Pop Star Brewers, You Say

Just read Boak & Baileys friday post about this and the response from an anonymous brewer. I have to say I agree with almost all of what both parties say. 

I am becoming very bored with the growing amount of back-slapping and brewer idolatry that's becoming so prevalent nowadays but at the same time i am very interested in a lot of the stories that the brewers have about their past and why they started out etc...

Twitter, Facebook, beer blogs, video blogs, etc...all play their part in my relapse into beery ambivalence as i struggle to give a shit about any of it.

I DO see the point though, small brewers need these events to get sales and interest in their beers indeed we do them at Tap East and The Rake. Tap takeovers and meet the brewer events are important for those reasons. Faceless corporations have their enormous marketing budgets to garner interest and lie about being craft, small brewers do not have that luxury and if they did they'd only be accused of selling out. Isn't that the end game for a lot of them though? selling out? Surely they want to create a massive brand that a regional or global drinks company will buy in 10-20 years time making them very rich happy people? By all means disagree with me but i can see it happening all over the place. 

What are the 'shareholders' going to say when the boys at Brewdog decide that they want to sell out to a bigger company? Who knows? there will probably be new, cooler breweries out there anyway that they can go and editorially masturbate over, there usually are and that's what makes me want to gouge my own eyes out. 

•Most brewers i know are remarkably generous and nice people, but as a point was made, they are people, they have responsibilities outside brewing, families to support and mortgages to pay etc... so of course if someone makes an offer too good to refuse they're going to take it and they'll probably end up after dinner speaking or writing for a living anyway.

For my part, i'm going to continue saying well done to people that make good beer by ordering it (for the time being) and also by looking outwards from within and being safe in the knowledge that it's only beer. People in certain parts of the world are being massacred by the hundred whilst other people  sit around circle jerking about what beers they want to drink and what brewers they must have sex with this week.

Also, until one fanboy wrote about John Kimmich, I didn't have the first foggiest fucking clue who he was, or care for that matter.

As you were.

•I felt the need to qualify this as some brewers i've seen online are total superficial, cynical assholes.