Guerilla Journalists of Beer

Excerpt from Early Days of American Craft Beer by Tony Forder

In April 1992 I attended my first microbrewing conference, Brew Bayou, the National Microbrewers and Pubbrewers Conference and Trade Show. Held in New Orleans, it was organized by the Institute of Brewing Studies, which was an arm of the Association of Brewers, as was the American Homebrewers Association (AHA) and the GABF, all presided over by Charlie Papazian. The AOB was to merge around 2005 with the Brewers Association of America and become one entity, the Brewers Association.

I wrote that the sheer numbers of attendees – 670, nearly double the previous year – indicated an even more rapid growth rate than the industry brewing volume average of 30 percent per year. The camaraderie amongst brewers was infectious with the accent on fun. I didn’t even have a hotel room for the first night, but there was more than one offer of a spare bed. Trade shows can be a bit of chore depending what profession you’re in, but with plenty of beer lubrication, how can you not have a good time at this one?

I linked up with fellow New Jerseyans Ray and Erica Disch and Adam Rechnitz who would open Triumph Brewing Co. in Princeton the following year. There were plenty of other prospective brewery owners in attendance.

I jumped on a pre-conference bus tour that took us out to Abita, one of Louisiana’s first microbreweries, home of the legendary Turbodog Porter. We also hit Dixie Brewing, which had recently emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy. They were trying to jump on the micro train with beers like Blackened Voodoo and later, White Moose, a white chocolate dessert beer sold in 7-oz bottles. This historic brewery looked like it needed some love; I remember the place reeked of ammonia. It was not to survive Hurricane Katrina in 2005, but was brought back to life in 2019 as Faubourg Brewing by the owners of the New Orleans Saints.

After show headquarters was the pioneering Crescent City Brewpub, New Orleans’ first which had opened in 1991 with a concentration of German-style beers from German-born owner Wolf Koehler. 

Fritz Maytag, the man who saved Anchor Brewing back in the 1960s, and often referred to as the grandfather of the micro movement, gave the keynote speech. 

“American brewers are on a great journey, a great adventure,” Maytag said. “It’s going to be unforgettable over the next few years.” Maytag also made some pointed remarks about “those who are not to the brewery born,” and who may have entered the industry for purely mercenary reasons. Carol Stoudt echoed those thoughts in a roundtable discussion. “Pseudo brands with bullshit labels are cutting into my market,” she said. Jim Koch of Boston Beer called for freshness dating – he said quality was the key to survival in a shakeup which he predicted was five years away.

After three days of beer, presentations, trade show traipsing and more beer I was beat, lugging around heavy camera equipment. I remember giving my shoulders a break and chatting with another conference rookie at the IBS welcome booth – Nancy Johnson, who rose through the ranks of the Brewers Association to be organizer-in-chief of all BA events.

It was reported that the microbrewing industry had hit an early milestone in 1992 – one million barrels.

I also got to rub shoulders with other beer media. Even though ASN was less than a year old, it seemed we had grown up fast. There was a gathering of beer publishers – Bill Metzger had Southwestern Brewing News, Don Gosselin of Yankee Brew News from Boston, Tom Dalldorf of California’s Celebrator Beer News, Barleycorn from the Mid-Atlantic and the granddaddy, Dan Bradford of All About Beer. A jolly little club indeed.

All except All About Beer magazine were newsprint-based periodicals, free to the public, advertiser supported. Subscriptions were available if you wanted the paper mailed to you. We were basically guerilla journalists, covering a new phenomenon, one which big media, which was somewhat beholden to big beer, had yet to take seriously. 

All About Beer was the oldest of the bunch, basically a rag that had been turned into a smart magazine by Bradford, whose resume included managing the Great American Beer Festival for a few years. We always considered his approach was inside the church preaching to the choir while we felt we were out in the parking lot trying to convert the masses.

The brewspapers had similar approaches, mainly spreading the word about the revival of full-flavored beer with features on startup breweries, adventurous bars and the personalities behind them along with homebrew, travel, and at least for us, reporting on the twists and turns of the industry itself – the rocky road to beervana. At ASN we tried to keep an open mind, which often strayed beyond the normal bounds of beer, as embodied in our philosophy – Beer Relates To Everything. Or, Everything Relates To Beer.

Being regionally based we weren’t direct competitors for the most part and when we were I preached the gospel of co-existence, admittedly a bit of a foreign concept for partner Jack who was accustomed to doing battle on the cutthroat streets of Manhattan.

"Printing is the ultimate gift of God and the greatest one." – Martin Luther, 1517

Looking back on it, we were a fairly short-lived breed. It took the printing revolution 500 years to go from Martin Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press to desktop newspaper

publishing. Computers revolutionized printing with software that enabled the likes of us to create publications on limited budgets. Of course, we didn’t do the printing, that was farmed out. But it took computers’ digital progression into websites and social media only about 30 years to render much of newspaper publishing obsolete, especially in the beer world and especially for free advertiser supported journals. 

The marketers of craft beer fell hard for digital media in their quest to woo the next generations of beer drinkers. I know of no brewspapers that survived. Even All About Beer magazine succumbed. But I’m getting a little ahead of myself. Let’s return to the heady days of the microbrewing revolution.