What a pleasant coincidence that on the very day I decide to launch my site, the New York Times chooses to run a story about Todd and Jason Alström, the founders of Beer Advocate. It’s a great article, and it really goes toward supporting my claim that we are living in times of a Beer Renaissance.

The Web site is just one of the gathering spots for beer lovers — not the guys sitting in front of the tube with a six-pack of mass-market brew, but a rapidly growing body of connoisseurs who are as devoted to their chosen beverage as wine lovers are to theirs.

Hear that? We are a rapidly growing body of connoisseurs. Awesome. The article goes on to identify a problem that beer culture faces – backlash from macro-brewery advertising, and the negative image that can sometimes be associated with “people who love beer”.

“One of our main goals is trying to raise the image of beer as a whole and bring back the beer culture,” Todd said. “We had a beer culture but Prohibition kind of reset the button.”

The popular image of beer drinkers has always been the industry’s greatest strength and its greatest weakness. The slobbering yahoos at the football game with the bare chests and painted faces; the snarling mud wrestlers battling over “tastes great, less filling,” and the usual array of good ol’ frat house antics are all representations from the mass-market beer industry itself, which has succeeded by aiming low. The cost has been respect, and the result has been a decades-long battle to win it back.

Hats off to Todd and Jason for being written up in the New York Times. They are helming the ship that will lead us beer disciples to the Land of Plentifully Available Niche Brews. And to that, I say Godspeed.

Read the full article: Overcoming a Frat Party Reputation