Alaska Beer Nerds

I hang out on Facebook quite a bit; maybe more than I should. I get all the hype about the various risks associated with social media use, but I still like Facebook a lot. I have a lot of friends that I share stuff with – like everyone else on the platform – but I get a lot of beer information from the site and often discover beers, events, breweries and other sudsy stuff I wouldn’t ever hear about if I didn’t hang out online.

I love posting pictures of the beers I drink, the places I visit and my own beer experiences and often get feedback that it adds values to others; they discover too.

Facebook has a feature that allows people with similar interests to participate in a managed forum with an administrator that can control the content and manage membership in the group. I’m in a bunch of those groups. I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and belong to groups that feature hometowns and usually are titled with “You know you’re from… [insert your hometown here)” One of my favorites is “You know you grew up in Anchorage if…” This group is rich in Alaska history, noteworthy current events and all things we love about living here.

I’m not surprised that there are beer groups on Facebook, and of course, with Alaska’s robust craft beer community, I’m not surprised that Facebook’s got an Alaska beer group called Alaska Beer Nerds. I’ve been a member since the site’s inception. I learn a lot on this site, although admittedly I don’t post to it a lot for some reason or another, choosing instead to put my beer stuff on my own page. That’s no indictment to the Beer Nerds site.

Group Administrator Maria Benner, wife of Scott Clendanial – a local beer artist – surprised me when I asked why she created the group a couple of years ago. “The short answer? I didn’t want my grandmother seeing all of the beer pictures I was posting on Facebook. She doesn’t approve of drinking and I needed a secret society where I could be more free with what I post,” she says.

If Benner’s grandmother sees her granddaughter’s Facebook page, what would keep her from discovering the group? “I don’t think so,” laughed Benner. “She’s’ not from around here and I don’t think she’d look or figure it out.”

The real reason for the site’s inception is Benner’s love for craft beer and sensing the need for a place for Alaskan craft beer lovers to discover more good beer and interact with people that share similar interests.

Clendaniel studied fine arts at Western Oregon University, the Western State College of Colorado and here at UAA. He went to West High here in Anchorage. He fell in love with craft beer and the craft beer community early on and decided to feature beer in some of his paintings. I won’t say he became obsessed with painting with beer as a subject but in 2011 he got pretty serious about it. Benner and Clendaniel own Real Art is Better. Benner quit her job and has been working as the business and marketing manger.

Then, Clendaniel started a series called 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall. “It went over very well,” says Benner.

In 2014, Clendaniel launched a very ambitious project called The Year of Beer Paintings where he painted small canvases with a different beer in a different setting every day for a year. “My job was to edit the blog posts, get it on social media and we started trading beer from different states because Scott wanted all 52 states featured in the series. That’s where I learned the most about craft beer,” says Benner. “After that, we stayed in the beer scene and got more involved. We joined the local home brew club, Great Northern Brewers and became homebrewers ourselves. Yeah, we’re definitely big beer nerds for sure.”

During The Year of Beer, Benner had made a lot of friends in Pennsylvania and discovered a Facebook beer group for that area. “I joined a group there called Beer Nerds. Still, I didn’t think it was relevant for what was going on and what I was drinking up here. I thought we needed a local group for Alaskans and where Alaskans would recognize the beer, events and places I could post,” says Benner.

Creating a Facebook group isn’t complicated. “It took me like 10 minutes to create. I found a picture of a bunch of Alaskan beers, invited a couple of friends to join the group and it took off from there,” says Benner.

The Alaska Beer Nerds group has 976 members. I poked around on Facebook to see what else was out there, and without an exhaustive search compared group member sizes. The Fat Wizzle Society has 774 members. The Alaska Scotch Club has 286 members. Whalesips has 1,230 members and Craft Brew Junkies boasts 7,214 members, for comparison. But size doesn’t matter; it’s all about the content and the community, and the group’s ability to link people to good beer and each other.

The site’s easy to manage depending on what’s going on. Benner’s selective when it comes to who she accepts into the group, and who she rejects, for that matter. “Yup, I’ve turned people down and I’ve kicked people off the site. If someone doesn’t have a profile picture, doesn’t have any friends on Facebook and they’re just all about selling something or spamming, I turn them down. I look at their profiles. I can see where they work, what they do and where they live. If they look shady – especially if they’re not from Alaska – I follow my intuition,” she says. I’m okay with breweries featuring events, but posting about Spenard T-Shirts is not relevant.”

“One thing I do love about this group is that it brings people together. Two members of the group discovered they both live in Bethel and made connections, got together and enjoy craft beer together out there now,” Says Benner.

On Thursday, November 1, the group will host its first ever Alaska Beer Nerds Meet Up at Zip Kombucha on Arctic Boulevard at 6 pm. “The meet up was a group member’s idea. She just moved up here and was having a hard time meeting new beer friends in Anchorage. She’s a big craft beer enthusiast and was looking for beer buddies and joined the group. I thought her idea of a meet up was a great one and formalized it and planned it for the first day after Sober October is over,” says Benner.

As soon as the idea of a meet up was posted to the group, Benner had no problem finding a place to host the event. “Jessie over at Zip Kombucha said he’d love to host us. So did Glacier Brewhouse, Even the Palmer Alehouse offered to host,” says Benner, highlighting our industry’s support of craft beer and craft beer lovers. “I love the choices. We’ll definitely be doing more, but for now, I think the Tilted TapRoom is a good choice. They’ve got a great beer and Kombucha line up there and can host a crowd.”

Want to meet local Alaska beer nerds like me? Plan on attending the meet up Thursday the 1st; I’ll be there and would love to get to know you.