On the afternoon of September 25, 2005, I proposed the following on A Good Beer Blog:

Ever since I picked up a couple annual editions of the Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture, I have been wondering why such a thing does not exist for beer. We know that beer is a massive economic phenomena and that it is a pervasive habit. Yet, as far as I can tell, there is little discussion on the cultural event as far as I can tell. Sure there are histories of brewing in a region or a nation but I have yet to come across anything as a general effort to define the sociological aspects of beer. A co-mingling of study and ale not necessarily like this but not necessarily unlike it. Could we do that? It would require:

• interest - I need a group to discuss and plan a level of achievable feasibility. Creation of a trust account and a steering committee.
• money - for awards to trigger academics and lay folk to prepare papers. This could start with donations to a trust but could also include larger sponsorships from brewers.
• a panel - to read and judge the papers.
• a medium - presenting the best papers requires a medium. Cooperstown is a gathering of baseball nerds at that magic place but that sort of expense and formality need not exist at the start.

Any interest? One day, in the third or seventh year, we may meet at Milwaukee or Dublin to hear the papers read. For now we can consider the virtual world our medium.

By that evening I had tweeked the interest of two aspiring academics I had never met and started writing the HTML for this prototype of a publication tentatively called The Journal of Culture and Brewing. The idea that a symposium needed to be based on a journal was Beered's and made much sense. So here we are.

If you stumble upon this document before its formal presentation, please feel free to comment back at this post at A Good Beer Blog which will serve as a discussion point. Over time as I learn a few HTML tricks hopefully it will look a bit snazzier but for now this is what it is.

A. McLeod,
Publisher and Editor, The Journal of Culture and Brewing
Publisher and Editor, A Good Beer Blog