Independent news culture must die (a parody)

Is the independent news “revolution” over yet? For the past four or five years I’ve been plaintively asking this question in the same tone as a toddler in the back seat. Now it seems that every time I head to the newsagent or Internet I’m confronted by a row of hand-whittled newspapers. My pleas are becoming more desperate.

Independent news is easy to hate. Most of it is badly written. Media snobs are phenomenally irritating, often even worse than the narky farmers’ market set or the paleo herd. 

But the worst part is that independent news is un-Australian. We have a fairly specific kind of news consuming culture, and it’s ill at ease with the kind of overly balanced news favoured by the indy set.

When I go to the pub I want to talk to my friends about their lives, our jobs, politics, funny things we saw on public transport that day. I don’t want to read stupid rants about craft beer culture, I want to have a conversation with my mates.

Pull out a Daily Telegraph or a Herald Sun around one of these independent news snobs (or worse, buy them one) and expect them to read it, and you’re at a high risk of having the entire discussion become a media education session. Since it’s become more socially acceptable read independent news, the incidence of these hostile conversational takeovers has increased exponentially. If media snobbery were perceived as a bit weird, like cheese enthusiasm or wine appreciation, we wouldn’t have this problem. Everyone reading $1.50 broadsheets of classless drivel would be free to talk about other things, all of them far more interesting.

Independent news culture must die, or at least stop taking over all the newsagents and parts of the Internet where I like to go. If it were contained to its own small social media platforms where I never go, it’d just be another niche subculture, where it belongs. Instead, it’s being relentlessly click-baited down our throats. Give me biased media, or give me ignorance.

The Social Network

Dial the clock back two or three years. I was at the Local Taphouse for my very first Ale Stars - their monthly beer appreciation sessions - at a time when I was still new to the venue and very new to the world of Twitter. The theme for the night must have been strong Belgian ales or something similar, because that's the sort of style I was into at the time. I suspect I will never remember exactly what beer style it was that we were talking about, but that's far from the most important thing about that night.

In this blog's very first post, I talked about one of the most important moments in one's beer-drinking life: the epiphany. The focus of that post was on the drink itself; this time I'd like to delve a little bit more into the social aspect of the beer community.

Anyway, that night was also the first time I met Doc, now famous for bringing out some of Australia's most exciting and interesting beers* under the Doctor's Orders Brewing label. That session was Doc's first as Ale Stars Czar (i.e. master of ceremonies) and at the end of the night we got to talking about various things beer. When things were winding up, he gave me his Twitter handle so I could keep up to date with developments with his then-still-new professional brewing gig. The significance of this event was that I had had a chat with a fellow beer lover, and was subsequently introduced to a wider beer social network that existed in a series of tubes.

Today, discussing beer with like-minded individuals in person and through Internet social media platforms such as Twitter is a daily activity in my life.

I was recently thinking about how people in various professions and interest groups meet and socialise with each other. The dreaded buzz word for this tends to be 'networking' and it happens online, at conferences and festivals, and at other different types of social gatherings. I imagine that, apart from Alcoholics Anonymous, most of the face-to-face situations will involve at least a little bit of alcohol, and there's nothing wrong with that because it's a great social lubricant. I think it's slightly different with beer.

These events held by many industries and communities don't appear to happen within the beer community, and I think it's because they would be inherently redundant. I don't think I've ever seen a beer event market itself as a 'networking' meet-up because it just happens automatically; the thing people have come to talk about are the very liquids they are drinking.

I don't think this is entirely applicable to other types of alcohol, either. Although the community supporting good beer are as about the quality as the wine- or whisky-lovers, I think the socialising, and especially the discussion of the drinks themselves, happens more when you're with the beer-lovers. Perhaps it's because, in terms of the quality stuff, beer is more accessible (you won't hear me say that often!) than wine or whisky in a casual, social setting. For example, you usually won't go for after-work drinks and grab a bottle of Laphroaig to share with your colleagues (if you do this regularly, I hate you), and you may hit up a wine bar with some friends on occasion, when you can afford it, but it's more common to go somewhere where there's good beers on tap. It's not a huge leap to go from drinking the beer to talking about it. "Wow, this beer is great!" your workmate might say. "Yeah, it's made by these guys in Parramatta," you might respond. And the conversation begins.

Maybe this was so obvious, or maybe I've been too engrossed by online interactions, but it has taken me that long to realise this: beer as the ultimate social network. True, it's sad to think of all the beer-loving people I would not have met and all the beers I would not have even known about had Internet social networks never existed. Interactions through Twitter, Facebook, and other similar platforms undoubtedly facilitate the growth of the good beer movement. However, the optimist in me would like to think that I still would have met some beer lovers, and I still would have been introduced to some unique and interesting beers without the help of the Internet, because that's how the beer community works.

You're at a pub that serves some really good beers, and another punter at the bar orders your favourite drop. Maybe you feel a little apprehensive about talking to a complete stranger, but maybe you can't help it. Maybe this is because you love the beer so much or because some of that alcohol has already infiltrated your system and loosened your inhibitions, or a combination of both. So you strike up a conversation. And who knows, maybe she's a brewer, or maybe he'll end up introducing you to styles of beer you've never even heard of, and hey, do you know about the local homebrewers guild? You should come along to a meeting, even if you don't brew. That's how it all starts. While the Internet certainly helps in the growth of the beer community, the very act of drinking a beer you like surrounded by others who think the same way is both enabler and ultimate icebreaker.

Which brings us back full circle to that fateful night at the Local. True, it was the genesis of my foray into the online beer-loving community that I have come to love so much, but if no such Internet social network existed, would simply being there that night with like-minded people still have gotten me so involved in the greater beer community? I'd like to think so.


*That very night he had brought along a bottle of his Lambic Gose, which sadly ran out before I got to try it it. I'm still imagining what a weird and wonderful combination of flavours that beer would have had.

Update: Doc tells me that the Ale Stars topic was Strong Ales, so I was close. Line-up: Emersons Old 95, Coopers Vintage Ale, Three Floyds Oatgoop, Horn Dog Barley Wine. Good times. Doc also brought a bottle of his wheatwine, which I also did not get to try. Dang.

The Boag's Effect

Sitting at the bar at Frankie's, a fellow beer lover casually mentions the drinks people have been ordering all night. I've just come from a concert at the State Theatre, and he's been drinking since after work, so he's had a lot more time to make such observations. "A group of guys ordered those two drinks at the bottom," he says, pointing to the tap list at back of the cash register. The only permanent fixture is Boag's, with the remainder of the list crudely fashioned from strips of masking tape and permanent marker. The two beers he's referring to are by Doctor's Orders and HopDog. "They didn't even know what they were, but they seemed to like them! At least they weren't drinking Boag's." A light bulb goes off in my head.

Frankie's Pizza is the third offering from the people who brought you Shady Pines Saloon and the Baxter Inn. After barely a month in operation, it's already a raging success, just like its sister bars. This with only a word-of-mouth marketing campaign and a little article in TimeOut. Just like its sister bars. It's well-deserved, too, with the bar offering a wide selection of good beer both on tap and in bottles, pizza by the slice, free pinball, hard rock blaring out of the speakers, and an atmosphere that evokes the great American dive bar, without the surly bartenders. The two minor gripes about Frankie's coming from people within the beer community are the plastic mugs and the availability of Boag's, but both of these are mostly understandable; the former is partly due to licencing restrictions, and the latter is presumably a consequence of a contract to pay for the tap system. The positives of Sydney's latest beer bar not only outweigh but overwhelm the negatives.

"Maybe it's because of the Boag's that they're drinking those beers," I tell my drinking partner. He nods slowly with a look in his eyes that could be epiphanic or a result of drinking for hours on end. It could be the alcohol affecting me too, but I'm beginning to think we've stumbled onto some weird phenomenon here. "Maybe," I continue, "it's because Boag's doesn't have the same appeal of, say, New or Carlton. The casual crowd comes in, maybe after work, and they only see Boag's on tap. It's Boag's. It's the lowest of the low.* It's water. So they try one of the other beers on the list, and all the other beers actually have flavour. Maybe Boag's is turning these people onto good beer."

It makes a odd, drunken sort of sense that the necessity of a tap contract has worked out better than planned for Frankie's and for the growth of the beer community as a whole. Is Boag's an unlikely hero in the campaign to convert big brand drinkers to the tastier side?


*I'm not suggesting this is true as it can get much, much lower; it's just a drunken hypothesis on the big brand beer drinker's thought process

The First Time

Do you remember your first time? I do. I was, I think, 6 or 7 years old, and it was a horrible experience; I was crying by the end of it. I am, of course, speaking of beer. But before I get to that story, I’d like to talk about the so-called “epiphany beer”.

Epiphany beers is a great topic of conversation because it’s something you can talk about as long as your mind has been opened to the possibilities of flavour beyond what you would taste in bland mass-produced lagers that dominate the market. Chances are, whether that happened days or decades ago, you will still be able to remember how it was that you were thrust into this wonderful and occasionally weird world of craft beer. It’s one of those topics of conversation to which the answer can change radically from person to person, ranging from specific to vague. My story is one of the latter.

I’m notorious for trying to show off so it’s not unusual to hear me name-drop beers like Kwak or Arrogant Bastard when I’m talking about what got me into drinking better beers, but in the same sentence I might also drop an unexpected name: Stella Artois. Yep, you read right. In my early days of drinking, I tried a lot of different types of alcohol and lots of different types of beer, probably because I got easily bored and/or repulsed by the drinks that I had had up to that point. While I don’t hold it in any high regard these days, I do recall Stella being one of the first beers I tried that tasted different the ones that I’d been having. Not necessarily good, but certainly different. Suddenly, I was interested in finding out what was possible from this amber liquid rather than finding which ones wouldn’t make me retch. Don’t be fooled, though, because Stella wasn’t my epiphany beer; it was simply one of many firsts.

The fact is that it’s hard for me to pin my epiphany down to one particular beer. No one beer turned my world upside down; it was a gradual change. Stella Artois introduced me to a different flavour, yes, but it wasn’t Pauwel Kwak, which, on my first visit to the Belgian Beer Cafe, made me realise that beer could have a complex flavour profile and could be stronger than your standard 5.5% ABV. Nor was it Stone Brewing’s Arrogant Bastard, which, at a random pub in San Diego, drew me in with its notorious label, blew my taste buds away with its aggressive bitterness, and brought the word “hoppy” into my vocabulary in the most spectacular fashion. And that’s not even the end of it, because there are so many other beers I can talk about, like my first wheat, or my first sour. I can’t (and won’t) decide on one particular epiphany beer because so many different beers have contributed, and will continue to contribute, to my taste.

Of course, your story may differ, and that’s great. You may recall the exact time and place that you had your beer epiphany like it was yesterday - perhaps it may even have been yesterday! That’s the beauty of it, and that’s why I love to hear other people’s stories and to share mine.

First ever beer? That one can sometimes be a more interesting question, mainly because the answer is often something potentially embarrassing. It certainly is for me, as I have already alluded to. Okay, I’ll stop waxing lyrical and get on with it.

I don’t remember exactly when this was, only that I was very young, still living in the Philippines, and there was some sort of party going on at my family’s house. My throat was parched from running around and generally being a brat, so I made a grab for the first glass I could find that contained liquid. It was my dad’s glass of San Miguel, his favourite beer and the Philippines’ most (in)famous alcoholic export. Naturally, I didn’t find this out until I had taken a gulp of it and, almost immediately, spat it out in disgust. My dad laughed, I cried, and I swore off beer for the rest of my life. I’m glad I didn’t follow through on that, not because the next beer I had, late in my teens, was Victoria Bitter, or because it took me years to figure out there's more to beer than just the flavourless things they market to you on TV, but because if I hadn’t broken that promise to myself, I would not have had the chance to try the Kwaks or the Arrogant Bastards of the beer world. And, yes, even Stella Artois.

So, what was your first beer, and what opened your eyes and your tastebuds to craft beer?