How to drink socially
Some time ago, a friend of my wife’s invited us for a drink. I ended up finding some of the best beer and conversation I’ve had in my life.
It wasn’t just that first venue — to be honest, I can’t even remember which we went to that time. It was the whole London Craft Beer scene, which lives, thanks to passion and skills of its creators, in numerous drafty railway arches and remote industrial estates across the capital, and in the overflowing cupboards of myriad craft aficionados whose biggest drinking problem is storage space.
So what’s so great about it? After all, craft beer falls well inside the “hipster” spectrum in most people’s perceptions — cliquey, pricy, and the domain of slightly obsessive and superior individuals. But in reality, that’s an unfair perception of both hipsterism and craft beer. Both are the results of passion, individual expression, genuine creative effort, a search for something a bit beyond the mundane, and the willingness and ability to pay for it. Personally I’ve found the local scene friendly, diverse, accepting, and, ok, maybe a little obsessive.
But it’s the obsession of a hobbyist’s excitement. It’s a shared enjoyment and the ability to present friends with a constant stream of new discoveries, to share finds and chat about something more relatable than your jobs and more interesting than the weather.
Yes, craft beer aficionados talk about beer a lot. But there’s a lot to talk about in beer; styles, tastes, favours, discoveries made in travels, and there’s a lot to talk about it outside too; beer is the gateway to friendships, but then you talk about friends’ lives and experiences too. Beer is a lubricator of social friendships, an excuse for a gathering, and something to do when the conversation lulls.
Does this sound like I’ve just “invented” the pub, and that I’m potentially about to pitch it as the latest angel-backed startup? Well, no. I’ve known of pub culture since I was old enough to get pissed at university. But… I didn’t really like the beer they served, and I didn’t much like the noisy, crammed pubs with their piped music and echoing, deafening attempts at conversation. My hearing packs up at a certain volume threshold and I’m simply unable to participate in conversations that others seem to be handling without difficulty. Most city pubs and clubs are therefore useless to me from a social standpoint. Country pubs, back when I lived where they were accessible, were a lot better in terms of atmosphere and I’ll still seek them out when hiking, but even then the beer wasn’t really to my taste. Switching to cider gave me options in some areas but, ultimately, pubs just weren’t my place.
Craft taprooms and bottleshops, on the other hand, are. Most of them have no, or quiet, music. They have a much wider range of beer styles, almost always containing something I’ll enjoy. And they’re full of people who are there to enjoy and even celebrate the beer, not merely consume it. You wouldn’t call most of them atmospheric, unless you enjoy the industrial utility of being loomed over by huge fermentation vessels, but these barren, bare-floored industrial units give me what I suspect most people get from pub culture.
That’s not to say that there aren’t cosy craft pubs, however. London has a decent number of them, and my favourite local is a tiny one which turned a redundant hairdresser’s into a small but welcoming venue via the addition of 8 draft lines, a few tables and a couple of dangerously comfortable leather armchairs in the corner. Admittedly this one has music, but the bar staff share our tastes and generally keep it to a level that allows conversations to flourish. You can find it (I’ll let your figure out for yourselves which it is) on my Foursquare list of London Craft Beer, now covering around 100 bars, taprooms, breweries and bottleshops.
Of course, to focus on the venues is to forget about the beer. I suspect most people perceive craft beer as something a bit different, “good if you happen to like that sort of thing”, the pricy and limited output of a few brewpubs with mixed quality. In fact there are now around 80 craft breweries in London and 2000 across the UK. Clearly, a few brews are going to be dire, but many of them produce some fantastic beverages and some, even the smaller ones, achieve excellence in multiple styles (step forward Brick and Fourpure). You could certainly assume that these breweries produce an average of 5–10 styles each, so with at least 10,000 beers being produced in the UK, there’s going to be something for you.
Which brings me to an important point. There is massive variety in beer — more so that in any other drink, certainly far more so that in wine, whisky or coffee. That’s not to say it’s better than any of these, indeed I picked these examples precisely because I’m keen on all of them — it’s just more varied, and everyone’s likes and dislikes are massively influenced by their personal preferences. For example, I’m very fond of sour beers, which my wife largely dislikes, while she’s a great fan of pastry stouts that I generally find far too sweet. Neither of us is right or wrong, we’re both just benefitting from the diversity of the drink. This matters for two reasons; firstly, if you think you don’t like beer, it’s entirely possible you’ve just not found a style that suits you yet, and secondly, if someone else doesn’t rate a beer, you might well find it’s the tastiest one you’ve encountered.
Learning the styles can admittedly be tricky — there are far more than you’ll find on the mass market — and the tapboards can be covered with acronyms and styles unfamiliar to most of us. Here, a little reading can be useful — I’d recommend “Miracle Brew” by Pete Brown, which gives both a good history of brewing and a personal introduction to numerous styles. Another useful guide is Untappd — an app in which you can locate, find out about, check in and rate pretty much every beer and style on the planet. However, for the reasons recently covered, you should treat most of the ratings with a good dose of salt, and stick to rating for your own reference.
Indeed, Untappd is widespread in the London craft beer scene, with phones visible on the table in most taprooms, mostly as an aide-memoire — with quite so many beers available external recollection can be essential. Personally, I’ve got as far as to record my own scoring scheme to try and maintaining consistency between checkins:
0.x : Never even consider drinking this again
1.x : This is how beer gets a bad reputation
2.x : Drinkable, if thirsty
3.x : Good, albeit nothing special. Might be one to look for as a staple
3.5+ Definitely tasty if not unusual or exciting
4.x : Tasty & interesting
4.5+ Genuinely special
5.0 : Liquid god
You might expect all this phone-gazing to become tedious, but it’s mitigated by the fact that, having noted the drink, we tend to drink slow, chat and enjoy. Craft beer might well be more expensive than “macro” brews, but it often has a stronger taste (and often a higher alcohol content) and is commonly taken in small measures — thirds or halves — and appreciated, frequently shared, rather than drunk simply to consume it. A typical session might well be six thirds or so over the course of a night, rather than a number of pints; the costs balance out. Not that six thirds of 13% Imperial Stouts can’t leave a mark…
So it’s a scene that’s largely based around friendships, how do you get into it? The best way is probably to head to your local bottleshop and chat to the staff; the eponymous Bottle Shop on Druid Street, in London’s Bermondsey Beer Mile, is a personal favourite, with friendly staff, an outstanding range, a reasonable amount of seating, and frequent events such as Tap Takeovers, when the draft lines — 18 here — are given over to the output of one or two breweries, often smaller or foreign ones. Outside of London, I’d recommend searching for Craft Beer on Foursquare and paying attention to the ratings, or finding your local BrewDog bar, a larger-scale (if not entirely uncontroversial) craft brewery whose bars usually feature some excellent guests. It’s probably also worth checking out my undoubtedly incomplete twitter lists — one for craft beer accounts of all types in London, and another slowly growing one for craft breweries across the UK.
Discovering these beers in the comfort of your own home is also a good option; beer, being sold in single serving bottles that sit well with meals, is easy to stock at home and dabble in at your leisure. There are a number of craft subscription services available, some from single breweries, others more diverse, but my personal preference at the moment is Beer52 — a monthly box of 8 or 10 beers from a particular location, accompanied by an excellent magazine (Ferment) covering the beers, the local scene, and wider developments in craft beer. Rather usefully, they give all subscribers a 50% off referral code, so to get that deal, use this link: £12 off your first case at Beer52.
So however (and whenever) you get into craft beer, enjoy it — but with moderation of course. It would be irresponsible for me to introduce this as a hobby and not recall that alcohol is an intoxicant, with health risks when consumed to excess. So park the pint, enjoy the third, the tasting flight, the lighter beers between the double-figured imperials. Enjoy the taprooms that host great pop-up food too. Pace yourself, chat, and enjoy; stick to a few drinks a night and not too many sessions a week, because the one thing that’s for certain is that there will always be another great new beer on the horizon. It’s about the journey, and it’s one that can be taken slowly; an excuse to explore your own area or the life of one you’re just visiting, or a familiar destination to chill out with friends, or locals with a common interest.
Right now, the craft beer scene is wider, more enjoyable and more accessible than it’s ever been. Find your flavour, raise a glass with us, and tell us what you think of it!
Feedback on this piece is welcomed — contact @parsingphase on twitter, particularly with any additions to the twitter and foursquare lists I’ve missed, or with suggestions on what else would interest you on this topic.
