Brewed Beverage of Choice: A nice pint of Porter…preferably a cask conditioned one…an old favourite I had forgotten about until recently…
Today I picked up one of the local newspapers because there is a weekly article on brewing within its pages. Fred Eckhardt, a local and national beer writer, was this week’s guest author, and he wrote about brewers as artists. While at Siebel, this very topic came up several times. The instructors thought that brewers were not artists because artists create something once and move on to a different project. While this may be true, artists also spend years and years honing their artform to create those works of art much like brewers. So are brewers artists?
According to the second definition in Webster’s II New Riverside Dictionary an artist is “one, esp. a public performer, whose work shows great skill.” That to me sounds remarkably like a brewer. A great brewer creates memorable quaffs through great skill and ingenuity. I am not a huge fan of the first definition which basically defines an artist as someone who practices the fine arts. That definition is too circular for me.
As I stated earlier, artists and brewers have the study of their respective crafts in common. A good brewer spends years learning the little details of different varieties of malted barley: their flavour, their colour, how grain from France is different than grain from the Pacific Northwest, etc. A good brewer studies the hops he or she uses, the equipment, and the eccentricities of every yeast strain. Just like an artist who must know about all the mediums, paints, inks, etc. This is how a brewer can be viewed as an artist.
Although I do see brewers as artists, I prefer to use the term “artisan.” The same dictionary defines artisan as “a manually skilled worker,” or a craftsman. The artisan is very similar to an artist. He or she must know the elements to be “molded.” The one major difference is that an artisan creates a work of usable art, something that can be consumed or used as a tool. (Sorry about my own circular definition…) A piece of art can be admired but is, at most times, decoration. (Jeez, I am going to have artists on my ass now…) But an artisan’s work not only can be admired for the skill used to create it, but it also serves a need.
So while I agree somewhat with my instructor’s at Siebel that brewers are not artists, it is not for the reason they give. There is a lot of common ground shared by artists and brewers, skewing the line between them. But by and large, brewer’s are artisans. They are craftsmen and craftswomen who create usable versions of “art.” I guess the bottom line is do we as a society have to change our perception of what art is? Can we say that a finely crafted brew or horseshoe is a piece of art? I do know that walking in a British pub is essentially walking into a museum.
Prost!
the confucian artisan brewer