As of today, I’ve been doing this for a decade. 

In some other timeline, I had a trip planned to Montreal to celebrate. I started writing about beer in Montreal on a trip to Mondiale de la Bière to build a portfolio to get into brewing school. I thought it would be nice to check in on that event in its latter and somewhat diminished form as an excuse to get out and stretch my legs a little between semesters.

Instead of that, I’ve been sitting in my apartment for 82 days in a row with only the cat to talk to. Beer deliveries and periodic ventures out to see what’s 50% off at the local Loblaws are the only things breaking up hitting the F5 button on the keyboard to check which bit of the world is on fire now.

There’s been rather a lot of news. Between the pandemic, the killing of George Floyd and resultant protests, the impending collapse of the American Empire, murder hornets, cannibalistic rat kings, asteroids within striking distance of earth, the arctic being on fire, and the frequent and increasing seismic activity near the Yellowstone supervolcanic caldera, one might get somewhat despondent. Especially since the cat can’t seem to learn cribbage.

That’s a lot of time to reflect, and I thought it might be a good time to see if I’ve learned anything over the last ten years. I’ve been racking my brain to see if there is a single lesson that will get the point across in a concise and pithy manner; something you can really put on a t-shirt.

Ready? Here it is:

Beer is about people.

I cover this subject bottom up and top down, sometimes in the space of 24 hours. One night I might find myself explaining the basics of ingredients or styles to George Brown students. The next morning I might be answering emails about the particulars of Toronto brewing history or providing feedback for brewers or making connections between people for employment or other reasons. That afternoon I might be walking people around the city helping them find things they’d like to drink and telling them stories. If there’s any time left, I’ve been known to do statistical analysis, map geodata, design QC sensory protocols, and get through about a half gallon of cask mild.

Now, the mistake I could make (and have made, in the past) is to think that I’m the important part of that equation. Ego will do that to you if you let it. Beer isn’t about me. Beer is about people. In the above cases that would be students, seekers of information, guests and tourists, breweries and hop growers who might benefit from ordered information.

Alright, the half gallon of cask mild is a bit selfish, but I do get thirsty.

I’ve been around long enough that I feel protective of the people in the beer industry. Thinking about Ontario specifically, I’ve been around longer than 90% of the breweries that exist here. One of the things I like about it is that the beer industry tends to be other directed.

My favourite moments are when I get to share things with people. I love to watch the colour drain from my student’s faces when they try Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbier or Lindeman’s Cuvee Renee for the first time and react with disbelief. I love making collaboration beers because there’s nothing quite like watching someone try something you’ve put time and effort into making. In both of these cases the results are mixed in terms of people’s enjoyment, but the shared experience is wonderful.

I’m not describing anything new. This is simply Xenia. Hospitality. The fair and respectful treatment of others and ritualized guest-friendship surrounding food and drink. You don’t need to be a religious person to understand the importance of this tenet. It is in all of them though.

If you wanted to play around with ingredients, you’d be a home brewer. A professional brewer, by default, brews for someone else. One assumes that a professional brewer does that because they enjoy it. One assumes that they make a product they believe in to the best of their ability and share it with the world. One assumes they are mindful of all the collective effort that goes into that.

That glass of beer on the bar represents a season’s growth of barley and hops, sunlit energy and real time effort. The labour of farmers, maltsters, hop factors, truckers, yeast scientists, etc. And that’s before you consider equipment. A million dollars of steel, potentially shipped halfway around the world and churning through water and electricity and the planet’s dwindling natural resources. There’s the training, as well. The time a brewer has put into it, the expertise needed to bring that skill to bear upon the ingredients and the equipment, the knowledge to be able to design something worth sharing.

The job of the brewer in its simplest form is to condense all of that time and effort into something beautiful in a glass and say, “I hope you enjoy this.” Whether that beer sells to a hundred people or a hundred thousand, they outnumber you. It is, by default, other directed and service oriented. Beer isn’t about the brewer. Beer is about people.

It angers me greatly to see brewers invite hubris. To take all of the time and effort and resources that go into just getting off the ground and then to decide to violate that concept of Xenia through exclusion. When you see a sexist or racist label, something that punches down and alienates the audience? That’s hubris. Not just in the sense that it typically comes from a place of arrogance, but in the older Greek sense that it shames or humiliates.

Now, if you’re in the beer industry and you see someone doing that? They’re not just being sexist, racist assholes. They’re disrespecting and undermining and devaluing the entire basis of your industry. They’ve failed to grasp the basic six thousand year old premise. The entire point is to share something you have created with everyone. Pride is certainly allowed, but it should be pride in the fact that you have made people happy through the creation of something. You are meant to increase the amount of happiness in the world. To use tools meant to create happiness to increase the suffering of others is repugnant.

On the opposite side of the scale from hubris is nemesis. Translated literally “to give what is due.” Now we are not in ancient Greece, and there is no divine agent of retribution likely to kick the door down. However, if you’ll scroll back up to the paragraph summarizing the news, you’ll see any number of ironic consequences we have invited upon ourselves as a species. I’d ask you to think what the ironic consequence of exclusion might be to the beer industry at large and to you personally in a microcosm. Xenia is predicated on the idea that there is an unspoken agreement between host and guest. Guess what happens with no guests.

Your hospitality must be loud and optimistic and wear boots. Your welcome must be warm and enthusiastic for anyone interested in having it. You must bring more people to your tent and spread joy up to the maximum. You must ask people for help in making that happen and ask your guests what they’d enjoy, and then give it to them. You must tell them to bring their friends. Revel in the fact that you have the opportunity to increase, if only by a little, the amount of happiness in a world that is currently leaning drastically in the other direction. Ultimately this is really simple:

Treat them how you would want to be treated. If you see people being treated badly, call it out and don’t be afraid of calling it out. More importantly, understand that this is not exclusively about yelling. Every day is an opportunity to improve and build consensus and share. Ask yourself “What can I do to help?” Ask yourself, “Is what I’m doing helpful?” Enjoyment is increased through communion and congregation and shared experience. You might have the newest hop or the freshest yeast or a hell of a barrel aging program, but all of that is meaningless in a vacuum. 

Beer is about people.