I only started following Pete Brown’s blog fairly recently (about when he was leaving for his IPA sea adventure), but he has a great post today:

The point is, there’s an attitude in beer appreciation that’s the same as the one I used to have when I was a teenage indie kid: back then, we thought anything on a major label was shit, anyone who actually got into the charts had sold out. It seems lots of beer fans enjoy being just as miserable as I was then. Big brewers churning out bland lager are easy hate targets, but when they start to show some interest in characterful beers, the vitriol only increases. Why?

This attitude doesn’t exist in, say, the whisk(e)y world. Michael Jackson used to judge single malts owned by Diageo on their merits alongside those from tiny distilleries. It’s a blight on beer that we can’t do the same, and it should come as no surprise when people dismiss the entire beer community as whining Luddites.

Brilliant. I have a hard time understanding this attitude as well; I’ve noticed it extends to breweries that have "sold out" or gotten too big, also. Like the Widmer-Redhook merger (or the general attitude towards Widmer itself—particularly their Hefeweizen), or the (surprising, to me) animosity toward New Belgium over Fat Tire.

I hope beer folks take notice. And I hope I never become that elitist!