Remember blogs? Remember lots of other stuff? We all know the idioms such as, “the more things change, the more they stay the same” and that classic attributed to that gratefully dead philosopher, Jerry Garcia, “what a long, strange trip it’s been.” OK, that last one ought to be credited to the lyricist Robert Hunter. Regardless, I haven’t thought about beer as a stand-alone concept in a long time. I think about beer as it relates to society all the time. Little did I know how much my B.A. in Religious Studies would prepare me to wrap my noggin around the sudsy subject. Religious Studies, despite the ring, is not theology. Although it contains that, too. I loved the major because I’d always considered it an amalgamation of my favorite humanities and most of the social sciences: Philosophy, sociology, anthropology, psychology, political science, geography, economics, and gender studies. OK, I added that last one just to see if you’re paying attention. Although, if, like me, you pay serious attention to Beer Writing, it started turning into an exploration of gender, and race, and lots of things that aren’t about malts, and hops.

And that’s fine. I’m not complaining; just observing.

For the last 20 years, I’ve called myself a beer writer. I’ve got a couple books with my name on it to prove it. And a bunch of awards from an honest-to-goodness organization called the North American Guild of Beer Writers for stories with my byline. And loads of links to published stories that I sadly stopped re-posting on this blog a couple years ago, evidently, which is why I thought to write an old fashioned blog post. But it’s not 2006 anymore. The world, like beer itself, has changed drastically. In some ways for the better; in others for the worse. But for all their faults (the world and beer), I still love both.

Easily the biggest shift in the world of beer is the surge in non-alcoholic brands which obviously dovetails with the sharp decline in beer and alcohol consumption. To the extent that has to do with people making healthy choices, I’m all for it! For the last few years, my own beer (and liquor) intake has dropped simply because I can’t process more than 3 pints. Sad! You’d think I’d lose weight as a result, but the universe has a perverse sense of humor that has embedded a beer belly onto me even when there’s far less beer in me belly.

I could probably assign blame for the decline in beer sales/consumption to the neo-Prohibitionists behind social campaigns like Dry January and Sober October, but I think more obvious reasons are to blame. The Pandemic knocked all of society on its arse for two weeks… ha, remember when we were instructed to practice social distancing for just two weeks…I mean two years. And even now that it’s over, we–the collective we–never quite recovered our taste for social-converging. Assembling. Gathering. Communing. Being social.

There was a meme… of course there was a meme because memes are the primary form of communication these days…that showed a triptych and in the first frame was a large group of friends from, say, 2015 and the second one showed a small group of friends from 2020, and the third one showed a person with their dog from the present day.

I’m not a brewer nor do I own a brewery so I personally don’t care that people are turning away from beer in droves. Everyone is free to do and enjoy what they want. But that touches on my feelings about how our world–at least America–has been altered by our current administration that used to pretend it was on the side of “personal freedom” and choice but patently is not. Along with it, the tanking economy means less money to spend on beer, at least pricier craft beer, despite how well craft beer performed in the past recession circa 2008 when the headlines were about beer being “recession proof.”

There’s also weed. My hometown of Bend, Oregon is world-famous for having the most breweries per capita (of a city with any real population, no offense to nearby Mitchell, OR with one brewery for every 300 heads given it has a population of around 300). It has an equal number of cannabis dispensaries. And unlike breweries, I don’t see any dispensaries closing.

I still enjoy writing about beer, but I can’t make a living at it like I used to. Along my journey, the one-off beer festival I organized in 2015 turned into a wall in my home office being plastered with the posters of all my brewfests. I pulled off some goofy ones! One was devoted exclusively to sour/mixed-culture cherry beers that ran for 4 years. One was dedicated to the even less sellable world of smoked beers. One was all about goses, a style of beer that was having a moment in 2017 and didn’t return in 2018 because that moment was over. I always referred to my events as “niche” in large part because I simply had no desire to compete with the big-tent brewfests that attracted tens of thousands of celebrants.

All of those are gone, at least in Oregon.

But I refuse to give up on beer, and not just hoppy fermented fizzy water but beer culture. In its earliest terms back at the dawn of human civilization brewers yeast was called godisgood. And beer featured in religious ceremonies. Because when you get a good little buzz on, you feel connected to a higher power. Equally important, you feel connected to the people around you. God bless pubs!

For all those people who bitch and moan about kids in breweries and pubs, my kid was 5 weeks old when he hit his first brewpub. He was 2 weeks shy of 14 when he hit his 447th. And guess what: he’s pretty fricken awesome with the social skills as a result. And you should see him when he gets a little Berliner Weiss in him! (Dear ATF and my local OLCC: joking.)

Drink beer! Don’t drink beer. Your choice. But don’t turn your back on your friends, neighbors, and community. Remember them and lots of other stuff you enjoyed when you drank beer?