haveigotboozeforyou.com

The Intricacies of Craft Beer: Confessions from the Bottle Share

At a recent bottle share event, I found myself in a rather amusing yet somewhat embarrassing situation involving my not-so-stellar beer vocabulary. As the evening unfolded, a friend opened a particularly intriguing barrel-aged sour. Feeling the pressure to sound knowledgeable, I confidently dropped a comment about how I “truly appreciated the characteristic brett interacting with the oak tannins to create some beautiful phenolic compounds.” The problem? I hadn’t a clue what “phenolic compounds” really entailed—I was simply combining wine jargon with snippets I had retained from various brewing podcasts.

What added to the complexity of my faux pas was the fact that everyone around me nodded in agreement, as if I had just revealed a profound truth about the beverage. Sensing their approval, I dug deeper, throwing in a remark about the beer “expressing local terroir through indigenous microflora.” It felt exhilarating in the moment, yet I couldn’t shake the thought that I was speaking in what I can only describe as “craft beer mad libs.”

Just last month, I caught myself using the term “mouthfeel complexity” when I actually meant to describe a beer’s thick and rich texture. What do these terms even mean in the grand scheme? It’s quite possible that many of us are just echoing phrases we’ve heard in conversations, out of fear that we might be exposed as less knowledgeable than we aspire to be.

I can’t help but wonder—do others out there feel the same way? Are we all just playing a game of craft beer telephone, hoping our words sound as sophisticated as the brews we’re enjoying? If you’ve ever felt the pressure to impress at a beer tasting or share, I’d love to hear your stories. Let’s embrace the complexity of craft beer together, even if we don’t always know what we’re talking about!