Mosher - Radical brewing: recipes, tales, and world-altering meditations in a glass

By Michael Jackson

T he world desperately needs more Moshers. If only we had more Moshers, the Tasmanian tiger might return from extinction. Mike Tyson at his peak would be able to step into the ring with Muhammad Ali. We would be able to see and hear the great performers who pre-dated the recording of sound. I might even now be sipping a preProhibition beer and checking whether Buddy Bolden could be heard across Lake Ponchartrain. Or I might be sampling Harwoods Porter in a London pub, or an India Pale Ale aboard a clipper heading for Calcutta.

To be truthful, I know only one Mosher. He is Randy, which in the United Kingdom, where I live, means feeling sexy. I know nothing of his private life, but there is passion in the heart of this seemingly quiet, kindly man. His activities are probably a threat to our morals. Passion, imagination, and tenacity are a challenge to the established order. So are people whose definition of progress is not acquiescence.

As a teenager, I learned this when I saw an item on television about a London pub in which the walls were lined with friezes showing merry monks. The pub was scheduled to be demolished to make way for road widening. In the TV programme, a slightly crazy-looking English poet was arguing that the pub was a temple to the pleasures of drinking and should be saved. It was. The poets name was Betjeman. I thought at the time that we needed more Betjemen.

We dont call them that; we know them as conservationists. A pity. I prefer Betjemen. Until now, there has been no name for people who go a stage beyond conservation, and somehow bring back pleasures that have been lost.

A revivalist? Randy does more than that. He and I once presented a tasting of rare Northern European beer styles, using examples that he had brewed. One of the styles was Grodzisk, from Poland. I had tasted the last commercially-brewed Grodzisk; Randy had only read about the style. Despite this, he made a beer that tasted like the Grodzisk I had enjoyed.

A beer archaeologist? People like Randy can find old recipes for some of the beers that have been lost, but they are very hard to interpret. The brewer of a century ago knew what Mr. Smiths malt tasted like, but we do not. Nor do we know that characteristics of hops that long preceded todays varieties.

A scholar? Randys researches represent diligent scholarship, and make possible a Jurassic Park of beer styles.

So what is he? He is a Mosher.

W ere taught from childhood that what is good cant be fun. Its a lie. Homebrewing combines good and fun into one sparkling amber liquid. We can all drink to that.

Culture is more subversive than politics.

Vivienne Westwood, punk fashion designer

Okay, so it isnt saving-babies-in-Africa good, but American homebrewers have profoundly changed the beer scene for the better. What weve accomplished, along with making it pretty easy to get a palatable beer just about anywhere in this country, is nothing less than keeping beer, a twelve thousand year-old cultural treasure of humanity, from slipping into a coma of mechanized industrial anonymity.

Beer is a deep, wide river that flows through human culture. It appears along with the earliest signs of civilization, and is enjoyed and venerated in nearly every society with access to its makings. To think that might have been subsumed into the drab one-size-fits-all world of modern commerce is an outrage, but we came very close. Fortunately, things are on a happier track now.

If youre a homebrewer, give yourself a hearty whack on the back. Youve earned it. You have experimented, evangelized, and prophesied. Some of you have even given up jobs your moms were perfectly proud of to put on the big rubber boots and brew beer in tiny breweries, a truly generous act. Youve celebrated the joy of great beer, paid your hard earned cash for it when you needed to, and demanded it from the places you frequent. Craft beer could never have happened without you.