DON'T TREAD ON ME BACK to MEDIA

by Dick Cantwell

A few months ago I got a call from Mike Hale, a local icon of determination and accomplishment, urging me to attend the next meeting of the Washington Brewers Guild. He didn't say so, of course, but my own critical inner voice chided me for not yet having thrown my lot in with the latest incarnation of the Guild, and I said I'd be there. I found a group comprised mainly, encouragingly, of relative newcomers to the scene here in Washington, and for once they seemed ready to get things done.

We've taken a run at this guild thing a few times up here, and each time the effort has collapsed under its own weight. The first time out, as I recall, the biggest local microbrewer pretty much demanded to control the organization and its agenda, based on a silly system of dues tied to production. Who can blame them, really? The next go-round failed as well, since by then there was another large-ish challenger willing to vie for stature and, once again, control. Then there was the hush-hush shadow organization that engendered a flat dues system and wouldn't admit either of these earlier-sullied micro-giants. There wasn't actually a charter prohibition against mentioning their names, but there might as well have been. Each time, gradually, we all peeled away, claiming something or other pressing, frustrated at the bickering and lack of commitment that ensued (or didn't) each time we all sat down over beers and nachos.

There are a lot of other reasons why we've never quite been able to get it together in Washington, Guild-wise. One of them is personalities, or what I prefer to call the clash of the curmudgeons. Another is the size of the shadow cast by the enormously successful Guild in Oregon, the state immediately to the south of us. The Oregon Brewers Guild has become an exemplar of industry advocacy and furtherance whose annual crowning achievement, the Oregon Brewers Festival, leaves many of the rest of us impotently in awe when we begin talking about doing anything. And there are a number of reasons why the Oregonians have done so well with their confederation-xenophobia and Fred Eckhardt among them—but it truly has little to do with what we're faced with up here north of the Columbia.

I found the shortness of memory and relative lack of awareness of this whole historical snarl refreshing as I helped myself to carrot sticks and onion rings at that first meeting I attended. New guys were in charge, who were blissfully unaware of all the vituperation and finger-pointing that had dominated earlier tries at organization. We talked about-what else?-putting on a festival to raise money and get the word out, and for once it was practical. The plan wasn't grand, and it wasn't perfect, but it stood a good chance of actually happening. We talked about some very scary potential legislation then galloping around the Washington houses of congress, which would have criminalized a driving blood alcohol level of .02 percent-one beer. And we talked about how to get more breweries to participate. Somewhat chastened by the fact that I hadn't been to earlier meetings I offered to make a few calls.

What has surprised me since is the reluctance on the parts of many of my colleagues to join up. Naturally I have some personal theories. One is that some of the people who a few years back didn't dare take time out from the runoff or filling kegs to regularly come to meetings are now trapped behind their desks, hemmed in by banks of phones and stacks of papers. Another is that a lot of people are afraid of organization in general, and that by constituting only one voice in a roomful of them absolute power will somehow be compromised. I was unenthusiatically urged by a sales guy for one non-attender that I should invite the generally skeptical company president to lunch and pitch him the idea of joining. Well, it isn't my personal organization, and I'm not trying to sell him insurance. The good sense, it seems to me, of being a part of a group that for once is set up to do us all a lot of good should be enough to sell itself.

We now have over fifty breweries in Washington. We've undoubtedly all got a lot of value to say to each other. No one person, or company, I'm fairly sure, has figured it all out to the extent that they can't learn something from someone else.

Most states have brewers' guilds, I'm happy to say, and while I can't speak with any certainty on what exactly they talk about or how effective they are, I think it's encouraging that the perception of common goals has at least brought them all into existence. For we truly all have to hang together, to concentrate on what unites us rather than what shade of difference makes it absolutely impossible to sit at the same table and discuss things.

It's perhaps a bit grand to compare our collective quest to those colonial bits of serpent sausage which decided to unite in revolution, but if we don't at least recognize what we've accomplished and agree to protect it against incursions of perfidious industry and cultural philistinism we will probably eventually lose it.

Participate in your state's brewers guild, or start one. If nothing else it's a good excuse to check out new pubs and breweries, the way we all used to.

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