GOOD PEOPLE, BEER PEOPLE ARE

Beer, whether rightly or wrongly, is associated with "good times". Have a beer. We'll meet up for a beer. He and I set the world to rights over a few beers. Beer has an effect, but not so much that you become slurry and melancholy at a fast pace. It oils the gearbox of life and makes changes easier on the transmission.

So, it stands to reason that the people involved in "beer" would be better, nicer, more easy-going than people who work in, say, insurance or telephone banking. After all, the barman greets you with a cheery hello when you enter the pub, and the brewer only wants you to drink and like his beer. What could be more good than that?

If only this were true.

Like pretty much everything concocted by humanity, the truism "beer people are good people" is on obfuscation. Beer people are only as good as the rest of humanity. In fact, the rest of humanity is probably more true. Why? Well, when push comes to shove, truth is barely varnished with most people. But in the beer world, you have to operate under a convenient fiction that everyone loves on another.  To be fair, it's obvious why this happens. If you run out of hops or a brewing kit part breaks, and you need it fixed, like, now, you can't wait for a commercial operator to get the stuff to you. No, you ask the brewer nearest you if they have any spares. And if they have, they'll oblige. After all, who knows when they'll be in trouble and need you.

"Good" doesn't come into it. Such things are more akin to a Cleaner Fish removing parasites from another fish. It's instinctive reciprocation rather than "goodness".

It's not "bad", but neither is it as good as claimed.