That shut my friend up, because we both realised at once who it was: Steve Grossman of Sierra Nevada brewery, whose phenomenally good stuff we'd come to sample. If you've ever seen Annie Hall, this was the closest real life gets to the Marshall McLuhan scene. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wWUc8BZgWE]
In certain parts of the country this is the new normal. Beer is Serious Business, with a cast of funky start-ups and rock-star brewers; the product itself comes at increasingly crazy strengths and frequently hits eye-watering prices. It's less "Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps" and more "Two Thirds of The Imperial Stout and a Black Pudding Scotch Egg, and Wait There While I Remortgage My House."
Hungry for growth, the drinks industry has taken what my ABV-querying pal calls "Smug Beer" mainstream - there are expert tasting segments on Morning Food Porn Live and own-brand American Pale Ales on supermarket shelves. Big legacy brewers are at it too, with Fullers hawking a 'craft lager' called - spot the sledgehammer-subtle West Coast USA reference - Frontier.
Is the wedding world riding the trend? I'm not sure. At the last one I went to Sol with a lime wedge was as good as it got; very welcome on a hot day, but hardly the stuff to crash Ratebeer.com's servers. To really impress the growing army of beer snobs you need limited editions, unusual flavours and careful food matching. I have to admit I'm on board with the latter: you wouldn't have red wine with smoked salmon, so don't crush it with a best bitter when it wants a fruity, zingy Pacific pale.
You're rolling your eyes, of course, but that's how we talk now. "Zingy Pacific pale" is as normal as "crisp, medium-bodied red". We drop centennial and citra into conversation as readily as wine drinkers do pinot grigio and shiraz. (They're hops. Keep up at the back.)
And that's essentially what has happened: beer drinkers, formerly the most easily pleased guests you could hope for, now have the same expectations as wine drinkers. You know all the fuss you've been making over choosing the right wines? The tasting sessions, the agonising over food pairings? Now you have to do it twice, and learn a whole new language of ingredients and flavour profiles. If I see Steve Grossman again, I'll send him your way.
Words Nathan Midgley
Copyright Wed magazine 2014
