Upsetting Conventional Wisdom

About four days before I set out for Denver and the Great American Beer Festival, I received an email from a publicist. He explained that he represented author and historian Maureen Ogle who had recently finished writing her book Ambitious Brew, The Story of American Beer. He wondered if I’d like to interview her. I replied that I’d be glad to.

And so began my scramble to be prepared for this interview. I’d never heard of Ogle nor Ambitious Brew so I did what any great researcher does; I read the Amazon summary of her book.

Before I go any further, though, let me explain something about myself. I am first a beer nerd, a fervent defender of good beer, and second a writer/journalist/interviewer/what-have-you. As such I have come to embrace a particular piece of conventional wisdom that, until now, I hadn’t even considered questioning. That is that the American beer market is flooded with weak flavorless beer as a result of the actions of the beer corporations’ obsession with the bottom line. It goes something like this – megebreweries figured out sometime in the twentieth century that replacing a percentage of the barley in their grain bill with cheaper corn or rice only minimally affected the quality of the final product while maintaining the alcohol levels. Less barley meant less hops and so further drove the cost down. American beer drinkers barely noticed the change so the corporations kept cutting their recipes using the additional revenue to undercut competition with lower prices and drive their massive marketing campaigns designed to further convincing us that this swill is what we wanted. Frankly, I’ve always been offended by the corporations for this.

So, back to the Amazon summary: in about ten sentences I found that I was equally offended by Ogle’s conclusions. She claims in her book that Americans actually wanted flavorless beer; that the market drove the trend to weak beer and the corporations followed rather than vice versa. I arrived in Denver on Monday and began discussing Ogle’s absurd conclusions with my fellow beer nerds. The more we compared notes, the more we convinced ourselves that her’s was an indefensible position. How could a bunch of European immigrants loose their taste for beer in just a few generations, we asked each other rhetorically. Why would these same people even want beer that didn’t taste like beer? And, most damning in my opinion, why the sudden change of heart as evidenced by the craft beer revolution and the continual market share gains of the craft beer segment? What began as an interview would now be an inquisition. By the time of the interview, I was ready. This heresy would not stand! After introducing myself, I asked Ms. Ogle a few preliminary questions about her background to put her at ease before routing her findings. She told me that she earned a PhD in history and, after a brief professorship at the University of South Alabama, settled on writing history books for general readers. I asked how she chose to write about beer. Turns out a Budweiser delivery truck pulled into her line of vision one day while she was driving. Again with the megabreweries!