Thoughts from a home brewer/beer nerd

This is my second post and as I was thinking about what to blog about the one area that kept creeping in is the state of beer in our society. Almost every beer drinker started by drinking yellow, fizzy, extremely cold beer made from one of the big three. No not LJ, Wade, and Bosch but Miller, AHB, Coors. This is the standard of which beer is judged by. When people find out I home brew one of the first questions is "Can you make something that taste like Miller Lite" which I cringe and smile and in some cases try to explain there is a whole beer world out there. I feel defensive and frustrated that my passion to the general population is put in such a small box. Think of it this way if Wine was thought to be nothing more than Boone's Farm. Beer is associated to the lowest common denominator.

Please don't get me wrong if you want to suck down your Coors Light you have every right to do it. There is a place in our culture for all beer drinkers. My largest issue is the way it is forced upon us. When someone says to me "I don't like the way beer taste" WHAT? That would be like me saying I don't like the way breakfast taste. I am confident I can find a beer for everyone. There are to many styles and variations of the styles for someone to hate them all. Yet the vast majority of the population thinks all beer is a variation of Bud.

So who is to blame? We need someone to blame right? Well I think there is a ton of blame to go around. First Big Beer is to blame. They own such a stranglehold on the distribution of the products it make it an up hill battle for the great micro breweries who are out there. Walk into your super market or liquor store see who's beers have the prime shelf place. It is all about marketing, triple hopped? what does that even mean.

So what can we do? Educate, encourage, and most of all support our local breweries and home brewers. I love craft beer, I love the culture and the comradely. It is growing and will continue to do so. We will never live in a world where Bud and DFH are on a level playing field but as long as we continue to fight the good fight craft beer will continue to grow and thrive.