The Bar Towel

I think I would fall under the Beer Populists category, what about you guys?

http://www.masslive.com/entertainment/i ... ity_t.html

Beer Geek with occasional moments of Know It All?

Populist with a dose of beer geek.

Depends who I'm drinking with. Beer geek when surrounded by knowledgeable aficionados; populist when I'm with my non-beer geek friends.

Beer Populist.

I admire a beer geek would aspire to be one, but I have too many demands on my time to justify it.

I'm whichever one that likes to get drunk and make inappropriate phone calls to your sister.

Given everyone is different - even those who fall into the same alleged category - I think it's difficult to place people in the various slots.

My main interest in beer is its flavour - I try to drink beers with the ideal flavour for the style. So I learn about them to seek them out. A secondary interest, but one which has gained in the last 10 years, is beer and brewing history. Many craft beer fans are captivated by that side of it. This makes sense since the best imports, and craft beers in general, often advertise their adherence to tradition. So I learned about tradition to understand what should be good, or at least, interesting.

I don't feel I have to taste everything - most beers don't end up pleasing in any case - it's enough to find an excellent example of a style and stick with it.


Gary

I'm such a Geek that I'm actually going to propose a subclassification for the Beer Geek definition...

Here's a Geek Hierarchy that I find amusing:

Geek - Understands, creates & fixes 'really cool stuff'.
Nerd - Understands & collects 'really cool stuff'.
Dork - Confused by 'really cool stuff'.

And I think it works for beer.

The die-hard geek is obsessive about all the technical things. They'll dissect every aspect of a brew and take detailed notes. Think "homebrewer".

The beer nerd has a good understanding of all the different styles and is obsessive about 'ticking' as many samples as possible. Think "comic book collector".

The beer dork aspires to be accepted by all the nerds, but only has a very basic understanding of the topic. That's not to say that they're dumb, they're just very eager, but inexperienced. Think "that guy in the office that has read a short article on craft beer, picked up a few different samples, then spouted off about how crazy these wildly different beers are (though they're actually timeless classic styles)."

Populist with a shot of geek for the homebrewing aspect and wanting to try everything but I don't make notes nor dissect beer.

I love the 5 categories. Well put! Beer Populist

lister wrote:Populist with a shot of geek for the homebrewing aspect and wanting to try everything but I don't make notes nor dissect beer.

That's about where I am at. Though I do take notes sometimes, especially on rarer stuff

icemachine wrote:That's about where I am at. Though I do take notes sometimes, especially on rarer stuff

If a beer makes that much of an impression on me I don't need notes. It's burned into my brain. And if I start to get forgetful? Well, it's "new" beer to discover!

lister wrote:Populist with a shot of geek for the homebrewing aspect and wanting to try everything but I don't make notes nor dissect beer.

This is also me.

Populist first, Geek 2nd, and while I try hard not to be a know it all, I sometimes slip up...

im not any of those things