Beer: It's Complicated

Welcome to Cincy Beer Me!  http://twitter.com/CincyBeerMe.  This week and for the next couple month's we welcome our guest local beer bloggers at Hoperatives, an awesome local beer blog.
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Submitted by Tom at Hoperatives:  Back in another lifetime I taught television production to college students. When they'd complain about some difficulty they were having, I'd usually wind up pointing out that it's a lot harder to make television than it is to watch it. I think about that a lot now that Hoperatives is approaching its third anniversary. My wife Carla and I launched the site on New Year's Day 2009 with absolutely no idea of what we were really getting ourselves into. Don't get me wrong: It's the best thing we ever did. It's just that we had no idea how much harder it is to be on the beer-industry side of things than it is to be on the beer-drinking side.

If you're not familiar with Hoperatives, the first thing to understand is that we don't make beer. I've done a little beer brewing at home, but mostly to keep myself humble. Most of our regular contributors homebrew as well, but it's a hobby for all of them. None of us are "in the business." What we have, though, is a deep appreciation of well-crafted beer. One of the main things we try to do as a blog is to be a clearinghouse of beer-related information for Greater Cincinnati. Every Monday we run "This Week in Beer" highlighting upcoming events, and every Friday we do a listing of beer tastings and what's on draft at the various growler stations in the area. Carla assembles both of these features each week, and it's a lot more work than you'd think. In fact, discovering just how hard it is to get that information together was our first inkling of something that's become crystal-clear to us: Beer is complicated.

There's every reason to think that humans have been brewing beer, or liquids very much like it, for 3000 years. For all but the last 155 years or so, though, we had no idea how or why brewing worked. The first 2,845 years of brewing history was really a series of happy accidents, trial-and-error, and probably a lot of superstition. "Brewe thye beere wyle standing on the lefte hinde legg of a younge Stagge," said some ancient recipe I'm completely making up, "and makee it thus bye thee tyme of a newe moone." Following that kind of recipe takes dedication. And young stags. The point -- and I have one -- is that there's been a lot of time for some complicated science, industry and superstition to take root. You may think beer's just that stuff that takes up pretty much all of Aisle 15 at the local Kroger, but there's a hidden world behind it, one most people never see. And, for the record, you probably don't want to look too closely at what's behind Aisle 15 either. Just saying.

Cincinnati's annual salute to beer and justification for not leaving town until May, the Cincy Winter Beerfest, is coming up in February on the 10th and 11th down at the Duke Energy Convention Center. The whole convention center. The thing's going to be huge. The week before, Feb. 2nd though 9th, is the first Cincinnati Beer Week. For nine days in February, Cincinnati is going to be focused on beer like never before. The folks at DERF have asked Hoperatives to contribute a weekly blog entry about beer in Cincinnati. They were very crafty about it. They asked when we were drinking. Of course we said yes. Then, as the cold light of dawn broke on some later unspecified date, we realized we was going to have to do the editorial walk-of-shame. We were going to actually have to write something.

So what I've decided to do is spend this time we have together trying to explain a little bit about what I've learned about the beer world over the last three years. I say "I" as if I'm really going to write all of them, which is a really fun for me to believe. Like how I was going to be an astronaut when I was a kid. Anyway, the reality is that I'm going to be asking my fellow Hoperatives contributors to help, too. Anyway, what we'll do is take one thing a week about beer that's complicated and talk about it in a thousand words or less. Sometimes it'll be mostly facts, sometimes mostly opinion. Next week, for example, I'm going to tackle the tension between appreciating a fine beer and getting face-down-in-the-gutter drunk. After that it's going to be an explanation of why bragging that your beer is "triple hop brewed" is a lot like bragging that your beer can occupies three dimensions in space. Then we'll see where we go from there. Have something you've always wondered about? If it has something to do with beer and I'm desperate enough for a topic I might use it. Email me at tom@hoperatives.com with your ideas. There are a lot of moving parts in the beer-making machine. I doubt we'll run out of parts to talk about.

See you back here next week. First round's on me.

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ABOUT CINCY BEER ME
We're here.  We're beer.  Get used to us blogging about the world of beer.  Catch us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/CincyBeerMe.

We also heavily support local beer events such as Cincy Beerfest which is coming up in 2012 on Feb 10 and 11 at the convention center.  300+ Craft Beers.  10,000 Craft Beer Fans.  1 Great Time.  For 1 Incredible Week, The Eyes Of The Craft Beer World Will Be Upon Cincinnati!  Grab tickets!

We regularly welcome guest bloggers such as the awesome Cincinnati beer blog, Hoperatives.  Check out endless beer insights on Hoperatives.