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The Yuengling Kingdom and the Craft Crusade

April 7, 2015 · by Oliver Gray

Five years ago, I broke up with Yuengling.

It was a bitter divorce, but one sanctioned by the crown. Being recently knighted into the kingsguard of craft, I had a sworn duty to uphold the virtues of good beer. It fell on me to raise and drain a defiant chalice, strike out against the heavily entrenched enemies of our righteous cause. For half a decade I railed against macronic infidels, a good little soldier marching ever on in a crusade against people and products I had placed, without much deep thought, into the juxtaposed camp of “them.”

Years of battle chipped away the armor of my resolve. The people I’d sworn my sword against no longer prsented so clearly as adversaries; their culture and beliefs more gentle and benign than I’d been lead to believe. My zeal for the cause has mellowed, and my cup – once full of devotion and the dry-hopped blood of my enemies – now brims and spills with appreciation for anyone who can consistently brew beer and keep a business running. This veteran of the holy wars is tired, battleworn, and sated, no longer bristling with the vim of an stainless steel-wielding revolutionary.

He just wants to relax and have a beer.

All literary hyperbole aside, the modern craft beer movement and the 13th century “Just Wars” have some odd and somewhat unexpected similarities. Both followed a period of rapid but individualized industry growth, both relied on rampant evangelism from the everyday citizen to promote and further the cause, both hid substantial financial and economic motives very cleverly beneath a veneer of social and religious purity. Retaking and safeguarding Jerusalem is ecumenically equivalent to supplanting and dethroning the three false prophets of Bud, Miller, and Coors. The craft crusade was (and is) a modern spiritual war, fought with the twin spears of social media and millennial dollars.

Enter the descendants of King Gottlob Jüngling, the ancient and hallowed founders of the kingdom of Yuengling. Settled in the east lifetimes before our comparatively fledgling “craft,” the kingdom survived the prohibitionist dark ages, a great depression, and two world wars. Its chief export – an amber near ambrosia when compared to competing pale lagers – rarely makes it to other kingdoms west of the great river, and yet they remain stalwart in sales and solidarity. Those long emigrated from the lands still recall the lager with fond nostalgia, and its place in beerish lore remains unquestionable.

Logistically, Yuengling rests near the fully heathen expanses, and many crusaders (including myself) passed through their lands during our collective quest. When drinking our chosen beer – all hopped and heady – it was easy to dismiss their traditional, legacy beer as “meh,”  and even easier to add them as another in the long list of breweries that needed forceful enlightenment. It was all part of the moral tapestry woven by the lords of better beer, part of the lexicon de fermentation:

To drink Yuengling was blasphemy!

Until, with the flick of a pen, the reigning powers decided it wasn’t anymore.

I’d argue, now that I’ve seen the fields of combat in person, that Yuengling never really belonged on the opposite side of the craft crusade, but was lumped in with BMC because of their own success and proximal similarities. They were the France and Italy and Hungary of the actual crusades; unfortunate and probably undeserving collateral damage of a war that just so happened to march through their territory. We may have found (if we gave Yuengling a chance) that they were actually a lot like us, willing to change, adapt, grow, live in peace. Their summer wheat last year is some proof come to market, and who knows, maybe, now that they’ve found themselves crowning the BA’s top 50 list, their brewhouse practices will continue to evolve.

Drinking veterans seem quick to decide a brewery’s place if they do not find it perfectly in-line with their tastes, to the point they’ll write it off as “bad” and declare war. For every enthusiast I’ve heard decry Yuengling for being boring or sub-par, many more continue to buy and drink the stuff, at least in throngs thick enough to place them even higher than Boston Beer in terms of sales. Is it “fair” that a change in a definition would launch them to the top, nudging other breweries who’ve worked diligently for those places down to 3 and 4? Yea. Of course it’s fair. At least as fair as anything else in Free Market America™.

You need not believe me on words alone; go pour a Yuengling and a Budweiser or MGD side-by-side. That brownish-amber is the same it has always been, and decidedly different (arguably more “craft”) than a pale American lager. Of course it’s not Pliny or Jai Alai or even Boston Lager, but it’s tradition in bottles, a quiet and subtle bucking of the trends that’s been around longer than most young drinkers have been alive. It isn’t some big brewery pretending to be craft, it’s America’s oldest adhering to what has kept them in business for so long through so much. Every beer has its place (yes, even Bud Light Lime, although I’m not sure what that place is yet); Yuengling’s is on the East Coast, very affordably taking the edge off of humid summers days.

I’ve now come full circle, and annulled my annulment. While my mind has stretched from my experience and I’ll never go back to single-beer exclusivity, I will no longer distance myself from a brewery than deserves a chance to prove who they are in a post-war world. I’ll drink Yuengling because I legitimately like the stuff and always have, all BJCP gripes and IBU-snobbery aside. You’re free to disagree and dismiss me as a tasteless cretin, but you’re not free to tell others not to like it.

After all, is not freedom of choice why any warrior dons his armor and draws his sword? Why fight and spill wort for the cause, if not for who you are, and what you believe in?

004

All I ask is that they finally retire the green, twist-off bottles for the sake of UV/02 protection, even if they are an iconic part of their marketing strategy.

 

It’s Not Brew, It’s Me

May 16, 2013 · by Oliver Gray

(This piece was originally published by 20 Something Magazine, but I’m republishing it here in honor of ACBW)

Dearest Yuengling,

What has it been? Ten years? I remember the first time I saw you that summer, dancing in the sinking sunlight of that orange-stained evening. You were wearing nothing but your label and that brownish-gold bottle cap I adored so much. The fading rays of light refracted through the green of your glass as I held you high and to my lips. Our kisses were sweet, under-aged surrender; both of us willing, happy, just wanting to have fun.

It was love at first sip.

This last decade is a torrent of memories that I wish I could bottle and seal and store forever. You’ve done nothing but support me when life’s problems bubbled up. You were always there to comfort me during the hardest of times, pouring yourself into my soul and lifting me up like a lover and an old friend. I’ll never forget you or those tipsy Pennsylvania nights so long as I still have a thirst to quench.

And that’s what makes this so hard.

Yuengling, baby, I think it’s time I drink other beers.

I know that is hard to hear after all the pints we’ve shared, all the times we’ve stumbled drunkenly down the streets of DC towards home, but I feel it is the best thing for us both. I’ve given it a lot of thought and can’t keep seeing you, drinking you, or pretending I’m happy.

I’ve grown up so much since those millennial Julys; I’ve drunk deeply from the keg of life, smelled the intoxicating lupulin drifting from hop farms, and witnessed the beauty of beer being born in the depths of a mashtun. When I was a teenager you were new and wonderful – and you are still wonderful, in your own way – but I didn’t really know myself. I was just a kid who’d never seen the inside of a brewery, whose taste buds hadn’t matured, who was happy to be drinking any beer at all.

My adoration of beer in general has grown into a deep respect for the craft, the art, the science. I appreciate the rolling cascade of hops that are like citrus symphonies playing melody to my tongue and harmony to my nose. I’m looking for bold new conventions, and you’re the same old brown lager that your great-great-great Grandpa David Gottlob Jüngling was making back in 1829.

We’ve grown apart over the years. I changed. You didn’t.

I also have a confession to make. I haven’t been faithful. A few years ago, in a moment of weakness, I gave into my baser desires, my budding curiosity, and tasted the forbidden fruit of a Belgian lambic. As soon as those raspberry notes hit my tongue I was instantly changed. I flirted shamelessly with the blonde ales, kissed the effervescent lips of sweet browns, spent many long nights by the side of delicate reds. I felt like a beer-bachelor reborn, and filled my cup time and time again in a veritable orgy of new tastes and smells.

I didn’t mean to hurt you, smash your bottle and leave you broken on the floor. But I can’t pretend that we’re still living in those glory days of youth. I can’t untaste what has been tasted. I can’t pretend you’ll ever be so pure and delicious again.

If you see me at the liquor store, picking up a six pack of Dogfish Head 60 Minute or Troegs Hopback Amber please don’t get all weird. I expect you to find new men who love you for your sour-malt flavor and low price tag. I want that for you. I want you to be happy, not glaring at me from the cooler in the back while I walk out with some other beer on my arm. You need consistency, faithfulness, a one-beer kind of man, and I can’t give you that. My palette has been awakened to the full breadth of styles and flavors. I can never go back to only drinking brown lager. And that’s just not fair to you.

Please, don’t cry; I’ve seen how you sweat and how the tiniest bit of water ripples your label. Try to remember the good times. Like that night you and I hung out with Captain Morgan and ditched him with Jack Daniels at that terrible frat party. Remember that night? I carried you home across the girls’ soccer field because you were too drunk to walk. Or was that me? That was a night I’ll always remember, I think.

Even though I’m leaving, that’s what I want to hold on to. The love we shared and the twelve ounces of my soul you’ll always occupy. I may have grown up, but you’ll remain a part of what made me into a beer lover until some crazy brewer uses my mortal dust is used to make an especially potent batch of chocolate stout as per my last will and testament.

Anyway, Yuengs, I’ve rambled on enough. I’m going to take some time to really focus on my work and figure myself out. Maybe after we’ve spent some time apart and let the boiling wort of our feelings chill, we can get together over a drink, as friends.

Cheers,

-Oliver

Shit yeah that's a Yuengling.

Yet I should kill thee with much cherishing.
Good night, good night! parting is such
sweet sorrow,
That I shall say good night till it be morrow.

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