I, like many people around the world, spend much of my time at work communicating by e-mail.  The other day I had the pleasure of sending a business related e-mail to my good friend Tom Flores.  Tom and I are both employed in the brewing industry and started our careers together homebrewing in his mom’s kitchen when we were in high school.  Tom and I used to have all sorts of really great conversations about the deeper topics that brooding collegiate youngsters find worthy of discourse.  I fondly remember many hours spent discussing our fantasy of having our own pub and one of our great ideas was to have a chalk board that would be used to define a daily topic of discussion.  Bear in mind we lived in the DC metropolitan area where much of the nation’s storied past was born in taverns.  The idea was to encourage interaction among patrons discussing real issues.  Pretty idealistic!

In any case, my e-mail with Tom contained some small talk and we began a nice e-mail discussion on politics.  After several volleys back and forth our discussion ended with “this is the type of discussion that really needs to occur in person over a couple of beers” and my next blog topic was hatched.

In a world of instant communication using texting, tweeting, instant messaging, e-mailing and other techie tools that I know nothing about we are quickly loosing what I consider real communication.  And that is why beer is important to the world.  This conclusion can be understood when one considers what happens when people get together to drink beer; conversation happens.  The type of beer is not important, homebrewed beers and commercially brewed beers will both do the trick, but the key is getting together with others to enjoy.  Homebrew club meetings, old-fashioned game nights and trips to your local good beer bar are all places where real conversations and beer drinking can be found.

The next time you are in a social setting enjoying beer I suggest bringing up a serious topic of current interest and talking to your neighbor about the topic.  Many don’t like discussing touchy topics because debate can be uncomfortable, but good debate can broaden one’s view of the big picture.  I think it is sad that political leaders seem to avoid this type of discourse.  In the US, health care is the hot topic of the day and the process seems to lack clear communication, at least from my perspective of a Washington outsider living in Missouri.  The two camps seem pretty good at discussing issues within one party, but when it comes to developing a solution that addresses the entire population our elected representatives seem to be having some real difficulties.  Instead of closed door meetings perhaps some old fashioned tavern talk would stimulate ideas that could lead to a more workable solution.