Bitchin' Brews

The Beer Exchange
 

Chao says that the novelty and the scarcity of craft beer are what interested him most in the beginning. 

 

“I started to think, ‘Oh, where does this rare item stack up against everything else?’ and that led into ‘Oh, I want to try the item that’s the very best.’”

 

Because of the general stigma surrounding alcohol consumption, Chao wearily admits that craft beer is his guilty pleasure.

 

“I would say I’ve reached a full blown obsession of the hobby,” jokes Chao. “If I go out of town for a business trip, I’ll look up which brewery I should go to, or what bar I should go to. I’ll try to figure out if I’m only going to get one thing, I have to get the best thing, so then you try to figure out what the best thing is.”

 

He cannot exactly hone in on what the allure is that fuels his rapidly expanding craft beer collection. It could be that there are beers at any given time that have “hype” and are scarce, so the craft beer community gets really excited about these. The hype comes from that fact that the beer was made by an esteemed brewer, or by experiment, or that the beer turned out well. These rare craft beers are usually distributed only in their regions. For instance, some are only distributed in Wisconsin, or ones on the east coast only distributed to the east coast. One way to obtain these is by travelling there, but, due to the cost, people typically travel only to attend events in the convention circuit. Another more convenient way is by sending “beer mail” through BeerAdvocate.

 

“It starts off when somebody says they want something, and then I say, ‘Well, what do you have?’ and then we figure out what we want. He’ll get me something from chicago and i’ll give him something back.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chao keeps track of how much he spends. Since July 2013, calculating the cost of bottles alone and excluding visits to breweries, he has spent around $300-$400 a month, totalling an estimated $3000 since last July.

 

Aside from collecting and consuming craft beers, his hobbies include cars, watches and photography. Because these three hobbies are incredibly expensive, he reasons that craft beer is not too outrageous of a hobby.

 

“This is something where I can do retail therapy on and not feel extremely bad. Three grand over the course of a year--it isn’t too terrible.”

 

Chao’s Beer Algorithm

 

“I know that reviews are somewhat skewed because there are polarizing tendencies,” said Chao. “Like you go on Yelp and you’ll see that local places get pushed up higher and if they’re rated more then more people will go there, and that’s going to reinforce how high they are. But more or less, I still based my decision off of what people have said, what consumer demand is, and what ratings are, so it ends up being this imprecise algorithm for how I rank them,” said Chao.

 

Chao will look for India Pale Ales (IPA’s), which usually do not last for longer than a month, so usually you trade these faster, otherwise the taste starts to fade. Recently, he has been drawn to stout beers, or darker beers made by roasting the malt. Both stout and sour beers age and change over time. He sometimes “cellars," or the act of storing beers in cellars or basements (closets for people outside of the east coast).

 

“You end up hoarding these, right, because you can only drink them so fast,” said Chao. “Those are typically what I trade for because you can take your time, as opposed to IPA’s which you need to drink immediately. 

 

At the moment, he has several hundred beers scattered throughout his place. Some are cellared. Almost all of the beers are treasures not found at the average liquor store. He jokes that any visitor outside of the craft beer culture  would look at his place and think he is insane. “It’s a lot of beer.”  

 

He says the way he balances his hobby takes up too much time now, but the culture surrounding craft beer keeps pulling him in further. But he plans to take his hobby to the next level by homebrewing someday.