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23-08-2017, 17:04
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“What’s the etiquette when you know more about beer than bar staff? They’re probably passionate about beer, about craft. Maybe they’re younger and hipper than you. Sometimes they think that because they behind a bar they’re experts on beer, but drop clangers like telling you that Ekuanot is a brand new experimental hop rather than a rename of Equinox. What do you do? How do you communicate that they’re wrong about something without being boorish?”

— Brendan, LeedsThis is an interesting question, although more about etiquette and human interaction than something to which we can give a definitive answer. But we’ll try.
Short version:*let it go.
On a couple of occasions we’ve found ourselves in pubs with a veteran beer writer and watched them come up against the kind of bar person who not only doesn’t know much about beer, but exhibits their ignorance with enormous arrogance.
How does the guru handle it? They say,*‘Oh, interesting — thanks’; they smile kindly; and they walk away.
Unless it will result in you losing out somehow (e.g. being overcharged, or ending up with a beer you won’t enjoy) what’s the point in starting this kind of argument? It can only be ego, surely.
Take the high road.
Let it go.

* * *OK, short version over — now let’s dig into this a bit more.
The flipside of the situation Brendan describes is the difficulty for bar staff of dealing with experts, or at least people who think they’re experts. We asked on Twitter what people who’ve worked behind bars think of ‘know-all customers’ (leading language, but there you go) and here’s a selection of the comments we received:

“Personally I love when I get a customer that knows more than me. It rarely happens though, not to brag.”

“There is a contingent of generally male cask ale drinkers age 50+ who simply cannot accept that someone in their twenties can know more about beer than them. Despite the fact they know very little.”“Spent years being ‘told’ how to pour Guinness. These days if they keep annoying me I may casually mention my … They are there to have fun. It’s my job to help. If they are showing off and it’s jovial I’ll tease them about anything they get wrong.”

“Geeks who are just sharing their excitement – go for it, I like talking to guests like that. Know-it-all asses? Not so much.”“All power to em, if it’s the one bright spot their otherwise moribund existence then let em have it. Hardly worth the grief getting wound up.”

“I liked people to tell me how they wanted things served, rather than those who expected me to know and complained after.”
“Obviously, I also have the disadvantage of being female, and below the age of 30, so I think I may have had a more concentrated experience…”
“I’ve experienced two kinds of ‘know-all’ customers. Some love beer and just want to talk about it and they’re obviously pleased when they find knowledgeable staff. They’re the awesome customers that you can wax lyrical about hops with and share favourite beer facts. But then there’s the ones that want to lecture you. Normally middle aged men who like proving they know everything about beer to anyone in ear shot.”
“I’ve been that person myself; desperate to get the approval of the bartender. As long as nobody is rude, no harm done.”
One of those comments came from Suzy (@lincolnpubgeek (https://twitter.com/lincolnpubgeek)) and we asked her to elaborate — how should a customer in Brendan’s situation handle it?
When I was a fledgling beer nerd [working behind a bar] this happened every now and then and I’d just refer to what I did know or ask a manager… But then that was in a bar without a beer focus so it wasn’t a common issue.
If that’s happening somewhere that does have a focus on beer then that’s simply bad management. In my old job some of the staff weren’t as knowledgeable and they’d often refer to me or a manager which can works too so long as they at least know the basics.
There was a bar in Lincoln where some of the staff had zero training and didn’t even drink beer. It made ordering a very slow kerfuffle but they were apologetic and polite about it, it was definitely a management and training issue.
Staff need to know what’s going on in the cellar and need basic tasting notes for all the products as a bare minimum. Customers need to make it known that beer knowledge is a big plus, with their wallets when it’s not there, and their voices when it is.
We asked the same question to Susannah Mansfield who runs the Station House micropub in Durham (http://www.stationhousedurham.co.uk/):

Usually the people who genuinely know more are people who are happy with how we do things because they know why we do it, and it’s conversational, or suggestions to improve that I either may not have thought of, or have good reasons for not doing, or old tricks of cellaring that are less well known…
I’ve never pretended to know everything, but equally, I know a hell of a lot more than the average punter, and I tend to find that those that have that greater knowledge themselves are far less proud of themselves about it.
What comes out of all of this, is a fairly clear, quite obvious set of rules that really boil down to basic social skills. If you absolutely*must have it out…


[B]Don’t be blunt, loud or aggressive. Getting something wrong is embarrassing and being corrected can be humiliating, so gently (and quietly) does it. It’s not a point-scoring exercise…. is it?
Consider that you might be wrong. Of course you*think you’re right — you’re*sure you’re right — but if you think back a few years you can probably bring to mind*‘facts’ you clung to and parroted because you’d read them in one book you now know is rubbish. (We certainly can.)
If the bar staff haven’t been trained well, it’s not their fault.*If they start floundering and looking uncomfortable or unhappy, change the subject, and resist the urge to CRUSH THEM WITH YOUR KNOWLEDGE.
Don’t go on, and don’t lecture. Make your point but if you’ve been talking for more than, say, 30 seconds, wrap it up.
Ask yourself: am I assuming I know more because I’m older than them?*(And/or a bloke.)
Don’t, for goodness sake, trot out your credentials. There is no way to do this that doesn’t make you sound like a buffoon:*‘Don’t you know who I am?’ If it gets to this stage, we refer you to our initial advice: let it go.

Thinking about it, some of those rules probably work the other way across the bar too.
Q&A: How Do You Drop Knowledge Nicely? (http://boakandbailey.com/2017/08/qa-drop-knowledge-nicely/) originally posted at Boak & Bailey's Beer Blog (http://boakandbailey.com)


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