it. I don’t dance.

Do wine writers feel the need to analyse what they write about, to defend what they write about, to bat off half baked jokes about the best job in the world, thus implying that the beer writer is permanently pickled (if that was the case I’d get nothing done). Of course not, their trade has a history going back a long time, there’s a reverence and a religiosity about what they do, but hold on a minute you could also say that Alfred Barnard was writing about beer, that Julian L Baker was writing about beer, that Andrew Campbell was writing about beer, so writing about beer does have a history, albeit a history that is hidden.

It’s no longer a hidden history though: this year sees the 25^th anniversary of the founding of the British Guild of Beer Writers, whose first meeting was in a pub (the Horniman, Hay’s Wharf, you can read the minutes here). As far as I know none of the current members know how to dance to anything, never mind architecture, but they do know how to write about beer, to write about pubs, to write about breweries and for that I give much thanks to the Guild.

I’m the Secretary of the Guild but this post came about because I had the first line and wanted to see where I would go with it rather than any desire to plug the Guild, that’s the beauty of blogging, you never know where you’re going to end up when you start with that empty page and a sequence of letters that eventually form words that eventually shift themselves into sentences. It’s a bit like making music, which brings us around to dancing once more. 

Christmas beers

Commonly said amongst beer writers at this time of the year is the wash of wine-and-Christmas articles that flood the pages of our newspapers. Of course they are there but it’s not as bad as it might be. I noted that the Guardian had something and I bet Will Hawkes at the Independent will put a few thoughts out there later this week (though in the mean time you should read his piece on Scottish beer). Meanwhile Gavin Aitchison at the York Press has added his voice here. As for myself, I’ve got 10 suggestions over at the Telegraph, which can be read here.

The Taste — another world

In search of an image and associated story about a Whitbread lager dispensed from a tap-like fount, I gather together copies of The Taste, which ran — I seem to remember — from around 1998 for a couple of years. The issues have busy covers, lots of headlines, pre-Photoshop pix of beer bottles and the logo ‘Britain’s Brightest Beeriodical’. Cover shots include Santa behind the bar, Harvey’s and the river that runs past it (and would flood it not long afterwards), Lemmy, a pub with a cut-out of Mick the Tick in front, Jo Guest and a bevy of cheesy looking sub-Page Three women holding pints (they are clothed, just). It’s beer as beer was then, manly, trade-like, beery, sweaty, yo-ho-ho, freemasonish, whiskery, clubby, Bass and some other biggies, ruby-faced porters in bowlers, some class but a lot of foam plus CAMRA, though the magazine always reserved the right not to agree with the Campaign (when Roger Protz returned to edit the Good Beer Guide in 1999 he was described as an ‘old hand’). Writers from then still serving time at the coal-face of beerwriting (© Bumper Book of Clichés) include Brian Glover and Martyn Cornell (I was also a contributor), while Roosters’ Sean Franklin contributed a couple of interesting articles on tasting beer. Looking through the news pages it’s a time of carnage; breweries whose demise the magazine recorded include Vaux and Flowers (did I really care?), while there’s an attempt to list all the microbreweries that were extant then. There was also a regular barmaid of the month… It had an old-fashioned feel though it did try and do one thing differently; as What’s Brewing’s headlines thundered CAMRA’s outrage at whatever brewing duplicity was going on then in the manner of Arthur Scargiill denouncing class traitors, The Taste tried to get away from the hectoring but sadly went too predictably down the nascent lads’ mags route (in fact I remember the editor telling me that WH Smith didn’t have a clue whether to put his mag next to Loaded, BBC Food or Heritage Steam Engines). One issue in January 1999 had the headline ‘free internet access with Breworld (who I remember being very useful with brewery info in 1996 prior to a trip to New England). I don’t know when the magazine finished, it was either 1999 or 2000, but I stopped it in November 1999 when the issue featured a really shoddy pic of a barmaid in Blackpool in a spangly pink bikini — it was enough to put me off my evening’s beer.