I met a man from the real ale pressure group CAMRA 10 years ago. He was straight from central casting. He wore socks and sandals, a baggy jumper stretched over a barrel-sized beer belly and he sported a straggly beard. It was unclear whether he had embraced the look to fit the beer, or the other way round, but he was a cliche nonetheless.
Today, according to various social trend spotters, his ilk has been replaced by craft beer-swilling hipsters. This urban sub-species, recognisable by its facial hair, tattoos, tweed waistcoat and retro sneakers, was first spotted in London’s Shoreditch. Sightings have since spread, and if you've been to the Edinburgh fringe you'll know what I mean.
With his local pubs full of them, the London-based beer writer Pete Brown has studied the phenomenon up close. He feels it sprung from dissatisfaction with our infantilised culture. “That Ernest Shackleton beard and Don Draper leisure shirt says the hipster is a man, not a boy,” he wrote.
He also claimed: “The hipster hates anything that’s trying too hard”, which ironically some would say is a defining trait of hipsterdom. Whether craft beer is a similar trait, the drink itself refuses to be pigeonholed and rightly so. I have never met a craft beer stereotype and doubt one exists beyond the style pages of London magazines and newspapers.
Melissa Cole of the blog: letmetellyouaboutbeer agrees, and blames editors, or what she calls “a bunch of sad middle-aged men” for daring to suggest that craft beer might be a fad. The truth is the flavour genie is out of the bottle and the proliferation of tasty, local beers looks set to flourish. People are embracing them not because they are trendy, and no amount of marketing is going to win them back to Stella or Carslberg.
This coming Friday and Saturday sees the return of Craft Beer Rising to Glasgow’s Drygate brewery where Cole and others will be spreading the gospel of good beer along with plenty of music and street food. As for the lesser-spotted hipster, I suspect he’s now back in London after the Edinburgh Festival and is probably drinking something else. Even beers like Brewdog have become too mainstream and today the toast of the counter culture is probably something like Absinthe. dry sherry.
Craft Beer Rising (craftbeerrising.co.uk) Sept 4-5. The Herald has 10 pairs of tickets to give away – email: chris@craftbeerrising.co.uk
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