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Steven Coulson
Steven has been drinking beers, wines and spirits for decades and has a propensity to go about them at length after a few drinks.
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Title: The Art of Pretension in Craft Beer Culture: Have We All Been There?
Craft beer enthusiasts often revel in the intricacies of their favorite brews, but how often do we find ourselves speaking a language we don’t quite grasp? Last weekend, during a lively bottle share gathering, I was presented with a barrel-aged sour that sent me spiraling into a whirlwind of pretentious jargon that I barely understood myself.
When I exclaimed my appreciation for how the “characteristic brett interacts with the oak tannins to create some beautiful phenolic compounds,” I quickly realized I was stringing together phrases more from wine tasting than actual beer knowledge. The truth? I had little understanding of what phenolic compounds truly are. It seemed that I had taken a selection of wine-related terminology and a few scraps from a brewing podcast to put my thoughts together.
The most amusing part? The crowd nodded along as if I had just dropped a profound truth. Emboldened by their agreement, I took it a step further, embellishing my observations with a comment about the beer “expressing local terroir through indigenous microflora.” Talk about a classic case of bluffing through beer appreciation!
In a moment of reflection, I found myself recalling numerous instances where I described a beer’s “mouthfeel complexity,” which in reality was my way of saying it simply tasted thick and rich. It dawned on me that I was essentially engaging in a craft beer rendition of mad libs; a playful yet nonsensical jumble of phrases that sounded sophisticated but lacked substance.
Are we all guilty of this linguistic charade? It often feels like we’re echoing the thoughts of those around us, contributing to a collective pretense that nobody seems eager to challenge. If you’ve ever found yourself in a similar situation, know that you’re not alone. Let’s embrace the fun in our shared enthusiasm for craft beer, even if it means occasionally stumbling over our words or borrowing a term we don’t fully understand. After all, enjoying a good beer shouldn’t hinge on our ability to sound knowledgeable—it should be about the experience itself.