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Civilization of Beer is a company I founded in the fall of 2006. Prior to that, I worked for ten years in sales and brand management for a large regional brewing company. I’ve learned about and talked about beer since I was a boy, but professionally I’ve been doing this for the last decade. Advocating one particular, outstanding brand of beer was always a great experience for me, but it also left me feeling that I could do more for the beverage. I began to feel more passionate as an advocate of beer itself as a legitimate and healthy part of the American experience.

For a long time now, beer has been stigmatized by a negative and narrow-minded social discourse. Most of the civic-minded, intelligent dialogue focuses on drinking and driving, or on regulation. But there is much more to this beverage. I’ll delve into the entire history of beer in future articles, but until then, consider this: Beer is entrenched in the history of our country. Many of the Founding Fathers were brewers. In fact they were drinking ale in a pub when they plotted the American Revolution. Beer has been our close companion through the birth and growth of our country, and as you’ll come to see, it’s been our true companion through the birth of civilization itself.

So what has happened to the reputation of this important beverage? There are three major events that have influenced the negative perception of beer. First, in 1066, after the Battle of Hastings when the French took over the English throne, the drink of nobles was no longer beer but wine, and the perception of beer took a turn for the worse in Europe.

The second major blow was prohibition in the United States. After the repeal of prohibition, a major concession by the legitimate brewing industry was the replacement of high quality ingredients and traditional brewing techniques with cheap government-subsidized grains and industrial manufacturing facilities with huge research and developments budgets. This led to a loss of identity and individual taste.

The third blow to beer’s reputation has been the marketing tactics of these large producers, which distract the consumer from the actual quality of the product, and at the same time divide the country into two groups: the consumers, and the people who despise a perceived gluttonous and foul behavior. Meanwhile, the perception of wine has gone in the opposite direction. Since 1066, the French held wine to be the drink of sophisticates, while beer was perceived as the beverage of the common people. This idea has been cunningly and successfully sold to the American people through enormous amounts of money, misguided advertising, and the perpetuation of a great many myths, by both beer and wine producers, about either beverage.

People tend to think of beer drinkers as heathens and juveniles and miscreants and the people throwing up in the corner. We should be ashamed for letting it come to this. But in many cases it’s the brewers themselves who continue to perpetuate this stigma. Having lots of beer at your disposal will not necessarily get you laid. Nor will it make you a champion, necessarily. It might help you cope with working within a vastly cruel and confusing society, sometimes. But mass-market beer advertising never shows two middle-aged, slightly pot-bellied neighbors discussing politics or social responsibility over a handcrafted, pre-dinner ale. It shows nothing of the sort. Instead, it asks you to root for two blondes in bikinis wrestling in a water fountain over whether their beer tastes great or is less filling. This is a side of beer that doesn’t need to be explored any further.

Many beer companies are not promoting their product as a responsible beverage you can enjoy with food on a daily basis. Instead they are attaching meaning to beer beyond what it really is, which is a staple in the diet of civilized man. The mission of Civilization of Beer is to promote, through education and appreciation, the responsible enjoyment of high quality, craft beer in the context of our rapidly changing culinary landscape. The first goal of the company is to close the gap between wine studies and beer studies in the professional culinary community, and return beer to its proper place at the American table.

Copyright  © 2007 Samuel Merritt