American Beer.

What the hell is American Beer?

In Brew Like a Monk, Jean-Marie Rock, brewing director at Orval is quoted as saying, "Before copying Belgian brewers or Belgian methods, tell the American brewers that they have to produce a specific beer made for the American people."

My initial reaction was, "He's right - we do need our own beer."  But after about a half-second, I groaned, "Ugh, we have our own beer, and it's light American lager."  (Though even this is hard to call American now that A-B is owned by the Belgians - maybe they need to get their own beer...)

But light American lager isn't the end of the story, either.  We have the West Coast Hop Bombs, too.  But can you really say that an extreme beer from the Left Coast is an American Beer?  Most of the Texans I know say the word "California" with a roll of the eyes and a shrug of their shoulders.

Is an American Beer a beer sourced only with American ingredients?  I think it's a start, and at Blackland I will be brewing all of my beers with 100% American (or at least U.S. and Canadian)  ingredients.  But as I sit here drinking a pilsner brewed in Houston, TX, completely with North American barley and hops, I still don't feel like I'm drinking an authentically American Beer - even if I did kick up the abv by 2 percent in American bigger-is-better fashion.

Maybe there is no such thing as American Beer, because there's no such thing as Mr. Rock's "the American people."  Sure there are lots of Americans, but what it means to be American is constantly changing.  Immigration, religions, American Idol, Coors, Goldman Sachs, Granger National Bank, Southern Star, small brewer, big brewer, suburbs, urban renewal, 230 years of white men in charge followed by one improbable black one.

If it means anything to be American it means not standing still.  It means not being satisfied.  It means being a Cowboy in the best, Texan sense of the word - proud, independent, responsible, respectful.

Maybe we don't have our own beer.  Or maybe it's whatever the hell we want it to be.