Love lost: Why I can’t write about beer
I've got a brewing industry hangover
I want to write about beer. I really do. But it seems like every time I set my mind to writing something about beer, brewing, or the craft beer industry, I’m overcome with a wave of negative emotions. I love certain parts of the brewing industry in isolation — but lately, it seems the bad overshadows the good. At least in my mind.
Last November, I set out to exercise my writing skills by committing myself to writing a piece about brewing every week. I was freshly divorced from the beer industry and found myself living in a new city without my industry connections.
I had been brewing for over a decade. Since March 2020, I had been the owner, head brewer and manager of The Slough Brewing Collective, which I started with two other partners. Starting a business at the same time that a global pandemic upended our lives proved to be more than we had bargained for, and we were forced to sell after only three short years.
I was proud of what we accomplished, even though I felt like the industry never took us too seriously. I was proud of the beer I brewed and the community we created. I was happy that — for three years — we provided paying jobs for a few people we loved dearly and made a safe space for our community when it was needed most. More than that, we ran the business the way we wished others would.
After deciding we needed to sell, I worked as the head brewer for the new ownership for a year and moved to Sacramento with my fiancée in September 2024. Unsure of my next step in the industry, I agreed to take a job as a general manager for a small local brewery. It felt like a decent enough match; the owners seemed to realize the value I could provide, and they seemed like nice enough people. I quit three months later after realizing that this job was just like any other job in an extremely problematic industry.
This left me no better off than before. I was now in a new town where no one knew my name or my history. I was wrestling with the emotions that arise when you give up on your dream: sadness, anger, frustration, isolation, regret. I decided to channel these emotions into writing. I created Bitter Wit so that I might outline all the ways in which the brewing industry let me down.
When I sit down now and think about what I want to write, I think about the time one owner of the first brewery I ever brewed for said to me, “Maybe you’re not meant to be a brewer.” This was because I pushed back on working 12-hour days while being illegally classified as a contractor. Or I get flashes of the time another owner of the same brewery grabbed me around the throat and threatened my life on the brew deck. I think of the many years I spent as a one-man production team, my wages averaging about $16 an hour with no real health care, paid time off and always a discouraging frown from a manager at break time.
Looking past myself, I think about all of my friends and peers in the industry who aren’t white or don’t identify as straight men. I would be hard-pressed to name a single person in the industry who identifies that way who can say they’ve been treated well.
Most of all, I think of the eye rolls and bullying coming from fellow brewers, managers and business owners when you suggest that a brewer should be well compensated, supported or respected. Even now, the ideas of a wage higher than $20 an hour, compensated overtime and paid vacation are all pipe dreams reserved for the owner’s college buddy or the 10-year veteran brewer who learned how to play ball with a problematic management team. You can forget about health care, bonuses and paid holidays altogether.
I don’t know why it surprises me that the brewing industry has become so anti-labor, but it does surprise me. You might notice that I’m complaining a lot, but I’m not complaining about the work; I love brewing. I just firmly believe that brewers should be compensated like any other skilled laborer. If I could have imagined a future for the brewing industry back when I first became a brewer, it most definitely would have involved unionized brewers, a more communal model for breweries, and — in fact — a much heavier emphasis on community over capitalism.
Again, I can hear some brewers scoff at the idea that community is more important than “just brewing good beer.” In my opinion, being able to focus on making good beer is just a luxury that comes with the privilege of having stability. The goal is always to brew good beer, but you can’t brew a damn thing if you don’t have a community behind you — especially now.
“ I believe people are turning away from craft beer because they naturally seek out a community, and the communal well of the craft brewing industry has been poisoned.”
Something dark happened in the industry in 2020. We all got scared. The future was uncertain, and we shut ourselves off. The good parts of the industry before COVID were the times we all participated in making the industry better. In a post-COVID world, it seems like we’re all just trying to hold on to whatever we still have, as that pile of resources rapidly shrinks. We don’t have the time to welcome new folks into our fold. There’s no energy to put back into the community.
More breweries are closing this year than ever before. We’re watching helplessly as people turn away from beer as their daily indulgence. You have to wonder if maybe it was never about the beer in the first place. I believe people are turning away from craft beer because they naturally seek out a community, and the communal well of the craft brewing industry has been poisoned.
So as you can see, every time I try to write about the industry, it makes me sad, and it makes me angry. It’s not all hopeless, though. Going forward, I’m going to try to focus on the people who are still holding onto the ideal and supporting their community — even if it means they keep a little less of their pile.
I’m hopeful that refocusing myself on the little bit of good still left in the industry will help me overcome this incredible case of writer’s block. I’ll keep my chin up. I hope you will too.
Cheers,
Ben