I have two things to share with you. (1) I’ve been drinking way too much. I’m not looking for sympathy, just some understanding. Yes. It’s a side effect, I suppose, of becoming a “Beer Guy”, when one’s job and identity are wrapped up in the culture and the act of beer consumption.
Not that I’m complaining, but beer – while enjoyable! – isn’t exactly healthy when consumed in the quantities “Beer Guys” tend to indulge in. I realize now there’s a thin line between your fun-loving, wise-cracking “Beer Guy”, and the less appealing “Drunken Loser”. One often mutates fluidly into the other in the course of a night.
Fact: Beer writing is fun. This is good. However, I’m doughier than I’d like to be. This is bad. Also, my nights are long and mornings useless. I have a negligent attitude toward exercise. I’m in a perennial fog and often feel like what I imagine a day-old turd would feel like if it were sentient…until I have another glass of beer, which starts the cycle all over again.
Is this the plight of the beer writer – fun job, rotten health? I certainly hope not. So why do I do it? To maintain some sort of illusion, that I’m in the right places, drinking the right beer? Is it to stave off the lingering effects of the previous night’s excesses? Or is it to pour beer over whatever internal tumult drives me to drink in the first place?
I ask you: Is the craft beer culture simply a collection of emotionally damaged individuals seeking solace in beer and the community it hath spawned?
Oh gawd. It’s a grim world, friends, outside and in…
With that said, (2) I have some glorious news! I’m launching a new craft beer magazine this Friday. The Growler Craft Beer Handbook is a free, quarterly print guide featuring profiles on every single craft brewery in Metro Vancouver. The Growler is also overflowing with stories about craft beer culture and all kinds of pretty pictures. It’s designed to be as much fun to look at as it hopefully is to read.
Because the industry is growing so fast, it’s hard to keep track of who’s now open and where everything’s located. Each issue will include up-to-date information new breweries and old. The Growler will eventually bring all BC breweries together between a single 100-pound-stock paper cover in a way that reflects the creative, artisanal and communal aspects of BC’s craft beer industry.
That’s why we’ve launched with a print product before a digital one. We want to offer something you can hold, or bend, or light a fire with if you find yourself in a bind. We want something you can use and refer to, to keep on your coffee table or in your purse or in your bathroom. Above all, we want to make something useful.
The website (TheGrowler.ca) is coming soon, so stay tuned for that. In the meantime, get yourself a copy of The Growler at your nearest brewery, bar or private liquor store (Warning: I’m distributing most of the copies by hand, so if you’re outside Vancouver it might take you a few days to find one).
Also, follow us on Twitter and Instagram and let us know what you think @TheGrowlerBC. If you have tips on how to enjoy beer without devolving into a drunken lout, tweet at me @StephenSmys or shoot me an email at [email protected]. I’ll write another story about this in the weeks to come.
