First Draft Follies: Early History of the American Homebrewers Association and the Brewers Association, Part 3

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Part One --- Part Two --- Part Three --- Part Four Part Five --- Part Six --- Part Seven --- Part Eight --- Part Nine

Welcome to this edition of First Draft Follies, an ongoing series here at the blog. 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. As always, when the excerpt is lengthy, and this one is, I break it into manageable bits and post those bits over the course of several days.

This edition of FDF concerns the early years of the American Homebrewers Association and what is now the Brewers Association, the craft brewing trade group. Much of my research into the topic fell into “insider baseball” information: interesting to those who were involved, and to people with a serious interest in brewing history, but dull as rocks to a more general audience. As a result, almost none of what follows ended up in the book, which was intended for a general audience.

On the other hand, the groups' early histories provide fascinating insight into the creation of a organization from the ground up, particularly the conflicts that ensued between and among the participants. As a result, I think it’s worth posting this (long) series in full.

For more about the founding of the AHA, see my earlier string of First Draft Follies entries on that topic. (The link takes you to part six of the six-part series; it contains links to parts one through five.)

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For Charlie Papazian's commentary on Part 3, see here and here.

Bradford entered the Boulder circle almost by accident. He had grown up in New England, where his family had lived for sixteen generations, being descendants of William Bradford, Mayflower passenger and first governor of Plymouth colony. That ancestry endowed him with an intuitive sense that his own life and the present were but small parts of a past much larger than himself. It also left him with a strong desire to break free of his New England roots and make his way in the world as unimpeded by the Bradford name as possible.

In 1968, he graduated from high school and headed to Boulder to attend the University of Colorado. There the maelstrom that was the United States in 1968 “descended upon” him starting with his dormitory: His roommate was a Japanese-American kid whose best friend was a black kid whose own best friend was a member of the SDS. (*1) Bradford plunged into campus politics--the demonstrations and shut-downs that were normal for that time--studying history in the classroom and hanging out with graduate students and professors during his free time. I

n 1977, BA and MA in hand, he headed for Ann Arbor with the idea of getting a PHD in history and entering the academy. Sadly, like all too many graduate students, he collided immediately with the reality of academia: infighting, back stabbing, bitching, whining, and complaining. This was not the rarefied world of ideas he had imagined when he’d manned the barricades back in Boulder and dreamed of changing the world.

Distraught to the point of breakdown, Bradford embarked on a two-year trek through his own soul and most of Europe. Eventually he returned to Boulder, at loose ends and no more certain of what he wanted to do than when he had left.

A friend who worked at a Denver publishing company suggested that Bradford become a literary agent. She knew a homebrewer who was trying to publish a book on the subject and needed an agent. He was, by his own admission, “clueless” about what agents did or who they were, but it sounded as good as anything else.

The author was, of course, Papazian, who wanted to push Joy of Brewing to the next level. Bradford compiled a list of publishers, headed for New York, and, after a daunting number of rejections and almost to his own surprise, succeeded in selling the work to a major publisher.

His energy impressed Papazian, who decided he was just what the AHA needed, especially if the organization hoped to host a national beer festival, which was how the New Englander ended up on the payroll early 1982 as the organization’s first employee.

Bradford was a good choice. Like Papazian, he loved “getting people in a room and having a good time”; loved the idea of providing ways for others to “express their own passions.” He was also, and perhaps more importantly, the “kind of guy who didn’t understand ‘no.’” And last but not least, Bradford knew nothing about beer or brewing and so had no turf to protect and no agenda to promote except whatever the AHA happened to need at the moment.

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SOURCE:

*1: Daniel Bradford, interview with Maureen Ogle, April 28, 2005. All quotations in the entry are from the interview. Bradford is publisher of All About Beer.

The Nygren System of Literary Genius, Vook, and other Matters

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Quick quick catch-up here on non-beer related matters:

Last week, I mentioned David Nygren's self-described nutty idea --- using Excel to create a novel. Thousands of people have since downloaded his program.

And now, the New Yorker, that magazine beloved of the glitterliterati (which would not, ahem, be me) everywhere, mentions it. Although as David notes in a tweet, woulda been nice if they'd mentioned his name!

I can see it coming soon to a "bookstore" near you: A collection of short stories composed using the Nygren Method of Literary Genius.

In other news, yesterday the New York Times ran a story about a new e-publishing venture, Vook.tv. If you're interested in the future of the printed word (and if you read this blog regularly, you know that I am), take a look. It's an interesting idea, and I suspect sometime in the next two years it, or something similar, will begin to bear (profitable) fruit.

As I noted a few weeks ago, it's clear that the notion of the "book" is changing, and that soon (very soon!) a "book" will contain various  digitized, embedded components of the kind being explored in the Vook project. I have to point out, however, that the Times article, like most of its ilk, focuses on fiction.

To which I say: WHY this obsessive focus on "books" as mainly fiction? In the U.S., 85% of the books published are non-fiction. You do the math: only 15% are fiction.

As I noted in that earlier blog entry, I'm intrigued the possibilities of non-fiction of the sort I write containing digital links to, say, Wikipedia or other external sources. Indeed, I can think of many ways in which an e-book is more suited to non-fiction than to fiction. (

Although there is a huge drawback to non-fiction in an electronic form, and I plan to explore that soon in one of my "Historian At Work" entries.)

Okay, enough of this Monday rambling. Need to get back to my chapter-in-progress (being created, I might add, by the Ogle System of Slog and Shuffle, rather than the Nygren System of Literary Genius.)

Doing History-By-The-Group

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Oh, this is fun! Yesterday I began, and today added another installment to, a series about the early years of the American Homebrewing Association.

Today, one of the actors on that historical stage, Charlie Papazian, weighs in with commentary on those events, as well as a couple of photos. (Including one of him in what is, hands down, one of the best '70s era images I've seen.) You can find his entry here.

I also added that link to the post from yesterday, and if there are more forthcoming, I'll post all the links together in a separate blog entry so that they can all be accessed from each section of this history as I post it here. (And I hope that makes sense...) Thanks to Charlie for joining in to help create some e-inspired history here on the web.