Beer Has Roots.

Recently, an article in Boston Magazine detailed how the craft beer movement has seemingly outgrown Sam Adams.

It was a bit sad to read how such a giant in the craft beer industry (an oxymoron in a field where individualism, uniqueness and small-scale tenacity are highly valued?) could be felled by it's own progeny and how someone as iconic as Jim Koch could be forced to play catch-up.

Yes, there are bigger, badder, more unique beers to try but that wasn't always the case even a decade ago.  Some of the responses to the article and on Twitter seem to indicate that there is a developing schism the craft beer world.  There are those of us who remember severely limited options and those who came into craft when it was already under a considerable head of steam.  That is, all of you rotten kids.

No one wonders "what's a triple IPA?" or "what does barrel-aging mean?"  But rather, "who made that triple and which barrels were used and for how long?"  The magic is gone.  Stuff that opened my eyes in wonderment is simply taken for granted by the new, larger and younger population of craft beer drinkers.

Vanilla stout?  Dude, that was so 2000.  Coffee stout?  Bah.  Have you had any  Kopi Luwak stout offerings? Not just coffee beans but coffee beans passed through the digestive tract of a civet!  Umm... yea, cat-pooped coffee beans.  

But even that is passé!  The trend has been to demand more and more exotically sourced ingredients with which to fuel the Hype Train.   Beer made with habañeros?  Pedestrian!  But check it out! This one is made with a pepper grown from seeds smuggled out of Itzcoatl's tomb!  Uh, yeah. The guy had to smuggle the seeds out in his ass so... there's that Kopi Luwak theme resurfacing again...

That's not to say one can't outgrow a beer. In fact, I think it's impossible for your palate to not develop.  Folks will move from one style to another or find specific beers within a style that they prefer over others.  Currently, for example, I have moved from drinking copious amounts of Stone IPA to drinking so much Union Jack that my neighbors get kidney failure every Friday night.

So, yeah, Boston Beer Company's Rebel IPA doesn't really satisfy a hophead the way a Green Flash Palate Wrecker or even my beloved Union Jack would.  And their flagship Boston Lager has been eclipsed by a bevy of other craft beer offerings.  But does that mean that Sam deserves such derision?

All craft beer enthusiasts started somewhere and I'd be willing to bet, most of us started with something like Sam.  I highly doubt that, after a collegiate career of drinking Bud, someone jumped into the deep-end and got into craft by first sampling a rauchbier or a funky, brett-laced sour.  

For me is was Bass. And Sam.  I remember fondly downing pitchers of it at The Silhouette Bar and Lounge in Allston in the mid-90s playing Cricket and 301 until I developed dart elbow.  Then Abita Turbo Dog.  Those three, crucial brews slammed together like an alcoholic's Voltron and made me into the IPA-loving, quart-guzzling super-boozy robot you see before you today!

And I never looked... actually, I did. I looked back and still look back a lot.  And every now and then I'll have a Sam because it's important to remember.

As Wilford Brimley (another old fart) said in the Quaker Oats commercials, "It's the right thing to do..."