The Session #69: The Perfect Beer World

The SessionThe first Friday of November is upon us and for beer blogging, that means it’s time for another round of The Session! The Session is a collaborative beer blogging project where people from all over write a blog post on a given topic, and the “host” for the month (who is also the one who selects a topic) will round up all the various posts afterward for easy reading.

This month’s topic is suggested by Jorge of Brew Beer and Drink It, with the topic “The Perfect Beer World“:

Ever feel like there are many things in this world that are backwards, upside down, wrong… that just don’t make sense?

Like local craft beer not being considered ‘domestic’ in the menu of many restaurants in the US…

Or like having a beer that doesn’t taste very good have the largest market share…

… among other things…

… but, hey. This. World. Is. Not. Perfect!

So with that being said… what is something you would like to see change… something that will take us closer to the Perfect Beer World?

The topic is wide open… even if you think that what you want to change for the better is not important or ridiculous… share it!

I suppose there are a lot of “what if” type answers that could be tossed around here, but I have to start by saying that I think the Beer World is pretty damn good right now: craft beer is on the rise, corporate industrial beer is losing ground, new breweries are opening every month, and (here on the west coast, at least) we have an embarrassment of riches in our choice of quality beer to drink. And things right now only seem to be getting better.

Now, having said that… one of the first things that come to mind when thinking of what I would change to bring out the Perfect Beer World is… lose the beer snobbery. I’m tired of seeing people trash a beer because the brewery “got too big” or turn their nose up at an American Light Lager or declare a beer the best in the world because it’s the most expensive for no other real reason than they’re being a snob.

Look—be a beer geek, but don’t be a beer snob. Try (and respect) all beer; if you don’t like a beer, fine, as long as you’ve actually tried it and formed a real opinion based on its merits. But never think you’re too good for a beer. That will definitely help get us to a Perfect Beer World.

Beyond that, I would love to see a lot more people get into homebrewing and learning how easy it is to make beer—and by extension, I would definitely like to see many more small breweries open up across this country, especially in the underserved regions, and help educate people about how good fresh, locally-brewed beer can be.

I want to see the corporate interests taken out of beer: I have no problem with breweries growing and running their business as, well, a business. But when you look at the corporate bottom line that is more concerned with profits and shareholder growth than the beer—this is a great reference article for this—that needs to go away. There can still be Budweiser, but does there really need to be a ruthless international corporate machine churning it out with an eye only for profit?

(The correct answer, of course, is no.)

If all of these came true? We’d be pretty close to that Perfect Beer World in my book. What about yours?

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