My Milk Sour Chocolate Tripe Tripel

Here’s a nice pic of some real hops being sorted

Are home-brewers the real craft brewers? Untrammelled by the need to sell their beers or place them in front of the drinking public, who will then decide whether to buy or not, home brewers can make what they like without fear or favour; their beers also remain close to the original maker, so there is no concern about parties further down the line of distribution making a hash of serving them. True, if they enter competitions, then the beers are judged by their peers, but there is no concern for trends, financial constraints, indifferent bar staff and the fickle nature of beer geekdom. Is this the nature of true craft, of authenticity even, this isolation, this solo path, that the home-brewer, like a wandering monk sworn to discard all earthly pleasures, takes? 

If it is so, then why does a home-brewer then decide to become a commercial brewer, to be sewn into the fabric of the market and drinkers’ trends that some could think are a stifling clamp on creativity (‘what do you mean, my Milk Sour Chocolate Tripe Tripel wasn’t popular? The dog and my mum liked it. Ok, here’s my Sunny Delight, I mean NE IPA. Sigh.’)? What would have happened if Martin Dickie had remained a home brewer after his tenure at Thornbridge or Evin O'Riordain had stayed in the world of cheese and solely shared his beers with his confederates in the London Amateur Brewers? I suppose someone else might have come along, but Martin and Evin entered the market and this someone, who never came along, remained the unknown home brewer who stayed at home, his or her name unsung and invisible on a par with the composers and poets that we never ever heard of because they also remained silent at home.  

Are those who keep journals and diaries, untouched by the whims of editors and the dictates of space, the real authentic writers? Those who make music in their bedrooms, bake their own bread, or even train online to be front room lawyers, the real practitioners of their craft? What is authentic? What is craft? What is it that motivates the home-brewer, the home-baker, the home-writer and the home-lawyer to make the transition from this meditative silence of home to the noise and disruption of the market?

Steam beer

Seems like that there’s a lot of steam being blown about regarding craft beer etc in the world of CAMRA at the moment. In the letters pages of the current issue of What’s Brewing a couple of correspondents seem to be standing up for craft keg: ‘while a good pint of cask ale is always going to be nicer than a keg beer, these newer beers are not, as Peter Jackson writes (WB, Jan), the spawn of Satan’; ‘CAMRA should be all-encompassing, supporting and promoting all good beer, whether it is real or craft’. Then on page 7 there’s a piece with the headline ‘Taste not ideology must rule’; this is written by Jim Scott who has been in CAMRA since 1988 and the line that jumped out at me was this one: ‘I think we should judge with our palates and not ideology or — heaven help us — be shackled to that obstructive corpse called tradition. We should welcome the newcomers as separate but, unlike their effervescent predecessors, equal, and unashamedly enjoy both’. 

However, CAMRA also have their AGM coming up in Norwich and the Bradford Branch has put forward a motion, part of which says: (this Conference) ‘recognises and asserts that the terms ‘craft ale’, ‘craft beer’, ‘craft keg’ and similar terms are meaningless and misleading. Conference therefore instructs that these (and similar) terms should not be used in any CAMRA communications and publications except where absolutely necessary, for example when quoting other sources and use of the term cannot be avoided. Where it is absolutely necessary to use any such term in CAMRA’s communications and publications, the qualifier (sic) should be used after the term and where appropriate the term should be put in inverted commas.’ 

Some interesting conflicts seem to be arising here and I expect the steam to keep billowing for some time yet, though while all this agonising is going on more and more great beer is being made and drinkers are not worrying what container it arrives in.