Our correspondent John Harvey celebrates his 90th birthday
How do you know you are getting on a bit? There are hundreds of tell-tale signs like when your back goes out but you stay at home; or when you realize that your joints are more accurate than the national weather service in predicting approaching showers. Another indication of rampant fuddy-duddyism is when you begin every other sentence with “Nowadays...”, and you actually hear yourself say “when I was younger…” as in “when I was younger I did not risk being walked into by some git on the pavement staring into his iPhone”, which makes you sound like your own high school teacher and you hate yourself for it (actually others tell me that I have taken up ranting like an old biddy too of late).
But the deadest give-away is when you keep more food than beer in the fridge. That’s when you really should start worrying about approaching old age.
I know for sure that by these tokens John does not have anything to worry about. Although, when pressed he will admit that clothes he put away decades ago have come back in style several times over. Yet, on the matter of keeping beer at home, I can tell you that John does not offer any reason for concern. At his house he runs two fridges: a big one for food in his kitchen and a similarly sized one stacked with beer out in his games room.
When his doctor, a woman probably half his age, asked him last year at one of his regular check-ups, how much beer he drinks, he decided that it was daft to lie to her. So he gave her an honest answer and said that he still enjoys beer on a daily basis. When she raised a disapproving eyebrow, you know, the way well-meaning young doctors do, and suggested that cutting back on drink might help him live longer, he merely pointed out that at his age that was not really a major concern, was it? As he told me this story in his deadpan way, my immediate thought was: Well done, John. This should have put her in her place.
I have known John for close to twenty years and in all those years he has not changed at all. That’s why the number 90 makes me gulp hard. Can it really be true? Those who have known him far longer will remember that in his younger days he would have cut an imposing figure, all tall with a thick mop of brown hair. But, as I see it, to age gracefully and with dignity has got nothing to do with hair. It’s a matter of your grey matter and to what use you put it as you get on in age.
We at BRAUWELT International are fortunate that John has been our Australian correspondent for over a decade now. We have all benefitted greatly from his clear-sighted missives about what goes on in the Australian beer market.
In terms of beer volumes, Australia ranks only 24th among the beer producing countries and because of its location at the bottom end of the world it could easily be ignored. However, judging from what the brewing industry down under has experienced over the past thirty years it can serve as a timely reminder of what happens to a market if the twin forces of consolidation and globalisation are allowed to cause havoc.
All these changes and upheavals have not been lost on John. Enjoying a writer’s gift, he has been his industry’s most astute chronicler, to which two books (‘A History of the ANZ Section of the Institute of Brewing 1952/82’, published in 1984 and updated as ‘A Decade of Change’ in 1995, plus ‘Keeping A Head?’ – History of the AP Section 1952 – 2002; published in 2002) and sundry other pieces, plus his on-going newsletters testify.
That he was ideally suited to the task of chronicler I put down to his personality. John is what I would call an unreformed brewer. Yes, his background is in science and technology. But in the old days technical brewers weren’t what we call nerds today: blinkered operators who don’t always care or think about the wider consequences of what they are doing. Brewers of John’s generation were acutely aware of the social and political impact of beer. It went without saying that they adhered to professional ethics. That’s why they did not need corporate mission statements or grand CSR strategies to tell right from dodgy or plain wrong.
Never mind the corporate spin, brewers like John have always known that brewing is a people business and that the consumer and responsible consumption should be at the heart of it all.
To this day, his reports cover issues to do with alcohol policies and regulation – not because it’s important to know what the “enemy” is getting up to. No, it’s because he has not forgotten that beer is basically a social product that has brought people together ever since Man came to realise that sitting in a bar and having a cold one was infinitely better than having to bash his neighbour’s head in.
Preparing for this piece, I looked at John’s CV and noticed with a shock that as long ago as 1985 he retired from the South Australian Brewing Company in Adelaide after, mind you, 39 years of service. In 1985 many of our readers probably still went to school. These days it’s almost unheard of that someone in the brewing industry manages to work at one company until reaching the legal retirement age. That’s a privilege not enjoyed by many younger brewers. But having been with one company only does not mean that John’s was a cushy job or laid back corporate existence. He too has seen it all in his days as head brewer: several intelligent and not so intelligent corporate mergers with their ensuing rounds of retrenchments; the money men’s relentless pressure on brewers to cut costs and corners; the gradual disenfranchising of brewers and the unstoppable rise of the marketing guys who would get away with all sorts of stupid fads and gimmicks, whereas brewers would get their knuckles rapped if they did not meet targets.
Therefore, we will never hear him say that “when I was younger, times were better”. Nevertheless, in retrospect it has to be said that John’s was an exceptional career in the brewing industry as it allowed him, together with his late wife Margaret, to also raise four children while putting in long hours of voluntary work, mostly for the Institute of Brewing but also for his Rotary Club. He joined the then Institute of Brewing (today the IBD) in 1952 and was a founding member of the Australian (now Asia Pacific) Section when it was formed in 1953. He was elected a Fellow in 1985 and an overseas Vice President 1990 to 2001. His various responsibilities in the Section are too numerous to mention. Suffice to point out that he was involved in preparing all but two issues of the proceedings of the first 25 Conventions.
In light of his efforts on behalf of the IBD his friends and colleagues in the industry thought it only fitting that in 2007 he was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia “for service to the brewing industry and the community”.
When he retired from active IBD service in 2000 – because Margaret had put her foot down and told him to leave it to younger people, as he was getting too old, with him approaching 80 and all that – he just turned to writing about what goes on in the Australian drinks, beer and beverage industry.
Although his professional background makes him naturally biased towards beer, John continues to take a keen interest in whatever people chose to drink. As he conducts his personal market research, no detail goes unnoticed – from studying the labels on the empty bottles he regularly finds at his kerb on a Saturday morning (young neighbours, you see) to subtly quizzing his grandchildren and their partners on their currently favourite tipple, to visiting liquor stores and pubs.
For his research he will even travel. Together with his octogenarian friend Len he still goes on what they call interstate trips by car. Don’t worry (or worry plenty): Len does the driving these days. If you ask their families and friends about these trips, they will wink and smile and mouth “pub crawls” while Len and John will insist on calling them “quality control” exercises. Because what they actually do is talk to the bar staff and the punters as they try new craft beers that are not available in Adelaide.
In the old days, when you weren’t mistaken for a terrorist if you took your own toothpaste onto planes, I used to bring beers from Germany to Australia in my hand luggage for John to taste. Sadly the authorities have put a stop to this. When we do tastings these days, it’s beverages that are available in Australia. They are always great fun because all the other tasters, me included, will go by “nice” or “yuk” while John, undistractedly, will do the job properly, smiling to himself over his hopeless co-tasters.
Our most recent tasting, sans note-taking, was on 3 January and it was called “birthday celebrations”. And no, we didn’t have the local fire brigade standing by in case he failed to blow out the candles on his birthday cake. As befits the occasion, John had been told by his family to not get involved in the organisation. His only comment was that after his several birthday bashes he’d better get back into shape and quickly so. A few days later, he had his grandson’s wedding to attend … and where else but at a winery...
What’s there left to wish John? We at BRAUWELT International say: Cheers, John!
