Good Beer Hunting

Humanity in Hospitality

I Know What Boyz Like — A Grassroots Industry Struggles to Find Leadership on Social Issues

"Hi, we're here for the gangbang."

It's a succinct bio on Instagram, posted above a small collection of photos and videos that fit in easily with what you might expect from young men on social media. A trio of bearded and mustachioed guys shotgun beers. The hand of an off-camera body plunges in and out of a plastic tub, "fisting" fruit. A screen grab shows a man thrusting his crotch at the backend of an augmented reality Pokémon character.

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A note from Michael Kiser, Founder (Jan. 3, 6:30pm):

Since publishing this story, a number of account owners or associated businesses have reached out privately to excuse, explain, or otherwise dissociate from the accounts that were operated officially or unofficially, under their business purview, as mentioned in this article. The largest concern in these messages was that each person had a desire to be contacted and interviewed about the accounts beforehand. One, 2nd Shift Brewing, even claimed their intent was parody or progress (
despite their being no discernible indication that is the case), while another representative claimed they realized it went in the wrong direction immediately and put an stop to it. All of this to say: even within the confines of a single brewery with a small team, perspectives on what's acceptable, and what's not, and what the purpose of any of it is, is not clear. And it can go off the rails in three posts (I'd argue one). But its effects surely are clear—and that's where we're aiming. 

As you’ll see in this piece, we did reach out to and get comment from a few of the more egregious account representatives that shed plenty of light on the mentalities, and patterns of behavior—ignorant or intentional—behind these Instagram accounts. We did not contact, or feel the need to get an excuse or explanation, from every account holder—the patterns of behavior and the explicitness of the content was self-evident. It was a club—a network of shared accounts between breweries. And this article isn't an examination of the particular nuances and personal motivations of the people involved. It's an examination of the culture they contributed to, passively or aggressively, intentionally or accidentally, and how that contributes to a massive diversity problem in the beer industry. In other words, we are not interested in an at-length apologia for this culture. We're instead focused on the problems it creates for the people in their communities—customers and employees alike. They are the ones worthy of attention. And that is the purpose of this series called Humanity in Hospitality.

There's a shot of a holiday card, seemingly tame and caring. “Sending you all my love this holiday season,” it reads, followed by "Merry Christmas Queers.” It’s signed from "Thunder Cunt.”

Collectively, it's the kind of stuff that causes some to roll their eyes and utter a clichéd "boys will be boys," hinting that juvenile behavior is just something that happens for males in the realm of the internet. To others, it demonstrates a spectrum of homophobia and misogyny. Either way, it's right there for everyone to see, publicly available on the popular photo-sharing platform. To nearly all Instagram users, it would stay "secret" if you weren't looking for it—or if you weren’t really into beer.

The team searching for the "gangbang" is the "hgspicybois," staff at Longwood, Florida's Hourglass Brewing, which has a commonly-known, and much more public, official Instagram account with just over 2,700 followers. (The “spicybois,” by comparison, have 44 followers.) Click over to Hourglass' main Instagram page and you'll see images of bar staff, tap handles, merchandise, and more. 

"A lot of the brew staff doesn't really get to show their face out front of the brewery, so this is a peek into our stupid life back there, making dick jokes and giving a little insight," says Mike DeLancett, head brewer at Hourglass. There's a distinct difference between the two accounts, he says, so "one is boys and girls being ‘boys,’ and the other is making sure content is collected and direct, so we're not clogging up feeds with us farting around in the back."

Most important, DeLancett says, the spicybois account provides an easy way to stay in touch with other breweries, building friendships through participation in memes and challenges for fun, like shotgunning a beer. Spend time on the unannounced account and you'll get a hint of the small and hidden social media culture.

There are at least a dozen of these types of alter-ego accounts, interconnected by friendship, a shared profession, and their play on words, many utilizing some variation of "boy" like a membership card. Clicking around in the followers of these accounts exposes the hidden-in-plain-view network. There are the seemingly benign hafatboyz (Half Acre), brewhouseboys (Creature Comforts), kent_fallz_keg_boyz (Kent Falls), and what appears to the the inspiration for it all with the oldest social media page, and a tone that sets it apart from others, perennialfuckboyz (Perennial Artisan Ales), whose own bio lets readers know that, "When you got a big dick, it's hard to appreciate the blue eyes." Photos and videos mostly show employees around the brewery or poking fun at each other’s expense. There’s an occasional dick joke. And they're all tied together, the mundane and the profane, through the sort of obvious moniker of "boyz."

Asked about the account, Phil Wymore, co-founder and brewmaster at Perennial, admitted that its purpose was to compartmentalize behind-the-scenes aspects of brewers' lives with content from the brewery's main account, where visitors may simply be seeking information about the business, beer releases or events. The name of the account was based on an inside joke and one that probably needed a little more consideration to potential sensitivities, Wymore admits.

"[The account] was created as sort of an outlet for us not to be obviously public with our expression, but to also kind of be there as sort of an underground thing for people that know us or would be in the know about it," Wymore says. "It's really, in our mind, an innocent goof off that we can't really put on our public-facing or more prominent company account."

Wymore added that questions about the context of the account spurred internal conversations about being more sensitive to viewers and curating content to be more considerate. After posting publicly since March 2016, perennialfuckboyz went private on Jan. 2. Its bio has also been removed. However, like most of the other brand-associated accounts, it shows up automatically, and sometimes first, in the autocomplete when you start typing “perenn…”

To the credit of most, only a few accounts post sophomoric content, let alone images that push boundaries. And many stand in opposition to otherwise well-established brand values that regularly express progressive and inclusive images in their primary branding and social media, But the boys club is there, literally and figuratively. The majority don't come close to levels of outrageousness that could result in reports to site administrators. But still, there are examples like 2ndshiftsexytime (2nd Shift Brewing), which has photos of a shirtless man playfully posing in a brewhouse with “#puresex" added to its description, and a picture of a nozzle and condom next to each other, noting in its caption, "When you have to purge a tank at 11 but have to fuck at 3. #wrapitup #brewerylyfe." There’s a third and final photo on the account, with a man laying on his back, a 750ml bottle positioned in front of his crotch. “Come and get it,” its description reads. Representatives of the brewery, including co-owner Libby Crider, have since described the images as satire, of what is unclear without additional context. After three posts, she says, she rescinded her approval for the jokes and the account went silent, but remained public. 

Beneath the fratty exterior, the purpose of these accounts seems to be a way to maintain friendships among breweries spread around the country. They also foster a prevailing critique of the U.S. beer community that, even as other industries push for change and awareness of social issues, beer will always be a boy's club. To those posting these pictures, videos, and comments, it's all cliquey and cute. But there’s also the possibility that this is the kind of behavior that can go off the rails pretty quickly.

These examples do not bode well for a community expected to self-police. As private, independent businesses, breweries have the lawful right to operate, market, and promote themselves however they wish. Customers offended by Instagram antics or distasteful beer names and labels can provide feedback, but a brewery is under no obligation to do anything about it. Even the Brewers Association, which represents and lobbies on the behalf of around 6,000 small and independent businesses, avoids levels of involvement.

In its Marketing and Advertising Code Complaint Process, the BA clarifies that only a voting member can bring an official complaint, but first must jump through a number of hoops that begin with going to an offending brewery themselves, a psychological challenge for an awkward conversation between friends in an American culture that commonly tells us "nobody likes a tattletale." From there, the complaining member would be allowed to talk to the BA, which decides internally its own course of action. If an unsatisfactory response is provided to the BA within 10 business days, then, and only then, would the Brewers Association consider convening a panel to address the issue. It’s not clear what could or would happen from there.

The Brewers Association declined to share if any complaints have been formally filed since the process’ inception in 2008.

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There are many examples of companies trying to be proactive and progressive in their politics and social awareness. New Belgium has long supported sustainability and environmentalism, Raleigh, North Carolina’s Trophy Brewing painted a large anti-gerrymandering mural at its brewpub, and Missoula, Montana’s Imagine Nation Brewing has hosted about 1,500 public events covering topics of immigration, healthcare, and more.

However, it seems that in this moment, at least, the responsibility to cultivate change isn’t going to come from breweries or organizations. Like so many other efforts across politics and business, individuals are leading the charge.

"A lot of places just don't give a fuck about reaching out," says Dominic "Doochie" Cook, a beer sales rep based in St. Petersburg, Florida. "A lot of smaller breweries and a lot of local craft just don't have the desire for it."

The “it” Cook is talking about is actually more a “who.” Craft beer in a broad sense, Cook believes, isn’t concerned with connecting with non-white, middle-class customers. “They have their eyes set on a target demographic, and that’s just what it is,” he adds. “I know that from conversations in real life.”

Cook lives in the historically black Southside neighborhood of St. Pete, not exactly a burgeoning space for non-macro beer, where Coors Lite and Colt .45 are preferred by residents, he says. Demographics for typical craft beer drinkers have come from a variety of polling places, but consistently show the “average” consumer is a white, college-educated male with an annual household income above $50,000. Cook wants to change that, ever so slightly, through an effort he calls “Beer Kulture.” He’s trying to get black people into craft beer mostly because he doesn’t think industry professionals will put in that effort. So instead of waiting to see what might happen, he’s handing out bottles of New Belgium Sour Saison and cans of Rodenbach Fruitage, hoping it’ll convince drinkers to abandon their regular go-to beers.

Admittedly, part of that problem is an aura of authenticity consumers crave—one that craft beer has been working to cultivate for years. Breweries, almost exclusively run by white people, who serve beer to a predominantly white audience, don’t exactly align with what would feel like an “authentic” sell should they show up with a case of IPA in a majority black neighborhood. In recent years, that’s left outreach efforts to what essentially amounts to enthusiastic third parties. Marketing, apparel, or event organizers like Dope and Dank or Black x Crafty have worked to bridge the gap, but it’s Cook’s attempt to connect with minority drinkers that runs closer to classic grassroots outreach.

“I want other people who look like me and come from where I come from to have shit they can enjoy,” Cook says. “And have something they probably won’t ever be exposed to in any other way.”

The only reason Cook is in this position is because he serendipitously came across a copy of the book The Search for God and Guinness in 2012 while living in the Bronx. His son had recently died, and one day he started scrolling through a list of inspirational books on a Kindle. The book’s name intrigued him, and the idea that a beer company “was doing good deeds was foreign to me,” he says.

Cook didn't even drink at the time, but reading about Arthur Guinness led him to search for the historic stout, which helped him find Sam Adams Cherry Wheat and Summer Ale. He read The Oxford Companion to Beer and Radical Brewing. It was luck that led to a love of beer and searching for a job in the industry.

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He also recognizes that his story—given his background and stumbling into flavorful beer on his own—can be an outlier. 

“I don’t think the industry in general rejects minorities,” says Craig Smith, a brewer and industry consultant based in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. “This industry has treated me better than the corporate machine ever did. People are open-minded, and I’ve made lifelong friends. But I don’t think it’s a priority and it won’t be until the beer industry feels they can’t survive without us. The country is becoming more brown, not white, so at some point, someone is going to have to do something or beer won’t gain market share.”

Smith, who most recently worked as head brewer at Funky Buddha, met Cook virtually through Cook’s @BeerWithDooch and @BeerKulture Twitter handles. Smith said the two started a friendship based around being anomalies—black craft beer enthusiasts—and support each other because they see the need to create an inclusive community. Unfortunately, Smith says, that falls on the efforts of Cook, not breweries or trade organizations.

“If the Brewers Association really cares about diversity, they’ve got to make an effort,” he says. “It has to be something they really want to do, and I really do not think they care. People make time or plan for things they care about, and the whole ‘taking back craft’ thing and how fast they came up with the independent seal and stickers and patches tells me diversity is lip service.”

There is, of course, the Brewers Association’s Diversity Committee.

“Questions started coming from members about what we were doing to be more inclusive, and as we sat around the board room and discussed it, we realized we didn’t have an answer,” says Scott Metzger, founder of San Antonio’s Freetail Brewing, an at-large representative of the BA’s board of directors, and chair of the organization’s Diversity Committee. “Looking inward, it was good for us to recognize that the BA itself isn’t all that diverse and our industry wasn’t really diverse.”

Ahead of elections set for seven spots whose terms end in February, 31.5% of the Brewers Association’s Board of Directors were female or minorities, on par with an average seen across Fortune 500 companies. Metzger, whose family is of Mexican heritage, says that a goal of the Brewers Association should be about becoming "a part of the fabric of different communities" and finding places where craft beer is not the focus of typical consumer habits.

It’s an admirable and necessary effort because, ironically, the geographical impact of craft beer does the exact opposite. For many cities across America, “craft beer” is synonymously tied to “urban renewal,” a term often used by municipalities to audibly soften a racially-focused outcome of business development: gentrification. Beer is not the first industry to be seen as a panacea for down-on-their-luck neighborhoods, but it is a popular solution at the moment as cities seek transformation via new, young entrants into the middle class. Even the Brewers Association has noted that “up and coming neighborhoods” attract the “strongest category” of craft beer consumer, which while not explicitly young and white, typically is precisely that.

“Traditionally, the barrier to craft beer has not necessarily been ethnic or gender or sexual orientation,” Metzger says. “I think it’s typically been a function of economics and access.”

Should the BA actually become woven into the fabric of different communities, the biggest challenge might be real estate. In research published last year in the book Untapped: Exploring the Cultural Dimensions of Craft Beer, researchers from University of California-Berkeley and San Diego found that breweries were more likely to open in areas that were losing racial and ethnic diversity, and were part of a pattern of greater gentrification. Using census data, it was shown that between 2000 and 2013, non-Hispanic white populations increased by 8% in areas with a craft brewery, while black and Hispanic/Latino residents declined by 6% and 3%, respectively.

“Today’s wave of urban revitalization efforts has been viewed by supporters as a way to increase a city’s wealth and economic opportunities,” researchers wrote. “Detractors, however, consider it gentrification with better marketing.”

This reality reinforces why Cook’s work to bring craft beer into underrepresented areas may be necessary, and why change may be hard to catalyze by the Brewers Association. It’s not lost on Metzger, either.

“There is a distinct possibility that maybe we’re not able to do anything, but we’re going to try,” Metzger says. 

Since the committee was officially announced in April 2017, it has held four meetings via conference call or in person, a quarterly schedule Metzger anticipates will continue, with potential for up to six meetings a year. Staff at the BA are working on topics of diversity every day, he says, so the committee's meetings every few months build on that work.

A key initiative will take place in 2018, as the Brewers Association commissions a survey of employees within the industry to better understand the demographic makeup of professionals. From there, a strategy will be formed to offer suggestions to the Brewers Association and its members.

"This is a nebulous, difficult topic and we'd be lost without the voices in the crowd on this one," Metzger says. 

The slow movement doesn’t discourage Kevin Blodger, co-founder and brewer at Baltimore’s Union Craft Brewing, and a member of the BA’s Diversity Committee. Blodger says that being proactive on issues of diversity is important for the sake of creating more beer drinkers, but it’s also one of economics.

“Overall sales are flat, and we need to find new consumers and new groups to try our products,” he says. “Minorities are a big group to bring into the fold, and we can only advertise to white males for so long while ignoring other segments.”

Despite a lack of tangible outcomes so far, Blodger is hopeful, noting that it would be silly to try and force new policies or initiatives on drinkers or Brewers Association members alike. There’s an undeniable commitment from all, he says, which will lead to positive results.

“I’m very excited for the fact it’s not a tepid discussion,” Blodger says. “Everybody is jumping in feet first and wants to figure out how to get this going. We’re all really into diversifying craft beer, now how we do that is a different question.”

Thanks to the multitude of opinions, viewpoints, and presumed solutions to issues of gender and race, there are no easy paths laid out for the beer industry. But there is still a collective agreement that something—and in some cases, anything—needs to be done. But without clear directives of how to move forward, an ability to address diversity and inclusion circles back to a starting point with a logical question for which nobody seems to have an answer:

Who is this movement’s leader?

“I just think a lot of breweries don’t have the answer to that question,” says Rob Fullmer, executive director of the Arizona Craft Brewers Guild. “An organization like our state guild or the Brewers Association can make good arguments about why something should be done [about diversity]. We have a carrot, selling more beer, but not a stick.”

And that may be a core challenge of enacting true change. After years of double-digit growth, it wasn’t until recently that craft finally started to slow while the beer category at large is generally flat. The beer industry didn’t need to worry about cultivating new customers…until it needed to start cultivating new customers.

“If the result of our efforts doesn't sell more beer or make our breweries more financially successful, than none of our efforts matter,” Fullmer says of the responsibility for state guilds, whose focus is predominantly to support marketing and beer-friendly legislation.

There’s a roundabout path to success on this matter, with stakeholders more or less pointing at each other. In the past, the Brewers Association said directives to create new ideas or enhance policies needed to come from members. Members, meanwhile, have said they should receive leadership from the trade organization that exists to do just that. If the Brewers Association can create platforms for quality, safety, and more, why is it taking so long to do the same for diversity?

“They have the staff, they have the people, they have the data, they have the money, they have the marketing prowess to come up with something that gives us a little better directive to say this is an issue we should talk about,” says Tom Whisenand, co-founder and director of operations at Minneapolis, Minnesota’s Indeed Brewing, as well as president of the Minnesota Craft Brewers Guild. “I appreciate the quality of all the communication and information we receive, and it makes me think it wouldn’t be too difficult to wrap their heads around this situation.”

“I think there’s a huge reluctance from anyone in the beer industry to call out their peers,” says Carla Jean Lauter, a writer who covers the beer industry. “They’re not willing to sacrifice their own reputation to call out someone else’s behavior.”

Because there’s no formal system for consumers to alert leaders in the industry, drinkers who care about portrayals of gender and diversity are left the options of firing off an angry email or taking to social media to find other like-minded drinkers to share in their effort. This process is not lost on Lauter, who on several occasions has utilized Twitter and her more than 20,000 followers to raise awareness to questionable labels and names that oversexualize women or use inappropriate language.

Most recently, the ire of Lauter and others was directed at Massillon, Ohio’s Paradigm Shift Brewing, which opened in November featuring a coconut-flavored Cream Ale called Panty Dropper. The overt sexual innuendo is not an outlier—there are dozens of professionally-made beers with the name listed on Untappd, along with many made by homebrewers. It was the name, paired with comments by brewery owner Mike Malinowski, that attracted extra attention. On multiple occasions, when putting the name in context of the country’s sexual harassment climate and noting previous complaints of his own beer, Malinowski doubled down on keeping Panty Dropper, as it was “silly” and not offensive, saying “(women) know it’s a joke and they love it.”

When it became clear that no official complaint would be issued, Lauter sent Malinowski a copy of the Brewers Association’s Marketing and Advertising Code, which states in its second sentence that, “Beer marketing should be representative of the values, ideals and integrity of a diverse culture and free of any derogatory or discriminatory messages or imagery.”

Malinowski eventually changed his beer’s name, noted by Ohio.com’s Rick Armon, because “it wasn’t worth the hassle.”

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“Nobody sticks their neck out,” says Lauter, who says she received support from breweries scattered around the country—privately.

It creates an awkward relationship between all parties involved, from consumers to businesses to the BA. There’s openly-stated interest for a shared goal of addressing these kinds of challenges, but rarely, if ever, do they come together in a public space. When announcing its increased efforts toward diversity in April 2017, the Brewers Association cited media attention as a key reason for their new stance. What that attention has amounted to is not yet clear.

“It bothers me that it’s the same thing over and over,” says Lauter, who contacted the Ohio Craft Brewers Association over the Paradigm Shift fiasco, but never heard back. “It’s a lot of talking and not a lot of doing. It’s almost like there literally needs to be a guide of how to not name a beer like an asshole. I keep talking about making a resource like that myself.”

In November, under the alias “N-word killer,” emails were sent to inbox of Black Star Line Brewing, Western North Carolina's first black-owned brewery. Owner L.A. McCrae also identifies as queer.

“We are just getting started n-----,” one email read, according to local news reports. “GAY QUEER N-----. Only good N------ is a DEAD n-----. We hate N-----. Especially gay, men hating n-----. We still coming. Die, N-----, die.”

The threats were followed by vandalism of the Hendersonville brewery, which had just opened weeks earlier. The community rallied around McCrae and the Black Star Line staff, though the incidents highlight a theme mentioned consistently when talking about diversity and inclusion within the beer industry: it’s a societal problem, not just one in this specific sector of food and beverage.

“It’s a microcosm of the cultural zeitgeist right now,” says Smith, the brewer and consultant from Florida. “We couldn’t be more divided in everything.”

In the macro sense, the sentiment feels true, especially for anyone who scrolls through news feeds or turns on the nightly news. But, as shown from a variety of viewpoints across many entries to the beer industry, there has also never been as much cohesiveness around this one topic. If anything, now may be the most ideal time to push the hardest toward change. The Brewers Association struck a decades-long victory recently when tax reform passed, lowering federal costs for selling beer. It’s making a significant investment in a public hop-breeding program. The organization even launched an initiative to address an ongoing problem of lost kegs, which can be a significant financial burden to breweries.

Battles have been won. If ever there was a time to jump into the fray for other causes, now would be it. In fact, others have already done so.

At the end of December, the UK's Campaign for Real Ale consumer advocacy group released its first executive statement on discrimination, condemning "any behaviour that discriminates against individuals because of their gender, race, ethnic origin, disability, age, nationality, national origin, sexuality, religion or belief, marital status and social class.” Any use of sexist images or slogans would bar placement at the group's festivals, competitions, and publications.

Currently, no state guild in the U.S. lists any similar language on its website. The Brewers Association has its marketing code, and won’t announce inappropriate names of award-winning beers at events, but nothing as definitive as what the UK organization issued.

“It's important that CAMRA's stance is as public as possible in order to ensure that all our members are aware of the organization's policy when it comes to discrimination, and that they understand the standards of behaviour and value that we expect any member of CAMRA to follow,” says Tom Stainer, the organization’s head of communications. “It's also important that we make it clear to the rest of the industry where we stand on issues of discrimination.”

Similarly, the UK’s Society of Independent Brewers followed suit, issuing a statement that “SIBA members who promote their beers with sexist, offensive advertising have no place in our membership of responsible, professional brewing businesses.” The group goes a step farther than its U.S. counterpart in regard to offensive names or labels, holding the right to disqualify competition entries out right instead of simply not saying a beer's name during award announcements.

Change is happening in many sectors of society, but across the U.S., an attempt at incremental steps continues to be led by those with the least at stake. Consumers are often told to “vote with their wallet,” an assumption of economic power created one pint at a time, as if not buying beer with an offensive label or from a company with questionable business and marketing practices will force additional empathy. Tangible change requires more.

“There’s always a round of people that say, ‘if you don’t like it, don’t buy it,’” says Lauter. “A minority of people don’t, but it makes no impact at all. There’s always going to be a need for advocacy beyond saying, ‘I’m never going to buy your product.’ You have to make an example of a brewery, or contact them, or make a statement. There’s nothing else that will affect change.”

Elsewhere, drinkers are literally taking the issue into their own hands, delivering beer and conversation that is meant to win over new customers.

“It’s an uphill battle, but it’s a battle that can be won with the right resources,” says Cook, the beer sales rep from Florida. “There are a lot of people out there. A lot of potential customers and money that could be going to these breweries that make really good beer, if they just broaden their horizons.”

Efforts have already started from the bottom, with people like Lauter and Cook looking up, waiting for business owners and industry leaders to join them.

Will they?

The series of "boyz" Instagram accounts from breweries across the country acts as a strange litmus test, a point of entry for understanding how the exclusionary culture within brewing work and cultural spaces plants a seed that can grow in so many different directions, from the innocuous to the insane. These images, earnestly taken to express camaraderie, come from the latest wave of small and independent breweries, literally and figuratively the future of the industry. And yet, they too easily reverberate stereotypical tropes these businesses and others openly discuss as the antithesis of what makes today's "craft beer" special and inclusive. And indeed, in many cases, are the antithesis of what we see from the brands they publicly associate with. 

Created as digital alter egos, their presence also undermines a prevailing theme of modern commerce, that in order to best connect with consumers, showcasing your company and brand's authentic self is the best marketing tool. One after another, the photos and videos from these non-publicized accounts suggest they are, in fact, the "real" version of the people behind the brewery, some prove to be seamless while others are jarringly different. By comparison, the projection of "authenticity" through advertised or “official” Instagram accounts is old-school marketing at work, using aesthetic over substance and bringing into question where the two sides meet. Even when seen as potentially disturbing, the collection of "boyz" accounts are at least disturbingly honest.

“For us it's kind of a light-hearted way to represent what the brewhouse life is like,” says Mike DeLancett, the brewer from Hourglass. “If anything, it's the interesting side of things. It's a way of showing this is just beer and we're here to have fun.”

In August, seven men stepped inside a photobooth at the Midwest Belgian Beer Fest. Bunched together, arms around one another, the smiles and facial expressions are those of love and friendship. It's the kind of crowded shot you’d see from a wedding, as attendees are riding high on the celebration, and pause to remember. 

They're all shirtless. One man, his back turned to the camera, wears an orange construction vest, "FUCKBOY #1" written in black marker on the back, like a sports jersey. "Dudez on dudez on dudez," reads its caption, posted to perennialfuckboyz.

It has 142 likes—the account’s most popular post that week.


Share your story

If you have a story to tell about your experience working in, or around the beer industry that would help readers understand the need for conclusion and an open dialog about sexism, racism, homophobia, or otherness in general, please get in touch. This section is intended to give voice to those that are too often silent.  All messages will be kept confidential with our editorial team.

Words, Bryan Roth
Graphics, Mike Duesenberg