Too Many Ingredients

~ This article first appeared in The Leader-Vindicator newspaper. ~

The year 2008 marked my 21st birthday.  This was a good time to be an irresponsible young adult as the era can be described as the golden age of craft beer.  Consumer interest in beer offerings beyond the major brands had been building through the 90s and early 2000s and by the time I could legally enter a bar or brewery the industry was sophisticated enough to produce high quality variations of the beverage.  My friends and I drank at the very unique intersection of skilled creativity and market novelty.

It was trendy for a beer to contain numerous ingredients.  We liked complexity when we drank and it was as much fun to read the wild description on the label as it was to drink the beer - I actually saved bottles and today possess an extensive collection of bottle art. 

Nobody in the growing craft consumer market wanted a wimpy, simple beer and when an old geezer (40 or so) would walk into a brewery and ask for “something similar to Coors” we’d all snort and scoff and roll our eyes at the waitress in a desperate attempt to convey the shared fantasy that we knew anything at all.

As the growth curve of the beer movement rounded the top and started flattening craft beer inevitably became generic in its complexity.  Too many breweries started using so many ingredients that every conceivable combination was used up.  The situation became a little ridiculous in the beer aisle: Labels required indexes and external cross-references to comprehend and yet no matter what you tried it tasted pretty similar to the last few samplings you’d had.

It took a few years for brewers to figure out that they were working extremely hard and spending a fortune to achieve diminishing returns on their product.  It took a few more years for customers to get over the idea that drinking beer with lots of ingredients automatically made us beer connoisseurs. Finally, after everyone started being honest with each other, something remarkable happened: Craft breweries started making simple beers.  I remember the first time I noticed a brew pub selling a pilsner – the sign reeked of embarrassment, almost as though the owners figured they’d be run out of town.  Turns out customers were happy to throw away the indexes. 

The same trajectory is happening with farming, but I think the curve is a few years behind beer.  It is trendy for farmers to have one of every ingredient, simply for the image:  I regularly see examples of farmers showing off their diversified farmstead featuring chickens, turkeys, pigs, cattle, sheep, goats, ducks, donkeys, and a vegetable plot on the side.  There is a mentality that you’re not real if you’re not diversified.  I wonder when the novelty of that involvedness will wear off and become a life of complicated work with diminishing return and too much competition.  This was the downfall of craft beer and here we are doing it with livestock.

Throughout my life I’ve observed from a distance people in situations that seem so easily avoidable that I wonder how they ended up in the predicament they’re in.  The truth is that it’s hard to stay out of stupid situations; I can’t believe how powerful the pull is to follow the crowd.  Someone will observe me from a distance and wonder how dumb I can be.

Logically I understand that too much of a good thing too quickly is not a good thing.  I realize that adding more to my list of responsibilities right now will not provide the results I want.  But boy, do I want to buy one of everything so I can talk about it with customers.  I want to be like the big shots.

Fortunately for me, nobody really cares.  People want language they can understand and they want a product that is reliable in price, taste, and texture.  It’s interesting to see a little diversity on the farm but at the end of the day having forty-two species of pheasant doesn’t make a more wholesome product.

I’m struggling to resist the pull to look like everyone else.  It is my opinion that to stand out in local agriculture today a farmer must specialize to some degree in creating something truly good with only a few ingredients.  Stating such a thought feels a little embarrassing, much like the first brewmaster must’ve felt when he put his reputation on the line by proclaiming in a sea of ingredients that he would use only four. 

I want to strip the image away and leave only me in my specific circumstances.  I think that means a whole lot less marketing – synonymous with bragging – and a whole lot more people specific interaction.  I think other people should do it, too.  We can stop impressing each other and instead enjoy the genuine ingredient.  I bet we’ll like what we get.