I’m not criticizing, just goofing a bit.

But seriously, I do read a lot of things on your blog — and on J’s, Alan’s and a lot of other blogs — that give me the impression there is trouble on the horizon.

I believe there are a lot of negative things happening in the beer world – mostly due to conglomeration – but I think the good outweighs the bad.

Sounds like you do, too.

I read all of these things — “pubs closing, cask beer brands disappearing, historic breweries promoting beer with “ice and a slice” — on your blog.

Are you sure you are not a prophet of doom?

Sometimes when I read your blog I get the impression that London is swarming with angry teenage football hooligans running around swigging Carlsberg and smashing casks in the street, then setting the wooden remains ablaze….

You’re saying its not like that at all?

Good.

I’m sorry you think I’m mad! ;-)

I also got a couple of those e-mail messages. Within hours of each other, which was a further clue that it was almost pure marketing rather than a friendly “heads up”.

Now, why these folks thought that we were fans of their product I don’t know. Maybe because we’ve posted a couple of their commercials.

But, anyway, I still was trying to think of what I wanted to say about their site. Not the least because they linked to me and I was seeing some inbound traffic. I hadn’t come up with anything before this little tempest in a brew kettle started up.

One thing that I was thinking about: There are a handful of “A-list” beer bloggers. They’re the ones that all the other beer bloggers link to. Many of them are also established writers (Jay, Lew, Stephen, and others). When you’re not one of the “A-listers”, and you’re not getting inundated with press releases, products, and tchotchkes, that a company actually reached down to you and sent you a press release/announcement/whatever, that’s hugely flattering. One almost feels compelled to write–favorably–about the product being hawked. To not may mean that you won’t be contacted in the future.

I suppose that’s the point of the long tail and viral marketing.

He was right not to promote the Stella site. It would have violated his principles.

But unlike Stonch, I don’t view drinkers of mass-produced, light, boring lagers as heretics or lost sheep.

So I had no compunction about accepting the press materials or linking to the Stella site.

Even though the email from the Stella rep was “personalized” with specific info from my blog, I saw it for what it was — a request for publicity.

I didn’t feel coerced into posting just because they sent me a poster.

I thought the site was cool, the marketing blitz novel, and the whole situation remarkable…so I remarked.

But I work for a daily newspaper and we get press releases all the time, so I have a more “mainstream media” attitude toward this sort of thing than a wholly independent blogger might.

And overall I’m optimistic about the future of good beer, so I don’t view Big Beer as a threat.

Since I turned old enough to drink, I have never lacked for variety and quality in beer.

From where I stand, (sit, actually…in south central Pennsylvania) it appears we are living in a Golden Age of Beer that will last forever…

But maybe things look different in London — with pubs closing, cask beer brands disappearing, historic breweries promoting beer with “ice and a slice” — not that there’s anything wrong with that…

It’s important to me that people appreciate I’m not talking in absolutes – because that is the road to hypocrisy, somewhere I don’t want to go!

As for the professional cage-rattling, I think that those of us who derive even a portion of our livelihoods from writing about beer tend to take the issues you brought up more seriously because they’re connected to our careers, our reputations and how we go about our jobs. So it’s not at all surprising to me that you’d get more feedback from that group. I do agree with you that here in the blogosphere we’re all equals but you’re still going to get different levels of interest from bloggers who look at their blogs as a hobby and bloggers who take their blogs quite seriously.

Anyway, it’s done now. As you say, some people agreed, some people didn’t. It just seems that some who disagreed did so after attributing meanings to my words that were never intended.

No. I get press releases these days too, and I often find them useful.

“…it’s just that it’s much more complicated than just saying no to big companies”

I agree, and am disappointed that you believe my thinking is so simplistic. I’m not against writing about what big brewers are up to, and I don’t mind them telling me what they’re up to.

However, in this case the marketing people were using unusual methods – such as creating the impression they were personally readers of the blog in question – and deliberately targeting those who may never have received a marketing approach from a big brewer before, offering freebies in direct exchange for a write-up. I wanted to inform people of why they might not want to go along with this. Immediately one blogger – bob Woodshed – came forward to say he didn’t even know Stella Artois was owned by a macrobrewer, and that changed his personal opinion.

My post seemed to rattle the cage of many who see themselves as the “professionals”, but I’m afraid here in the beer blogging world we are all equals, like it or no.