The Stories We Tell
Humans are creatures of story and metaphor. If we want to understand something, we tell a story about it. It’s an instinct seemingly embedded in our consciousness, fundamental to the way we make sense of the world. I was reminded of this last week when I posed this question on Twitter:
If you were to tell the story of American brewing post-1980 in x breweries (five to seven, maybe?), which would you choose? In the conversation, possibly: Sierra, Allagash, Alchemist, Russian River, Goose (barrels), and. Who else?
A hundred and thirty-seven replies later, I knew one thing: American beer has no story: it has scores of them.
I see beer through a cultural filter. What we drink reflects who we are—whether that’s a maß of helles, a pint of bitter, or a goblet of abbey ale. The way I arrived at my Twitter list reflected this thinking: if I walk into a pub right now and look at the kind of beers on tap and then compare that with the beers available in 1975, how do I describe the change. For me it’s a story of humans finding their palate within the very specific context of the United States. In my mind, one could craft a story using a half-dozen breweries to describe the way we settled on the beers that define beer today. My cultural filter is so strong that when I posed the question, I took it for granted that everyone would start with the same assumption. We might argue about which breweries best express that cultural interpretation, but no one would doubt it was the obvious interpretation to use. Boy, was I magnificently, hilariously wrong.
The past 40 years can just as persuasively be characterized as a business story. In that telling, the key figure is clearly Jim Koch, the man who started with the premise that beer was commerce—and became a billionaire proving his point. For many of you, the story is one of localness. Before 1980, beer was a bland national commodity, and the craft period represents a re-orientation toward communities or states. Folks in this camp cited important local breweries who built their businesses by converting locals, one drinker at a time. They look at the beer they drink and see the hand of the pioneers. Still others observed that the line of causality started way before 1980, and that it’s impossible to telling the story without mentioning breweries like Schell’s or Yuengling—or even Budweiser. I didn’t completely suss it out in the answers, but I bet someone offered a set of breweries designed to upend the great-man theory of history, too. That would be a refreshing one.
We could go on and on. The real value in the exercise—one I certainly didn’t anticipate—is how many stories there are, each one making essential points. Of course, that cultural transformation doesn’t happen if the first breweries all close or limp along anemically. Sam Adams Boston Lager, an update of the kind of beer already available in 1980, did little to contribute to the kinds of beers we drink today. But having an evangelist who saw beyond a single neighborhood helped raise the consciousness of a nascent industry. If you prefer the grassroots lens, it’s equally valid to look at all the early states where craft beer thrived—Colorado, California, Pennsylvania, Washington—and see important early breweries that created the excitement that sparked other breweries to open.
A story’s value is not that it explains everything. Quite the opposite; a good story brings clarity out of the chaos of life. Telling the story of American beer through one of these lenses helps us locate important truths. They are not exclusive truths, however. We got to this moment because many things were happening simultaneously. The single-origin explanation is satisfying, but almost always inadequate. Yet if ten people tackled my question from the perspective most persuasive to them, we’d end up understanding American beer in a much deeper sense.
So consider this an invitation: how would you tell the story of American beer in six breweries? I’d love to hear—
Cover art source of the classic Pac NW native story of the raven stealing the sun.