Why I gave up craft beer – 04/21/2023 – Cozinha Bruta

An advertising campaign for Bud Light beer in the United States caused a huge stir. By hiring trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney as a poster girl, the brand triggered a violent boycott by right-wing brewers.

Violence is not a force of expression. The singer Kid Rock recorded a video that shows him machine gunning, in the most literal way possible, some bales of Bud Light cans.

The announcement that the brand’s shares would have plummeted by US$ 5 billion made the reactionary arrobos of social networks euphoric – many of them, from people who work with beer.

Some 15 years ago, something revolutionary seemed to be underway in the brewing industry. I bought that version and even wrote the word “revolution” in an article I did for the men’s magazine that employed me.

I returned fascinated from Blumenau, in Santa Catarina, where the first edition of the Brazilian Beer Festival had taken place, in 2010. In it, one of the Oktoberfest pavilions received small and medium-sized brewers, gathered under the adjective “craft”, to expose the product and exchange ideas .

The clues of what would become the so-called “beer scene” were already in the air. It was an almost all-male event, almost all white and with family money, almost all fans of classic rock, motorcycles, entrepreneurship and meritocracy.

The atmosphere of Clube do Bolinha bothered me, but I let it go. There was also the excitement of novelty, of the almost infinite possibility of creating, of some rebellion against the status quo of a mass industry – the big breweries, who were pushing marketing and corn down our throats.

A new IPA substyle came out every week, and I wanted to try them all. I took a beer sommelier course and got to give my tips professionally.

Then I got tired. I gave up on craft beer.

It was no longer for my beak. I was caught in a perfect storm that combined the rise in the dollar, the brutal drop in my income and the megalomania of the craft’s geniuses, who started selling beer for the price of champagne. The thing became inaccessible.

It’s true that I circulated in the middle and could drink it for free at events and with samples sent by producers and importers. But I wanted away from it all. I got rancid.

There are times when you don’t want to burp guava, passion fruit, grapefruit, mango, Lilliputian hops or Maltese malts. He just wants a beer, but the pressure for innovation pushed brewers towards complicated and weird flavors.

And it has the main.

The festive atmosphere of craft beer has soured to the same extent as the rest of Brazilian society. The reactionary face of the brewers, previously camouflaged in the coach’s speech, appeared without a mask and with all of his teeth.

The rise of the far right has washed away the modern veneer of the beer community. She revealed herself to be racist, sexist, homophobic and misogynistic.

As always, not everyone. I keep cool friends that I met in the beer circles – some still persevering, others with the sack on the moon. They are minority.

The American boycott of Bud Light shows that this brewer’s profile is not Brazilian jabuticaba. Here, by the way, Pabllo Vittar’s participation in Amstel advertising did not cause half the noise.

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