Pete Brown author of the upcoming Shakespeare’s Local amongst other great beer books posed the question, “How Many Beer Bloggers Does it Take to Screw in a Lightbulb?” It was good for some laughs. My favorite one-liner was “Is it an artisan produced bulb, or mass produced yellow fizz of light?”
Despite the fact that tongue was firmly in cheek for many responses it got me to pondering why beer blogging has a less than stellar reputation. I know that blogging in general is considered less noble pursuit and more navel gazing. But why is everyone who blogs about beer painted with the same brush of disdain?
Granted, since I blog about beer and have gone to two of three beer blogger conventions and am part of the Los Angeles blogger group makes me a little touchy on the subject because I am being stereotyped along with everyone else. I have the mentality of a newspaper that publishes something slightly anti-Republican and gets slapped with the “lamestream” media tag.
Part of the problem lies with people who think that beer snobs and beer bloggers are one in the same. Whereas in my interactions with bloggers most are of the geeky Comic-Con variety and not the beer whale hunting, non pilsner drinking up turned nose stripe. So that is an issue that beer bloggers are going to have to tackle in the future. How to tell the origin story of beer bloggers and show that we are a fun lot to have a beer with.
Another part of the puzzle is an inherited problem from doing blogs. They are not a business. They are a passion. And usually a one person passion at that. Imagine writing a newspaper article or magazine piece without any editorial assistance. Of course errors are going to happen. There are probably enough grammatical issues on my blog alone to raise E.B. White from the dead and then put him back in his coffin. Until there is a HuffPost of craft beer, this will remain. Again, we bloggers need to either ‘fess up to our literary shortcomings or sell it as what makes our blog a personal and honest stop on the ale trail.
The one thing that I think will really break the logjam is that if a really wide variety of people start, continue or change the focus of their blogs to topics dear to their heart. Be it beer cocktails, women and beer, beer in out of way spots in the U.S., sports and beer or writing just about Belgian beers. This will break the mold and force readers and commenters to re-think what a beer blog is supposed to be.
Even if nothing changed, there are a wide variety of beer blogs out there today that need to be critiqued on a blog by blog basis and not just rejected out of hand. You wouldn’t review a movie you hadn’t seen and the same applies to craft beer blogs.