boundless opportunity

However, deep within the fertile soil of the new renaissance there writhes already a turning worm…

Picture this:

In lieu of the idyllic, stable upbringing I’m sure you all enjoyed, you pampered lapdogs, pretend that you were raised instead by a stern, joyless great aunt, who ascribed to the John Harvey Kellogg school of childhood nutrition. For every meal she would prepare, and insist you eat, a homogeneous vegetarian mash that she called ‘rootmarm’.

Now, there was nothing wrong with rootmarm. It contained all the whole grains, vitamins, oat proteins, fiber and carbohydrates a growing what-have-you needs, and indeed you grew strong and sturdy. But every day, at every meal, there was the same steaming trough of mottled rootmarm. Gradually, within you The Madness grew.

Then one day she accidentally spilled a thimbleful of salt into the mix. Your head swam, your taste buds sang, and angels formed from mist about the room. Life, redolent with fertility and beckoning experience, unfurled before your dilated eyes and you escaped into the great unknown, kicking your great aunt deep between the buttocks on your way out.

When they finally found you, mere weeks later, you were squatting in a dilapidated flophouse surrounded by your own filth, chewing a massive chaw of pickled ginger and you had sold your kidneys for a sack of tarragon.

That, my friends, is the worm that turns. That is the fly in the ointment. For too long we were starved of flavor, starved of passion in our beer, and already, so quickly now that the spirit is back, we have begun to lose control.

It is a disturbing yet undeniable fact that a great many of the new brewers are out to be nothing but different, nothing but iconoclastic. They hop their beers and hop their beers until it burns through bulkheads like when you bag one of Ripley’s badguys, and they mistreat ale conditioning until the flavors push you around like the Hell’s Angels doing concert security.

For anyone who didn’t get that first reference, James Cameron has made much better movies about Marines than ‘Avatar’. Look into it.

We must not forget, here in the midst of an American beer revolution, that most revolutions fail after they succeed because they merely go against something, and have little better to replace it with.

NEXT TIME ON BEER SCHOOL: I’m not sure yet. Probably something about beer, but you never know. Life can be weird that way.

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So, with the last article having given you all the tools necessary to appreciate beer (surprisingly easy, wasn’t it?), it’s time to take a bald eagle’s eye view of the state of beer in America, a vibrant portrait redolent with flavorful goodness. With that lofty intention in mind and my determined, handsome expression conveying a sense of gravity and purpose, I mount the dais and take to the podium to deliver… the Beer State of the Union. The assembled notables fall respectfully silent…

My fellow Americans… ericans… ericans… (dramatic reverb)

Beer was alive and thriving in early America. Beer was the only vice the Pilgrims allowed themselves without having to sew letters on their bodices. Large German enclaves retained their rich brewing traditions. Hordes of thirsty Irish needed it to fight off the shakes.

It was then that new American beer styles began to appear. There was steam beer, maize and barley beer, Dr. Vanderhoven’s revitalizing Opiate Arsenic Beer Tonic, and everyone’s favorite, the most popular and lasting contribution, the American lager; a blond, light lager with a clean finish. It was an exciting time.

Then it all went to hell. Why? Because of the Jews. It’s always the Jews. The Jews killed the dinosaurs.

But not really. Really it was those meddlesome do-gooders of the religious revival and their damn Prohibition. Once Prohibition was done salting the fields, pretty much the only thing that took root again was the American lager, typified today by brands like Coors and Budweiser.

So what happened? With Prohibition repealed, why didn’t beer culture start anew, why was the market dominated for so long by the same style, the same brands?

Perhaps it was because the American lager was so tasty, and so well suited to American prosperity. I mean, let’s be honest, nobody but nobody spending a day out in the glorious American summer sunshine wants to reach into the ice chest and pull out a pint of tepid ale spiced with coriander. If they do they should be watched closely because they’re obviously prone to inappropriate behavior and will likely pull their wiener out on the jumbotron.

But still, for years and years beer in America stagnated. Boring stuff. People started hating American beer. The taste hadn’t changed, but the brands collected negative connotations. First off there was the advertising schema: a dead-eyed bottle-blond tit parade interspersed with talking horses, talking frogs, and talking chameleons. Scintillating. Then there were more personal associations: What did you see scattered all over the trailer court? Sun-bleached Coors cans. What did that high school bully set down on the hood of his blue Charger before he beat you senseless in front of everybody? A Budweiser tallboy. The time had come for a change.

And then there was the advertising

And change it did! Funky free-thinking innovators, probably sporting long hair and goatees, took to their garages and started producing interesting, challenging beers; beers that tasted like something long-forgotten, something half-remembered, like a wonderful dream that you can’t recall but haunts you long into the afternoon. Beers that tasted like choice and freedom.

America! Fuck yeah!

So as a long chapter in American beer comes to an end… end… end…

Another is already being written… en… en…

In the bars and liquor stores, and on the palates of our great people.

Good night, America, and God bless. (prolonged standing ovation, grown men weeping openly)

NEXT TIME ON ‘BEER SCHOOL’: The fly in the ointment…

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Step 2: Read the following rabid, frothing madness:

Beer drinkers of America, REJOICE!!!! HAAHHHHHHHHHH (crowd noise)! For it is a funtastic, fantastic, phantasmic time; a mystical, magical, mythical time; an exciting, ecstatic, exothermic time to be a beer drinker in America! HAAHHHHHHHHH (crowd noise)!

Coors Light, as American as baked beans and awesomeness

Beer brands and styles are exploding all over America like the spineless species of the Cambrian, and we, imbibers of the noble barley, are the Eurypteris-es of the Silurian feasting on the endless trilobites! HAAHHHHHHH!

And if you are not a beer aficionado? Then you my friend are a damn fool. A nutless, anemic, incontinent, jabbering fool chewing your lips bloody while you smear your own bedclothes with linseed oil you found in the garage. Because you like the smell.

But fear not! You, like countless others, can become an instant beer connoisseur just by following (blindly, religiously, with the unquestioning faith of Indiana Jones stepping off a cliff onto an invisible pathway) these instructions:

First put away the linseed oil before you get the vapors. While you’re out there in the garage, crack open daddy’s beer fridge (if daddy doesn’t have a beer fridge in the garage, get a job and move out of Utah) and grab a cold Coors Light (that’s right, beer snobs: I said Coors Light. We’ll save the discussions about microbrews, Trappist techniques and how being a beer snob is the ultimate in pretentious bullshittery for later). Next open that there Coors Light and take a sip.

Emily Webb from "Our Town"

You know that play “Our Town”, the one where this small-town girl dies and gets to invisibly visit her surviving relatives, and is amazed at how much joy and love flows right under the surface of what she thought was a life so boring she’d have to double-fist herself just to experience some sensation? Well let me put it this way: your invisible ghost is going to be so pissed if you ever taste a Coors Light in the afterlife.

Because there’s so much to enjoy, right there in that ubiquitous can! Pay attention to that boring domestic lager before you swill it down and you will find a medley of flavors. There is a cloying sweetness from the malt, there is an herbal half-bitter taste from the hops, and there is a sparkling, effervescent texture from the carbonation. Plus (unlike many microbrews I can name, beer snobs) the flavors are all in a careful balance.

With that done, I hereby offer you a diploma: you are now a beer connoisseur. That’s right! That’s all it takes! You don’t need to know about specific gravity or secondary fermentation. You don’t need to recognize every single goddamn short-lived local beer currently sweeping the hippy girls off their Birkenstocks in Northern California. All you need to be able to do is TASTE THE BEER YOU’RE DRINKING, and NOTICE WHAT IT’S LIKE.

Please do not think I am telling you that Coors Light is the greatest thing ever. In fact, in my very next article I’ll be tackling the topic of the state of beer in America, and Coors Light will be mentioned in a less flattering vein. Sort of a State of the Union address, but about beer and way more funny.

At any rate, if you take one thing away from this article, let it be this: the image of Emily Webb voraciously double-fisting herself.

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