Michael Jackson's First Column for All About Beer Magazine

Already an established writer, Michael Jackson first wrote for All About Beer Magazine in November of 1984, volume 5, number 6. This feature would become, two issues later, "Jackson's Journal," which ran in the magazine for 23 years.

The Thinking Drinker
By Michael Jackson

The Los Angeles Times recently ran an article about people called Michael Jackson. They deemed five Michael Jacksons to be sufficiently well known on the West Coast to rate a mention. I was happy to be among them, on the principle that they spelled my name right.

Two of us are regularly heard chatting on radio in L.A. The other one, who hosts a talk show there, described me to the L A Times in ways that weren't quite accurate but he was at least kind enough to add that I had written a "lovely" book on pubs. Perhaps he didn't like either of my books on beer.

Identity is a problem these days. "Okay, so you really are called Michael Jackson. Tell me, what's it like to be androgynous?"

"Pardon?"

"Androgynous. Having the characteristics or nature of both male and female. —Websters."

I don't know. I'm all man."

"A real man?"

The trouble is that the phrase means different things to different sexes. To people who consider themselves "real" men, it means Burt Reynolds. To most women, it stubbornly insists on meaning Alan Alda.

I once appeared on a TV talk show with Alan Alda. He was charming, poised...I slashed my hand opening a bottle of Sam Smith's Pale Ale. Burt Reynolds would, of course, have bitten the top off the bottle, were he a Sam's drinker in the first place. I carried on talking to the camera, keeping my wounded hand out of sight so that a member of the show's production team could crawl across the floor and mend it with that "no sting, no stain" stuff. I hope she found my vulnerability as winning as I found hers.

It's hard to escape from being vulnerable. The other week in Denver, NBC asked me to demonstrate for the Today show how to drink beer properly. As they shot my elbow from one angle and then another, I drank my way through six demonstration pints. I haven't seen the tape yet. You haven't, have you? I was rather hoping they were going to be merciful and can it, so to speak. If you see me, don't adjust your set. I always talk like that after six pints.

A British TV station (no, it wasn't the BBC) once spent a day filming me as I looked round a brewery and then sampled the beers in a nearby pub. The sampling session took four hours and had to be re-dubbed, I couldn't talk, though I could still stand up.

This is a hazardous job and I'm trying to show you that, vulnerable or not, I have the Right Stuff. Whatever that is (A white suit? A bottle of Sam Smith's?). I feel I need to prove this because of my identity crisis. It's all very well (or perhaps not) being mentioned in the same breath as Henry Kissinger, as I was in this magazine recently. It's quite different being compared, as I was in the Rocky Mountain New, with Julia Child. Sure I've done some cooking on TV. Is that a crime? Does she have a beard?

My Significant Other likes to compare me with A.J. Liebling. I'm not sure she means it as a compliment but I'll take it that way. I've a long way to go yet, though. Joe Liebling was a street-smart writer whose several great interests included the Press, low-life and boxing. He covered a war and produced some rich essays on gastronomy. He wrote for the New Yorker, had a passion for Irish women, and died of overeating in 1963, at the age of 59. You ought to read him sometime.

Me? I'm fascinated by boxing (I think it should be banned but, until it is, I'll watch every big fight), though my own sport is an especially merciless, professional, blue collar variation of rugby, which I played as a boy have since written about from time to time. I have attended two wars, in Belfast and Bangladesh, as a journalist. At the feet of some Fleet Street masters, I had my first serious lessons in gastronomy and drinking about 20 years ago and I've loved both ever since. When another 20 years has passed, I hope I'll have avoided drinking myself into an early grave. I think I'll survive.

The gastronomic aspects of drink are something we are going to have to deal with in this column. We are going to mention food as well as drink. We are going to drop the names of wines as well as beers. We are going to philosophize about beer. If all this sounds foreign to you, please stay around. Unless you would prefer to step outside.

Someone who is spoiling for a fight, albeit a friendly one, is Jerry Steinman, who runs a newsletter called Beer Marketer's Insights. He feels that I pay insufficient attention to American beers, especially the big brands. In fact, in my book the Pocket Guide to Beer, I discussed every brewing company in the U.S. (though not all of their subsidiaries). I did not, on the other hand, manage to include every British brewery, and certainly not every one in Germany — there are just too many. For the record, the United States has around 50 brewing companies, Britain about 200 (more than half of them micros or pub breweries) and Germany 1,200-1,300.

Ah, yes, says Jerry, but you seem to believe that small is beautiful. What about the big breweries? There is a simple answer to that. I don't write purely on the basis of my own tastes, or anyone else's. I also try to find out something about the beer, where possible by visiting the brewery. When I go to a brewery, I look around, ask questions, chat with the management, look at the archives, sample the full range of products, and then write my piece. What I write depends upon what there is to say. There is no reason why a small brewery should provide less material than a large one.

Nor is there any reason why small brewery should produce less interesting beer than a large one,. That is something we must discuss at length in a future column. Meanwhile, consider this: does a boutique winery produce a less worthy product than Gallo or Inglenook? There you are: I told you we would be mentioning wine before long.

That's the point, Jerry persists. You prefer little breweries with oddball beers. American beer is Bud, High Life Pabst...shouldn't you judge by those standards?

No, Jerry, I don't accept that. I don't care in which country the beer was made. I care whether the brewer was trying to produce something of character or to create a beer which could be all things to all persons. Like people, beers do not choose the countries in which they are born. To be less than ecstatic about American mass-market beers is not to insult the flag. I'm not crazy about British mass-market beers, either. Or French mass-market wines (there we go again). Most of those products are very well made in terms of quality control, and often outstanding value, but they do not rate special attention for their palate. If I dismiss jingoism, I disagree equally with those American drinkers who damn every beer made in the United States, or praise everything produced in Europe.

This column is stateless. This year, it has spent time in L.A., San Francisco (where it has an office at the Washington Square Bar and Grill — they serve good Guinness), Portland (the one in Oregon, where they brew Henry's, which comes in easy-to-open bottles), Seattle, Denver, Chicago, Intercourse (that's a town in Pennsylvania), Toronto, Montreal, Boston, New York, Washington D.C., Louisville, Nashville, London, Tadcaster (where they brew Sam's), Edinburgh, the Orkney Islands, Pilsen, Ceske Budejovice (formerly Budweis), Prague, Sapporo, Tokyo, Nagoya, Kyoto, Osaka...

"Where do you live?" someone asked. "London, I think." I carry a British passport, but that doesn't fool everyone.

"Are you sure you're British?" demanded a brewer I met in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.

"Yes, why?"

"You don't talk British."

"Yes, I do."

"No, you don't. I can understand you."

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