First Draft Follies: The Founding Of The American Homebrewers Association, Part 3

Part One --- Part Two --- Part Three --- Part Four --- Part Five --- Part Six

Welcome to First Draft Follies, an ongoing series here at the blog. This edition concerns the creation of the American Homebrewers Association. The AHA celebrated its thirtieth anniversary on December 7, 2008. The material is presented "as is" from the first draft of the manuscript that became the book Ambitious Brew. In a few places I added one or two words in brackets -- [like this] -- for clarification. The excerpt is long, so I've broken it into manageable bits and am posting those bits as a series.

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Hence homebrewing, a nearly perfect expression of personal ecology. In an otherwise "artificial environment," explained one enthusiast, homebrew satisfied "man's yearning" to "create something that fills his needs." People could make bread or weave cloth, but "the fermenting of a potion . . . seems to grab him." (*6)

"[N]ow that growing your own (food, dope, hair, younameit) is hip," wrote the author of an essay widely reprinted in alternative newspapers, "it's time to resurrect the Dope of the Depression--Homebrew."

Homemade beer inspired "good vibrations" and a "pleasant high." Unlike the rest of the "plastic, mass-produced shit" of modern America, homebrew represented "an exercise of craft" and empowered the "politically oriented" to retaliate against "Augustus [sic] Busch and the other fascist pigs who [were] ripping off the Common Man." "If you're looking for a cheap drunk," added the beer adviser, "go back to Gussie Busch. But if you dig the good vibes from using something you make yourself, plus an improvement in quality over the commercial shit," brew on, brothers and sisters, brew on. (*7)

There is no way to measure the number of Americans who practiced homebrewing in the early and mid-1970s, but by the summer of 1973 enough were that the Treasury Department issued a formal warning advising Americans to "leave the beer-making to the brewers." (*8) Treasury's warning was a bit bizarre, even laughable, given that Senator Sam Ervin was a few blocks away conducting hearings into gross illegalities on the part of the Nixon administration. Such, however, are the ways of men.

Charlie Papazian ignored the advisory to cease and desist. He stumbled across homebrewing in the early seventies while studying nuclear engineering at the University of Virginia. A friend introduced Papazian to a neighbor, an older man named George Connor.

One day while the two were visiting Connor, the older man went to the basement and returned with a bottle. It's beer, he said; he'd been aging it for a year or two. Connor opened the bottle and poured samples.

Revelation. Papazian and his friends usually drank 69-cent six-packs of Ballantine, which was okay but nothing to get excited about. Connor's "cidery" brew sang with "clean, fresh, lively" flavor. It was, Charlie decided, not only delicious but "interesting." (*9) And Connor had made it himself. Papazian had never thought of "beer" as something that could be made at home. Beer came from the supermarket, right? Apparently not.

Papazian enjoyed challenges--he was an Eagle Scout--and he decided to try his hand. He obtained a recipe from Connor and loaded up with supplies from a local grocery store: Blue Ribbon malt, hop extract, some yeast.

The first batch was, in a word, "bad." So was the next one. But Papazian persevered, fiddled with the recipe, and eventually concocted a batch that was downright tasty.

He was hooked, enough so that he began hunting for better ingredients than the local grocery provided. On trips back to his parents' home in New Jersey he loaded up with goods from a nearby Wine-Art store, buying bigger quantities with each visit. He tracked down some instruction books, all of them British, but they were "confusing," so he set them aside and employed humankind's oldest tutor: trial and error.

As Papazian's skill increased and his beer improved, he discovered another benefit to this new venture: homebrewing was a people magnet. His friends loved tasting and talking about his experiments. Homemade beer, Papazian realized, created community.

Next: Papazian moves to Boulder

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SOURCES:

*6: Peter Lawlor, "Birth of the Brews," Clear Creek 9 (December 1971): 25.

*7: "Beer--Brew It Yourself," Great Speckled Bird (May 17, 1971): 22. This article, like so many, appeared in multiple publications, thanks to the Underground Press Syndicate, the hipsters' version of the Associated Press.

*8: "Treasury Warns Home-Brewers," Washington Post, July 27, 1973, p. A3.

*9: Unless otherwise indicated, following quotes are from Charlie Papazian interview with Maureen Ogle, April 27, 2005.

First Draft Follies: The Founding Of The American Homebrewers Association, Part 2

Part One --- Part Two --- Part Three --- Part Four --- Part Five --- Part Six

Welcome to First Draft Follies, an ongoing series here at the blog. This edition concerns the creation of the American Homebrewers Association. The AHA celebrated its thirtieth anniversary on December 7, 2008. The material is presented "as is" from the first draft of the manuscript that became the book Ambitious Brew. In a few places I added one or two words in brackets -- [like this] -- for clarification. The excerpt is long, so I've broken it into manageable bits and am posting those bits as a series.

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Americans coped by turning inward. The self is one of the few aspects of life than can be managed and controlled, and a strong, morally upright self, Americans believe, provides the only sure buffer against the chaos beyond the gate. That was true during the unsettled years of the early nineteenth century, a reform era that produced a fascination with exercise and health as well as religious revival, abolition and the first temperance movement. In the late nineteenth century, citizens responded to immigration and industrial development by denying themselves the pleasures of drink.

So in the 1970s, when Americans plunged into an unprecedented exploration of self. Twelve percent of Americans tuned into their inner self through yoga, Transcendental Meditation, and other forms of "mysticism." Hippies became Jesus freaks and middle class folks sought shelter in fundamentalism and evangelical religions. Est, transactional analysis, and self-help books flourished as weeds in summer.

A "culture of narcissism," scoffed one critic. Tom Wolfe dubbed the times the "Me Decade." (*1) There was merit to both charges, but both critiques miss a larger point. People asked not "what can I do for me," so much as they asked "what can I do to construct a more substantive me so that I can forge stronger, more meaningful connections with the world around me?"

The decade's passion for personal ecology traced its ancestry less to Narcissus than to old-fashioned pioneer ingenuity. Nineteenth century pioneers raised barns and hosted quilting bees; their late twentieth-century counterparts organized community daycare centers and food cooperatives; Emma Goldman clinics for women and free clinics for the indigent. Farmers' markets flourished in suburban mall parking lots, and adults shared wisdom and skills at "free schools."

In a world gone berserk, personal ecology provided a way to forge new modes of community. It allowed Americans to gain control over scattered lives and to retaliate against corrupt corporations and even more corrupt governments.

Enthusiasm for do-it-yourself, back-to-the-earth alternatives began in the hipsters' ghetto but spilled out into the mainstream. Middle-class people concerned about pesticides and additives shopped at "healthfood" stores and food cooperatives.

Edward Espe Brown's Tassajara Bread Book--zen and bread--first appeared in 1970 and sold 400,000 copies; it has never gone out of print. So, too, Frances Moore Lappes' Diet for A Small Planet, in print since 1971. Robert Rodale, publisher of Organic Farming & Gardening, watched as his readership rose by 40 percent in 1971 alone. Bennett Cerf at Random House, about as mainstream a man and company as was possible to find, paid alicia bay laurel, member of a Sonoma County commune, a hefty sum for distribution rights to her ostentatiously hippie/alt-lifestyle guidebook, Living on the Earth.

In April, 1970, some twenty million Americans celebrated the first Earth Day by planting trees, picking up trash, participating in teach-ins, and joining rallies.

Nothing better reflects the passion and possibilities of personal ecology than the Whole Earth Catalog. The Catalog was created by Stewart Brand, who spent the sixties participating in Acid Tests, organizing the Trips Festival, exploring Native American cultures, and thinking large thoughts. Brand believed that power exercised "remotely" through impersonal or oversized vehicles like "government, big business, formal education, church" had failed. The planet's best hope, he argued, lay in the acts and lives of ordinary people.

"We are as gods and might as well get good at it." A "realm of intimate, personal power is developing," he explained, including the "power of the individual to conduct his own education, find his own inspiration, shape his own environment, share his adventure with whoever is interested." (*2)

But how to do that? "Fighting a system," he pointed out, "merely strengthens" it. (*3) Far better to co-opt the system's power by finding alternatives to its offerings; or as he put it later and more succinctly: "You have a stronger vote as a buyer than a voter . . . ." (*4)

Thus the Catalog, subtitled "Access to Tools." Brand and his staff stuffed each issue with advice about how to buy, build, and use geodesic domes, tents, kayaks, maps, plows, axes, and bees. As interpreted by the Menlo Park group, "tools" included silk screening, macrame, kerosene stoves, Kama Sutra oil, The Israel Army Physical Fitness Book, synthesizers, Gary Snyder's poetry, the Snugli baby carrier, aeronautical charts, the Yaqui way of knowledge, BMW motorcycles, adoption, childbirth, sex, and canning equipment.

The sum of this nearly hallucinogenic hodge-podge was greater than its parts. Such "tools" enabled Americans to challenge the system, transform their lives, and improve the earth. To vote more powerfully as buyers (and makers and doers) than as voters.

Mother Earth News picked up where the Catalog left off. John Shuttleworth, an escapee from Madison Avenue advertising, and his wife Jane launched the magazine in January 1970 with the goal of fueling the "revolution of consciousness" begun in Haight and the pages of Brand's Catalog. (*5) Within two years, nearly three-quarters of a million people were reading Mother Earth News for advice on how to build houses, grow organic produce, and raise chickens.

Next: Homebrewing As Politics

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SOURCES:

*1: Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism. For Tom Wolfe, see the wikipedia entry. The "me decade" essay appeared in the August 23, 1976 issue of New York magazine.

*2: "Purpose," Whole Earth Catalog Access to Tools ([Menlo Park, CA]: Portola Institute, Fall 1969), unpaginated title page.

*3: Stewart Brand, "Game Design," Last Whole Earth Catalog ([Menlo Park, CA]: Portola Institute, 35.

*4: Thomas Albright, "The Environmentalists," Rolling Stone no. 48 (December 13, 1969): 33.

*5: All quotes from David Armstrong, A Trumpet to Arms: Alternative Media in America (Los Angeles: J. P. Tarcher, 1981), 196. The "revolution" quotation was from an essay by Gary Snyder that first appeared in the Whole Earth Catalog, and which the Shuttleworths reprinted in their first issue.)

First Draft Follies: The Founding Of The American Homebrewers Association, Part 1

Part One --- Part Two --- Part Three --- Part Four --- Part Five --- Part Six

Welcome to First Draft Follies, an ongoing series here at the blog. This edition concerns the creation of the American Homebrewers Association. The AHA celebrated its thirtieth anniversary on December 7, 2008. The material is presented "as is" from the first draft of the manuscript that became the book Ambitious Brew. In a few places I added one or two words in brackets -- [like this] -- for clarification. The excerpt is long, so I'm breaking it into manageable bits and posting those bits over the next few days.

The time is the 1970s.

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The cumulative weight of the sixties crashed into the seventies, churning life's normal order into disarray, tossing the pieces hither and yon. Many baby boomers felt as though their generation had wandered astray on their way home from Woodstock and were no longer sure where or what "home" was.

Young women burned their bras and questioned the wisdom of marriage and motherhood. Drug use rippled through the middle class. Divorce no longer spawned scandal. Paths that once promised utopia dwindled to deadends, like the scene at the intersection of Haight and Ashbury, where free food and free love had collided with pimping and panhandling. Most of the communes, those New Jerusalems of alternative America, collapsed, too, victims of their own idealism and the inherent messiness of human nature.

The [Vietnam] war, a sad swathe of lies and deceit, bungling and betrayal, wounded the nation's soul. A "generation gap" divided pro-war, "love-your-country" fathers and mothers against anti-war, "question authority" sons and daughters. Working class men--"hard hats," the press called them--jeered demonstrators and insisted that hippies and freaks either "love it or leave it."

In January 1973, the same month that American representatives signed an agreement that ended the fighting, a jury in Washington, D. C. convicted six men for a break-in at the Watergate Hotel. Americans spent the summer of '73 staring at TV screens as a parade of witnesses staged a gape-inducing display of disregard for the constitution and moral authority. The Watergate nightmare dragged on for another year, until President Nixon finally resigned in August, 1974, and, in a moment of museum-quality surrealism, raised both arms in a victory salute

. Many Americans spent that summer waiting in line for gasoline. The OPEC oil embargo coincided with and then fueled inflation that ran as high as ten percent.

Brewers gasped for air as the inflation-recession-stagflation garrote tightened its grip. In 1973, corn prices rose 40 percent and barley thirty. Can prices went up 35 percent. Federally imposed price ceilings exacerbated the misery and many brewers switched to cheaper extracts and syrups; anything to cut costs.

The chairman of Horlacher Brewing in Allentown, Pennsylvania, spent his time "fighting like hell" to keep his doors open. (*1) The price of his malt had gone up 120%. Coal nearly destroyed him: from $15.75 a ton to $48.45 in just a few months. The city raised the cost of water 72 percent.

The economy's stomach-turning gyrations eliminated thirty million jobs--even as that same number of baby boomers entered adulthood and the workforce. By 1975, seven percent of Americans were out of work, and as many as twenty to thirty percent in areas whose economies depended on "old" industry. The American standard of living, once the world's highest, fell. The economies of Germany and Japan, rebuilt since World War II, outpaced the United States. In 1960, imported radios, clothes, and other goods only made up about four percent of the American market. Ten years later, they captured thirty percent.

A blanket of cynicism and near-despair draped the national psyche. In 1965, 68 percent of Americans trusted the corporations that made up core industries like cars, steel, and tire manufacture, chemicals and appliances. In 1977, only 36 percent felt that way. In the mid-sixties, nearly three-quarters of the population approved of the conduct of giants like IBM, General Motors, Du Pont, Sears, and Exxon. In 1977, only half did. Nearly eighty percent of Americans trusted government in the late 1950s. By 1976, only one third did so.

Next: Finding escape by going "back to the land."

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SOURCES: *1:"Kleine Nachrichten," Modern Brewery Age, weekly edition, 26, no. 29 (July 21, 1975): 3.

First Draft Follies

I’m launching a new blog series today: First Draft Follies. (*1)

Here’s the deal: Writers write more words than they publish. A published book is the result of writing, re-writing, editing, paring, agonizing, and head-bashing. For example, the first draft of the Ambitious Brew manuscript was 175,000 words long. The final book, however, came in at about 115,000.

Put another way, I wrote thousands of words that I never "used." Why? Many reasons, but the main one is this: When writers write, they’re constructing a "narrative arc," the "storyline," if you will, of the book. But not everything they "know" about their subject is necessary for or even relevant to, the final narrative arc. As Hemingway said while writing Death In The Afternoon (and I'm paraphrasing his comment): writers read fifty books (or documents or whatever) just to write one paragraph.

Also -- and this may be my own authorial idiosyncrasy (*2) -- one way I discover what I know and how to use it in my narrative arc is by writing it all out. I construct (write) a large, overarching structure before I figure out what is my smaller, narrower, narrative arc.

All that writing and decision-making produces three consequences.

First, I write many words that never make it into print. Second, I make choices about which of those words do make it into print. Third, lots of juicy material lands on the equivalent of my cutting room floor.

I’ve decided to liberate some of those "wasted" words and give them a home here at the blog. The wise among you are now thinking: "Hmmm, if this stuff wasn't good enough for the final version what the hell makes you think any of us want to read it?"

Great question. And the answer is: you may not want to waste your time. This is clunky, first-draft prose, and I’m putting in the blog as is, with no re-writes, re-arrangements, or any other kind of polishing.

On the other hand, the content of these drafts contains so-called "primary evidence" that otherwise won’t make the light of day because I don't use that material in the published work. (I've blogged about primary sources and the historian's work. Find those entries under "A Historian's Work" in the "categories" box in the left-hand sidebar.)

But this is also a useful exercise for me, a professional historian and writer. Not, I hasten to add, an exercise in vanity; I have no illusions about my talent as a writer. Rather, picking out these bits of excised text allows me to think about how I write, and why I make the choices I make.

Having said all of that, I hope that you, the reader, enjoy wandering through these First Draft Follies.

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*1: Links to my other blog series are in the categories on the left-hand sidebar.

*2: Damn! I’ve always wanted to use that phrase, and I finally found a use for it.