California Beerzine

I know of what I speak, because I too am a dork. If it’s not totally obvious that this obsessive/compulsive, try-every-rare-beer, online trading, pub seeking, beer blog-reading, lace-on-the-glass-loving behavior is about as dorkified as it gets, then it’s time to hit the therapist’s couch and truly learn to know thyself. I say this with the utmost in respect for you, and for myself.

Drinking microbrewed craft beer is a pastime shared by many around the land and indeed the globe; the increasing number of converts to our cause is heartening and cockle-warming. Astride the craft beer revolution, it must be said, are the fanatics. This new breed of high-end beer devotee is every bit as concerned with his naval-gazing pastime of choice as is the coin collector, the stamp collector and the antique accumulator.

In this beer-obsessed world, I’m often reminded of the fanaticism that I myself used to engage in when I was an ardent record collector. I used to spend hours poring over trade lists and looking in classified ads for folks who might be selling records that I’d either never heard (and only heard about) or had heard but couldn’t get. I’d go on road trips to find obscure records that I needed. The “thrill of the score” was palpable. I’d be thumbing through the racks and all of a sudden happen upon some LP or 7″ single that I needed (or had on “my list” starting to sound familiar, beer drinkers?), and the euphoric feeling was similar to that felt across the US today when a bottle of Bell’s Hopslam or Russian River Supplication arrives at the mailstops of beer dorks nationwide.

In fact, the regionalism of craft beer production is among its most appealing features for the beer dork. If everyone could walk to Safeway or the Piggly Wiggly and pick up a bottle of Lost Abbey Serpent’s Stout, then, hey, where’s the fun in that? This is my beer, damn it! Want to trade for it? I’ve found that the sense of loss felt by beer dorks when a favorite craft brewer succeeds in gaining wide distribution is akin to the feelings many of my record collector pals felt when one of our micro-scene bands broke out of their neighborhood and began to be played and bought on a nationwide level. It actually kinda hurts on the inside, even though it shouldn’t.

Let’s give the fanatic his due, though. It is he (and even sometimes she) that is helping bring incredible beers into the restaurants of America. It is he who has glorified the ultra-hopped India Pale Ale, and helped prod brewers nationwide to new tongue-scorching heights. It is he who has helped move craft beer acceptance into the near-mainstream, just as the punk rocker propelled his hallowed bands out of the local, scene-based ghetto and into mass acceptance.

It just may be that Moylan’s Hopsickle or Southern Tier’s Heavy Weizen is poised for a worldwide breakthrough on par with Nirvana in 1992. As always, the beer dorks will have been there first. Just ask them, for they will make sure that you know.