Hold on to your hats boys and girls, Food & Wine has discovered a new form of trendy beverage – it’s called craft beer! Ever heard of it?
Okay, so they’ve covered the craft beer scene in the past, but they recently posted a “Trendspotting” article on foodandwine.com and it’s all about the American craft beer scene.
Overall I think this is a good thing, but to call an industry that’s been busily reinventing itself over the past 20 years a “trend” still rubs me the wrong way. Of course it might be a “trend” if you’re a wine snob, so I guess it’s a matter of knowing your audience.
The article covers a lot of ground and in typical Food & Wine style, they do it with a certain flair. They cover some beer styles, session goodies, glassware, even how to pour a beer. It’s probably stuff you already know (you are a beer geek after all), but it’s kind of fun to see what they do with the topic. Click here to take a peek.
TIP of the Hat to John King over at Kentucky Brew Review for sharing this with us.
Beer & Whiskey Brothers 
That’s the thing, their audience for the most part aren’t geeks of any sort…they are perhaps best called aspiring geeks, be it beer, wine or food. It’s part of the reason I cried like an infant when they closed the doors on Gourmet magazine….they never would have called craft beer a new trend!
The lowest common denominator triumphs once again, Katie!
It is a trend. Yeah, the industry and culture surrounding it have been booming for 20 years, but for 17 of those twenty years it was a counter-culture, tucked well into the underground. The mainstream did not know about it. Over the past three years the terms craft beer, brewpub, gastropub, etc have entered the mainstream vernacular. Craft beer is a trend in that it has been trending upward and onward for the past two decades, and for the past few years it has become very hip. I predict it will continue to rise in popularity with the mainstream, but at some point will level off and perhaps even decline a bit, but it will never fall back into the oblivion caused by the events of 1919. In that sense, it’s not a trend; it’s here to stay. But given it’s rise in popularity of late, it definitely is a trend.
Exactly. Too many people equate “trend” with “fad.”
Mostly what this “trendiness” proves is that you can’t be on the wagon and the bandwagon at the same time. 🙂
Depending upon the part of country you live in, Jack, I would agree with you on your analysis of craft beer being an underground movement. But there exceptions to the rule, as in here in Colorado, as well as northern California and Oregon; in these places it’s been a part of the culture as a whole since very close to the beginning, well over 20 years. In my experience, it was a regional thing at first, that then catched on nationwide during the past 15 years or so. I liken it to regional foods; crawfish in Louisiana, lobster (or lobster roll, yum!) in New England, scrapple in New Jersey/Pennsylvania, salmon in the northwest, etc. Sure, you can get those in other parts of the country now, but in the beginning they were mainstays just in those regions.
Thankfully I haven’t yet run into any Black IPAs that look or taste like a Guinness.
Now I must go and see if I can keep my trend-inspired job.
Trend-inspired job? You sellin’ Crocs these days? 😉
And Uggs. Best thing since liquid bread.
Unfortunately, another thing invented in Colorado. Most of us here cringe when we see someone wearing those. 😉
Amen to trend-inspired jobs!
Yeah, and if the trend keeps…uhh…trending, there’ll be more where his came from.
My girl subscribes to this mag. The article was extremely weak, even enough to make my girl ask, “so what kind of beer is the best?” I explained that its not the kind, its the style, and its never about the best, its about the individual beer. She understood that in terms of wine, but still, I think food and wine just wanted to grab attention with the headline. Very weak article.
Yeah, it’s very 101, but if it got your girl asking about beer, then I’m glad they wrote it.
I have no earthly idea what the literary equivalent would be, but I have this notion of some up-its-own-butt horse magazine in the 1920s writing about the new trend of the horseless carriage.
You mean Carriage & Driver or HoofTrend.
Speaking of craft beer, did you notice this?
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/06/10/239780/wisconsin-craft-beer/
I didn’t think much about Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s whole union-busting thing, but this cuts too close to home. Bastard!!