#whatimdrinkingnow #whatdoyoumeanyoudontcare

I’ve always had a difficult time mustering up a sufficient amount of care for my own hobbies, which is what I call my beer drinking, because hobbyist sounds better than drinker. I don’t spend time posting in beer chat forums, I don’t post #whatimdrinkingnow pics anymore (I bored myself), I rarely drink out of proper glassware, and I don’t spend a lot of money on it. Because after all, it’s just beer.

But I’m a total beer snob. This is the paradox in which we beer appreciators are stuck.

Beer is a beverage celebrated and sold for its relaxing properties. It’s the drink you have when you get home from the office or from the factory; it’s the drink with which you celebrate both special occasions and your slow days off from work. It’s the everyman drink; the drink to chill out with. When some of us turn up our noses at certain beers, pay $18 for a bomber, or go so far as to call beer our hobby, we risk running contrary to the beer drinking ethos.

This is beer(!)

Once you admit that, yes, beer is a hobby — you know a lot about it, you spend time and money on it, you really, really look forward to that seasonal releasing today — you are effectively rendering null the it’s just beer sentiment. Obviously beer is more than just alcohol to you. It’s beer, exclamation point! When you take it a step further and start caring about hop aroma and mouthfeel and shit — well, then you’re the kind of snob that drinking beer is supposed to keep you from becoming.

At that point you’re coming dangerously close to wine snobbery: tannins, legs, pinkie fingers and all that. At the same time, I wish I could fully embrace my inner snob without worrying about undermining the grounded image beer enjoys.

So that’s where I’m stuck. Where on one hand I would never turn down a beer of any kind offered me at a cookout, I will also never drink the stubby bottle of Coors someone left in my fridge over the holidays. This is a problem endemic to the craft beer community. We’re supposed to be the hard corest of hard core beer drinkers, but our penchant for the good stuff makes us elitist prigs.

Standard Reference Method (measured by people who care A LOT)

Of course, like beer, there are many different shades in this spectrum of drinking attitudes. I figure I’m somewhere in the ambers, willing to wait in long lines at a beer festival for the chance to try the new and rare, but unwilling to engage in a serious debate about what actually defines craft beer.

I wish I knew more about what beer culture was like in America before Prohibition; before everything was reset and today’s mass-marketed, mass-produced, tasteless lagers were the norm. When every town boasted multiple breweries and quality beer was what everyone drank. Or so it exists in my sepia-toned imagination. I wonder if it is the way beer was then sold to us that changed, as much as the quality of beer, when we were again allowed to brew.

Beer(!)-lovers: how do you feel about this paradox? To be honest, after one or two beers, I really don’t care, but it’s good to be aware of potential hypocritical moments. Any hobbyists out there to whom it’s much more than just beer?