{"id":19238,"date":"2017-09-02T11:23:23","date_gmt":"2017-09-01T23:23:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/?p=19238"},"modified":"2024-07-13T14:32:51","modified_gmt":"2024-07-13T02:32:51","slug":"hazy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2017\/09\/02\/hazy\/","title":{"rendered":"Just a phase \u2015 on haze’s murky history, and crazes in general"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"'Solace<\/a>
And if\u00a0you gaze long into the haze, the haze also gazes into you…<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This piece first\u00a0appeared in the August 2017 edition<\/a> of SOBA’s magazine, <\/em>The Pursuit of Hoppiness\u00a0\u2015 a thing which has evolved a lot recently and spawned a nicely-maintained online incarnation, among other improvements. I’ve seen\u00a0<\/i>that<\/a> version of this post handed around a bit already, but I wanted to also share it here (as I have done with other pieces<\/a>). Overtly hazy beers remain a hot-button topic (as you may already have noticed), but I think the whole thing is most useful as a microcosm for how we think about history and fashion and matters of taste overall…<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

As I sit down to write this, I’m finishing off a glass of some newfangled hazy beer from an “independent” brewery not far from here. It’s distinctly murky, which blunts its otherwise-lovely golden colour but it’s got a nice amount of flavour without too much bitterness. I could see myself getting used to it. “Sparkling Ale”, they call it. From a Coopers Brewery in Adelaide, founded as recently as 1862! That’s basically just yesterday, given that we humans have been making beer for some 7,000<\/span>1<\/sup><\/a><\/span> years…<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"It<\/a>
Memesmithing by Dylan “The Bottleneck” Jauslin, noted subject-matter expert<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

My point, sarcastic but sincere, is that beer has a long history, filled with patterns and cycles and upheavals \u2015 and one of the quickest ways to make a fool of yourself is to look at something changing or unfamiliar or new, lose all perspective, and freak out about it.<\/p>\n

An excellent example of just that kind of misguided “outrage” can be found in a lot of the reaction to the rise of hazy East Coast (or “Vermont” or “New England”) style IPAs. Garage Project’s Party & Bullshit was the first notable local follower of the trend, which was\u00a0expertly chronicled in this magazine’s Summer 2016 edition by Jono Galuszka<\/a>. Revisit that piece for the style’s history and technical details \u2015 I’m going to focus on the nonsense ways in which its detractors talked about how beer “should” be: how they freaked out about the haze, and how they dismissed it as a fad.<\/p>\n

First, the murk. The idea that clarity is a mark of quality is incredibly recent, on any kind of sensible timescale. This is as true of beer as it is of cider or wine; all of them would’ve been significantly cloudy for a huge chunk of their histories. Crystal-clear beer depends on additives and equipment that doesn’t exactly grow on trees and weren’t just laying around for our ancestors to trip over. The techniques needed to make our drinks easy to see straight through had to be invented: there was a time before them, and they aren’t mandatory.<\/p>\n

\"Coopers<\/a>
Golden, glorious, genuinely opaque<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Before any of us had an East Coast IPA, we probably had a Belgian Wit, or a German Hefe<\/span>2<\/sup><\/a><\/span> \u2015 or a Coopers Sparkling. There’s nothing “new” or “wrong” about those, is there? Relatively-clear beer has been dominant for a couple of hundred years, but never completely, and 200 years in this business, frankly, just isn’t that impressive or immediately meaningful. Given the long dominance of darker styles and opaque drinking vessels, if we wanted to figure out exactly when clarity become the norm, statistically and aesthetically, we’d need a time machine. I’d rather go see the dinosaurs.<\/p>\n

With very few exceptions, haze is simply the side-effect of things done (or\u00a0not<\/em> done) for the sake of various flavours. In that way, it’s no different from the colour of beer, and I just can’t remember the last time anyone whinged about how “all beer should be gold”, or brown, or black. If you don’t like these beers because of their flavour of their texture, then (by all means) complain about those factors, not the haze that coincidentally results. But never, ever mistake your preferences for how things should be for everyone or anyone else.<\/p>\n

You can see how shallow the “clear = quality” myth is by the fact that it’s capable of reversing completely. Not long ago, when Coopers Sparkling was the local paragon of “good beer”, Australian brewers got into the habit of fogging up their beers seemingly just to emulate it and borrow some of its prestige.<\/span>3<\/sup><\/a><\/span> Likewise, some brewers of juice-bomb East Coast IPAs exaggerate their haze with additives selected solely for that purpose, and not in pursuit of tastier beer as such. Such trickery is indeed obnoxious, but it’s the cheating, not the cloudiness, that offends me.<\/p>\n

\"Garage<\/a>
Fair warning<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Second, the “fad” allegation. It’s simply nonsensical to claim that a particular turn in the long arc of beer history is less legitimate than any other. On a broader view of things, pilsner hasn’t yet proven itself: despite its current popularity, it’s only been around for about three percent of the time there’s been beer at all. For that matter,\u00a0beer<\/em> could just be a passing fancy, in human terms: our species has been here for 200,000 years but brewing for “merely” 7,000 or so. Of course, unless we get our act together, humanity itself might prove to only be a brief phase the planet was going through for a while…<\/p>\n

The one constant is change. Something can seem carved in stone or built on sand, depending on the perspective you take. Everything that seem “normal” to us was new, and possibly scary once. If we diverted that time machine of ours, we wouldn’t have to travel back far to find people freaking out about other fads like fizz or hops \u2015 as opposed to the gentler bubbles of “tradtional” carbonation, or “traditional” bittering ingredients like heather and bog myrtle.<\/p>\n

There’s no “legit” IPA in a strong enough sense to render any variations from it somehow unworthy. Every attempt at making an “authentic”, historically-accurate version of something masks dozens of subconscious choices about which elements to replicate faithfully and which to ignore or update. Beer styles \u2015 just like genres of music, film, art, or fiction \u2015 evolve through a chaotic combination of gradual, accidental drift and intentional remix and reinvention. In our enjoyment of all our subjective endeavours and matters of taste, it’s normal to think less of things that emerged after we joined the scene; what was here when we arrived seems like the real deal, newcomers seems supicious. But just because it’s a natural impulse doesn’t mean it’s excusable. Don’t mistake a reflex for an insight. Don’t mistake “I don’t like this” for “it shouldn’t exist”.<\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This piece first\u00a0appeared in the August 2017 edition of SOBA’s magazine, The Pursuit of Hoppiness\u00a0\u2015 a thing which has evolved a lot recently and spawned a nicely-maintained online incarnation, among other improvements. I’ve seen\u00a0that version of this post handed around a bit already, but I wanted to also share it here (as I have done … Continue reading Just a phase \u2015 on haze’s murky history, and crazes in general<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,75],"tags":[72],"class_list":["post-19238","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blahblah","category-taxonomy","tag-pursuit-articles"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":152,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2004\/11\/06\/goose-island-honkers-ale\/","url_meta":{"origin":19238,"position":0},"title":"Goose Island \u2018Honker\u2019s Ale\u2019","author":"Phil","date":"November 6, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Verbatim: Goose Island Honker's Ale. $?, 12oz, @home, Nov 6. More West Wing, so a Chicago ale with burgers. Darkish, but hints of orange again. Bubbles not so enduring, no haze. Lighter taste + smell, still flat, muted ale-ish. More an afternoon beer. Perfectly respectable + tasty. Great everyday stuff;\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Actual Diary entries"","block_context":{"text":"Actual Diary entries","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/diary\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Goose Island 'Honker's Ale'","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Diary-1016-Goose-Island-Honkers-1-300x138.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":687,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2009\/01\/20\/hopback-summer-lightning\/","url_meta":{"origin":19238,"position":1},"title":"Hopback ‘Summer Lightning’","author":"Phil","date":"January 20, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"This brewery's self-proclaimed 'flagship beer', and a hugely-awarded one at that. Bottle-conditioning makes it a conspicuously-hazy warm gold, and it's quite a lot fuller and maltier in the body than a lot of the Goldens I've been having lately. If it makes any sense, I almost want to say it's\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Actual Diary entries"","block_context":{"text":"Actual Diary entries","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/diary\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Hopback 'Summer Lightning'","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Hopback-Summer-Lightning-225x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":18730,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2017\/01\/28\/boycotts\/","url_meta":{"origin":19238,"position":2},"title":"Boycotts in Boomtime","author":"Phil","date":"January 28, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"This piece originally appeared in the summer edition of SOBA's magazine,\u00a0The Pursuit of Hoppiness. A few recent discussions of whether (and how) we should more-openly mix our politics and our pitching or\u00a0purchasing have reminded me to belatedly post it here. Introducing himself and his mission, Michael Jackson (the drinks writer,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Rambles and rants"","block_context":{"text":"Rambles and rants","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/blahblah\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"The header from my Pursuit of Hoppiness piece (Summer 2016, p60)","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Boycotts-header.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Boycotts-header.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Boycotts-header.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Boycotts-header.jpg?resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":610,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2008\/12\/05\/emersons-bookbinder-again\/","url_meta":{"origin":19238,"position":3},"title":"Emerson’s ‘Bookbinder’, again","author":"Phil","date":"December 5, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Verbatim: Emerson's 'Bookbinder'. Again. The previously-promised photo in \"proper\" glassware. Actually, I cheated a bit and upgraded my after-work glass to the ever-so-slightly-bigger version than what I was strictly-speaking supposed to. All in pursuit of a wee bit more Bookbinder, so totally justified. The Booky-book -- or Wookie-book, if you're\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Actual Diary entries"","block_context":{"text":"Actual Diary entries","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/diary\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Emerson's 'Bookbinder'","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Emersons-Bookbinder-again-225x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":17651,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2015\/11\/13\/the-fun-of-missing-out\/","url_meta":{"origin":19238,"position":4},"title":"The Fun Of Missing Out","author":"Phil","date":"November 13, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"A version of this post originally appeared in the Spring\u00a02015 edition of SOBA\u2019s quarterly magazine Pursuit of Hoppiness. The idea came to me during a guest spot on the Ale Of A Time podcast \u2014 though I didn't realise at the time that I could just reuse and rework\u00a0the standard\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Rambles and rants"","block_context":{"text":"Rambles and rants","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/blahblah\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"The Wheatsheaf, Adelaide (photo by Em, 8 November 2015)","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/The-Wheatsheaf.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/The-Wheatsheaf.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/The-Wheatsheaf.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/The-Wheatsheaf.jpg?resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/The-Wheatsheaf.jpg?resize=1050%2C600 3x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/The-Wheatsheaf.jpg?resize=1400%2C800 4x"},"classes":[]},{"id":17892,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2016\/04\/22\/reinheitsgebot\/","url_meta":{"origin":19238,"position":5},"title":"Reinheitsgebot’s last birthday","author":"Phil","date":"April 22, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Here's my contribution to the teetering pile of Reinheitsgebot-related reckons that are surfacing around the thing's putative 500th birthday \u2015 which is being celebrated despite the old law no longer being in force, the new law not being so old (obviously) nor so simple, and the whole thing being colossally\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Rambles and rants"","block_context":{"text":"Rambles and rants","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/blahblah\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Screenshot from www.deutschesbier.com, a marketing effort from the Radeberger Gruppe","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Radeberger-ad.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Radeberger-ad.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Radeberger-ad.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Radeberger-ad.jpg?resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Radeberger-ad.jpg?resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19238","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19238"}],"version-history":[{"count":28,"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19238\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19272,"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19238\/revisions\/19272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}