What’s Up Brewer w/Dogfish Head’s Sam Calagione – “Let Germany Brew Your Beer”
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MyBeer Buzz
From Sam Calagione and Medium:
This is the first installment of a column I will be writing for Medium. I plan to share some of the excitement, history, trends and stories of the craft brewing renaissance not only through my experience as a brewery owner, but also through the experiences of my brewing brethren. I will interview brewing rock stars from around the world and cover beer and food pairing, beer tourism and hard-to-find beer experiences worth seeking out.
I’ll also be celebrating trailblazers, usually with positivity and excitement. But occasionally, your heroes let you down.
I never thought I would be that guy, but I yelled “Judas!” as I pointed my finger at Bob Dylan. No, I wasn’t at the Newport Folk Fest in 1965 when he went electric and pissed off the old-guard folkies. I wish I’d been there, but I wasn’t born until 1969. My Judas moment came much later, during this year’s Super Bowl.
There was a pivotal moment during that ’60s folk festival when Dylan plugged into amplifiers and rocked amid cries of Judas and insults from the offended old guard. But make no mistake — a small group of passionate individuals reinvigorated by Dylan’s audacity to color outside the lines were present as well. The bands that took the stage that weekend in Newport included the Kingston Trio and Peter, Paul & Mary, who presented a very polished, innocuous and popular form of folk music — the easy-listening equivalent of easy-drinking.
But just because this music was popular doesn’t mean that everyone loved it. There were a growing number of listeners who wanted more from their music than something to tap their toes to — they wanted music and lyrics that represented the challenging, vibrant and sometimes incongruous time in which they were living. They were leading exciting lives, but there was no music that honestly reflected their excitement. Dylan had the courage to stand up there and express himself, to invent, innovate, experiment and follow his own muse. Maybe he knew the reaction he would receive from the carriers of the status-quo torch who invited him to play, and maybe he didn’t care. He was a true risk-taking artistic entrepreneur if there ever was one. Here is what he had to say about the reaction:
“There were a lot of old people there too. Lots of whole families had driven down from Vermont, lots of nurses with their patients, and, well, like they just came to hear something relaxing — hoedowns, you know an Indian polka or two, and just when everything is going alright, here I come on, and the whole place turns into a beer factory.”
I shit you not, Dylan called the scene a “beer factory.” I hate hearing a brewery called a beer factory, don’t you? But Dylan wasn’t referring to an actual brewery. He was referring to a bunch of old-guard folkies that feared change, diversity and confrontation. They wanted to define for everyone what folk music meant, whereas Dylan was calling out to the individual listener and saying, “You have ears. You have a mind. You are more capable of defining what folk music means to you than anyone else is. Screw the establishment. Create your own establishment.” What is more punk rock than saying, “How does it feel — to be on your own?”
I think every American craft brewer knows how that feels. Competing with international brewing conglomerates that dominate market share feels pretty exhilarating.
The Judas moment
My Judas moment happened earlier this year when I was suffering like so many people through one of the worst Super Bowls in history. Dylan appeared in a car commercial, and this is what he said:
“So let Germany brew your beer. Let Switzerland make your watch. Let Asia assemble your phone. We will build your car.”
Dylan’s script in this ad echoes his protest song “Union Sundown,” and although I can’t be sure, I’d bet that he wrote it. As one of thousands of American craft brewers making world-class beers and providing tens of thousands of jobs in every state, I am sure you can sense the reasons behind my disappointment.
Dylan is a one-man vortex of folk, rock, country, blues, psychedelia and more. With music, as with craft brewing, it’s the archaic artist who howls into the zeitgeist and alters it, and if the artist has hit the mark, the zeitgeist begins to howl back. Sorry Bob, but we have come too far as a nation of world-class small indie beer producers and passionate beer enthusiasts to let the Germans brew our beer.
American craft brewers are now recognized globally for brewing innovative, world-class beers, and the American beer drinker is the biggest beneficiary. There has never been a better time to be a beer lover in terms of diverse, distinct, flavorful offerings.
I have brewed beer in Italy, New Zealand, the Czech Republic, Sweden and many other countries, and it’s awe-inspiring to see the brewers in these burgeoning craft communities championing and referencing our American brewing innovations with their double IPAs and coffee-infused stouts. So many peers in the American craft brewing community collaborate with our counterparts around the world to brew beers, host events and drink the fruits of one-another’s labor. But it’s also symbolic that great beer, made by and for great people, knows no borders. We share a philosophy that centers around our passion for beer being primal and primary over our passion for business. I think many beer consumers see this and support us in part because of this philosophy, which makes many of our small businesses successful.
The average American now lives within 10 miles of a local brewery, and there are on average 1.2 new small commercial breweries opening every day in this county. Get ready: There will soon be a boatload of new exciting, creative, world-class, locally made beers coming your way.
Be on the look out for the next edition of What’s up Brewer?! We will be cracking open a couple of bottles of Vintage Life & Limb as I interview Sierra Nevada Brewery Founder Ken Grossman. Ken and I will chat about Sierra’s new North Carolina Brewery, the success of releases like Torpedo and Kellerweiss, and what is was like to open a craft brewery before the term “craft brewery” even existed.
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