The Art of Artisan Beer

You have a long day at the office.  So long, in fact, it has cut up your schedule in such a way that you are only left with a short night.  You are tired, weary, and a bit miffed that the various meetings you held and projects you delegated were not accomplished in a more efficient manner.  However, a couple members of the high-level management team that stood in the proverbial trenches with you all day invite you to catch a drink and a snack at the restaurant a couple blocks down from your office.  You initially balk, but then you recall how impressed you were with the venue’s stellar wine list, so you decide to suck it up and head on over for a glass of a deep, full-bodied cab.  As you sit down, your colleagues start discussing the prospect of ordering a beer.  They start breaking down the nuances and subtleties of each selection offered as you pour over the wine list in search of the perfect red.

If the above scenario happened as little as five years ago, there’s a decent chance that it may have surprised you.  If it would have, don’t worry; it wasn’t all that long ago that beer was considered the black sheep of the libation world.  We all know the reasons for this, of course:  it provided the fuel for those days in college where we were all young, naïve, and looking to lubricate our happiness; the low-quality stuff is cheap and can be easily purchased in the convenient store attached to the gas station; said low-quality stuff is traditionally attached to ad campaigns that seem eager to insult the intelligence of its intended audience.  Ultimately, each of these reasons, plus a few others, unfortunately saddled beer with the reputation of being the alcoholic beverage for the unsophisticated set; made primarily for people who cannot appreciate the complexities of a fine wine or a perfectly aged scotch.

But then, something startling happened.  Over time, beer began to shed its reputation as a low rent adult beverage and reinvented itself into a drink of artisanal sophistication.  Now, it is not only perfectly normal to walk into a nice establishment and enjoy a good, high-quality beer, it is the thing to do in some circles.  Sometimes, it’s even the expected thing.  So how did we get to this point?

First and foremost, it would appear that the cheap stuff no longer has as firm a grip on the national consciousness as it once did.   Time was the mass-produced stuff that seems to lead off every football game’s commercial break was the default representative for beer as a whole; a crude mouthpiece that was sold with the implied promise of rowdy times and unsavory behavior.  This does not seem to be case anymore, despite the fact that your local liquor store is still overflowing with bottles and cans of the mass-produced stuff that seems to lead off every commercial break during a football game.  While there are several theories available as to why this is the case, the one that holds the most weight seems to be an influx of ads touting more sophisticated beers.  Chief amongst them is Guinness, the dark stout that can almost be considered a gateway to artisan brews because of its elevated social presence.  To be certain, it would seem that the movement behind artisan beers coincided with the rotation of their ads on television.  Looking back at things, its appearance on the airwaves does seem a bit like the first shot fired in a revolution.

If this was indeed the genesis of how artisan beer took off, then the recent popular push toward local products and ingredients has played a major part in keeping it steady.  Orange County-based companies such as The Bruerey in Placentia and Bootlegger’s Brewery in Fullerton are just two of the examples of breweries that have developed huge following around town, and they have done so producing beer that contain flavor profiles that are fuller, richer, and far more complex than the inexpensive brands that probably populated your refrigerator in your early ‘20s.  While these regional beers produced in OC would have probably fostered a small cult following of some sort based on how excellent they are, one cannot help but think that their immense popularity was at least in part driven by the emphasis the foodie set has placed on foods and ingredients that can be used and enjoyed nearby.

Of course, now that beers such as Guinness and the local labels have made their way into the Orange County mainstream, it has allowed the world of beer to progress even further into some deeply elegant territories.  For example, some beers are now corked.  Others have taken a queue from wine and stamp years on their label.  Still others are presented in packages whose overall labeling and bottling would put a healthy amount of wine and spirits bottles to shame.  And it goes without saying that the flavor of these special beers tend to be a touch more on the sophisticated side.

Will beer ever be recognized on the same plane as wine or refined spirits?  As long as there is a market for simple, inexpensive product (read:  as long as society sends kids to college), probably not.  However, that does not nor should not knock down the great qualities of a true artisan beer.  Indeed, a well-crafted brew can indeed be every bit as satisfying after the end of a long day as a big red Cab.  In fact, if you approach the encounter with the beverage feeling drained and vexed about the inefficiencies of your workforce, it may be end up being an even better choice.

By Rich Manning