I recently subscribed to Draft Magazine and my first issue came a few weeks ago. I finally had a chance to sit down with it last week and since them I can’t seem to shake Joe Stange’s article, “American Beer Overkill?“, out of my head. He writes:

Isn’t it all getting a bit precious? A bit pretentious? A bit much?

Or, to put it another way: Has the cool craft beer Fonz finally jumped the proverbial shark? Aren’t we forgetting about the Richie Cunninghams of the world, who just want a flavorful glass of something drinkable—or, preferably, several glasses—in a friendly place at a fair price?

…I don’t like a line of thinking that leaves ordinary drinkers with lesser beers. We know from experience that great beer doesn’t have to cost much. There are a lot of price points out there, and room for all of them. But I want to see more of them on the lower end. Somehow, I doubt I’m alone.

Considering that craft beer grew 11% by volume in 2010–that’s over 14 million new cases over 2009–it’s no wonder that the craft beer world is changing. And Stange’s concern that the growth in American beer is too concentrated toward rare, expensive, and extreme beers and frou-frou, stuffy beer experiences is valid. Indeed, part of the sentiment behind Stange’s thoughtful and thought-provoking article fuels Lew Bryson’s Session Beer Project, Stange’s own blog, Thirsty Pilgrim, and the session-focused breweries they like to highlight.

The idea is that beer should not always be something you obsess over, spend a ton of money on, or carefully pair as part of a five-course, epicurean extravaganza. That’s not to say those things are bad, just that the beer that you share with friends, drink a lot of in one sitting, and don’t think too much about is equally special, but doesn’t seem to get equal attention. Just look at RateBeer.com‘s top 100 beers of 2010. The list is dominated by imperial stouts, imperial/double IPAs, and other very strong, especially rare beers.

The bottom line is that every beer lover finds the balance that’s right for him between carefully  rare, expensive,  super-high ABV/IBU monsters and quaffing down a great beer without describing and appreciating the nuances of its appearance, aroma, flavor, and mouthfeel.

Should your everyday beer drinker have an extensive beer vocabulary? Understand the process of tasting beer, the contributions of each ingredient to the product in the glass, and how to pair food with beer? Are you a beer snob if you can do these things? Eek. Better a beer geek than a beer snob. Beer has always been the drink of the masses, yet the culture being woven around it right now more and more closely resembles that of wine, which many beer drinkers disdain for its elitism and pomposity. So why bring beer in that direction?

But at the same time, if you don’t know that a dark beer isn’t always “heavy,” or what the typical hop-malt balance is for a given style, you may have not-so-stellar beer experiences more often than you would have if you did know such things. Being a beer luddite is not the solution either. This is especially true for the growing ranks of homebrewers, myself included, who love the creative, artisanal experience of manipulating a few raw ingredients to create something new, intentionally unique, and enjoyable. For people passionate enough about beer to devote the money and time to homebrewing, a healthy dose of beer knowledge is a byproduct of passion, curiosity, and experimentation, and it’s necessary to make a half-decent brew. Even if you think the average beer drinker doesn’t need to be a, let’s all agree that we would like our beer servers and sellers to be knowledgable enough to pour a good beer and tell us what we’re buying and drinking. Bring on the Cicerones!

Here’s what I need to get off my chest to get this article off my mind: Ultimately, I think Stange’s argument that beer is getting too fussy is, itself, too damn fussy. In fact, beer hasn’t just become more fussy, it’s become a lot of things as it’s grown. According to the Brewers Association, over 100 new breweries opened last year, bringing the US total to 1,759, the most since Prohibition. With so much more craft beer being sold, and so many more people choosing it over light American lagers (read: swill), it seems to me that a good chunk of the new craft beer being produced must be in the crossover realm, a la Goose Island 312 or Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, which largely overlaps with session beers. So craft beer has probably become just as much more session-y as it has fussy. So  what if that’s not what gets hyped? Beyond the session-extreme and snob-luddite dichotomies, craft beer has also, perhaps more interestingly, become tech-savvy, eco-friendly, economically important, politically controversial, and less Euro-centric. Cheers to that!

It will be interesting to see the industry statistics the Brewers Association plans to announce today at the Craft Brewers Conference.

Joe, if you’re reading, thanks for the great article and have an Imperial for me.