Critical Beer Writing
I don’t write about beer as such. I leave that to those (few) who try to make some sort of living out of it. I remain gainfully employed elsewhere.
I do however write about beer history and politics for Culture Matters, which is not quite the same genre.
Matthew Curtis has written a useful piece querying why there is no real independent writing about beer, in the way there is about wine or restaurants. You can, for example, read Jay Rayner’s restaurant reviews with the knowledge that while of course he has personal preferences, he will praise the good and call out the not so good.
Of course beer writing does call out the not so good but this is almost always at the level of breweries. Global Big Beer and its products comes in, rightly, for a lot of criticism, as do some just about independents such as Brewdog.
Matthew’s point though is more about individual beers from generally respected breweries.
As he notes often given the times they can be in difficult circumstances and criticism may not help.
As a parallel I used to review (mainly socialist history) books for left-wing publications. I do that less now because I can just post something on my blog which may well get more readers.
However when I was reviewing the general policy was clear. Space was limited and if a book wasn’t up to much it was best ignored. Far better to review and draw to the attention of readers good books that they might enjoy reading.
Again as Matthew notes in beer there is space for that. Adrian Tierney Jones beer of the week in the Daily Star flags up new beers that readers may be unaware of and might well enjoy. Given the space available it would hardly make sense to review a beer and conclude by saying it should be avoided.
That said Matthew has a point that developing a tradition of independent and critical beer writing would be a useful development. I’d venture that this would need a sponsoring publication- 50 years ago the Guardian published Boston on Beer weekly- or someone who either earned the living elsewhere or had independent means.
Let’s hope something does happen..
On Criticism in Beer Writing — TOTAL ALES
Boak and Bailey have also commented. I agree with most of the points but the idea (for example) of a new Richard Boston (a concerning idea perhaps!) is that a regular column about beer written critically in i.e. the Guardian (or at least on their website) would reach people who think good beer is Brewdog or Beavertown.
Pete Brown’s blog that word of mouth works well is a very good point btw
Leave a Reply