Cheap Beer and DIY Kombucha: A Look Back on the Evolution of the Hipster Diet

From the column ‘Remembering the Hipster‘

You probably don’t remember the first time you heard the word “hipster.” No one does. Like frogs in a simmering pot of water, doomed to be boiled alive, none of us really saw its cultural moment coming until Hurricane Hipster was upon us.

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Neither a flash-in-the-pan fashion aesthetic nor a full-blown cultural politic, the very definition of hipsterism continues to be a source of controversy even in the wake of its peak. But one thing can be safely said: it just might be the only subculture to come with its own menu. The infamous “Lexicon of Grunge” made no mention of what lamestains were noshing on, but you’d be hard-pressed to find a profile of modern hipsters published between 2006 and 2014 that made no mention of their quirky food choices and affinity for cheap beer. And, of course, there’s irony to be had.

To trace the timeline of the hipster as we knew it, you need only follow the sales trends of a humble lager called Pabst Blue Ribbon.

In 2001, Pabst sales were in the crapper. The company sold less than a million barrels, making it their worst-performing year in decades. But then, just two short years later, the New York Times ran a trend piece heralding Pabst’s pending revival, titled “The Marketing of No Marketing.” That headline might as well be a summation of hipsterism as a whole.

Dan McHugh, the Chief Marketing Officer of Pabst Blue Ribbon, tells VICE that the boom in PBR demand happened in three distinct phases. He pinpoints the first as 1999 to 2002, when consumers in the Pacific Northwest—Portland, in particular—grew weary of the region’s fixation on craft beer and instead decided to dig their heels into an (at the time) unpretentious legacy brand. PBR fit the bill.

The second phase, from 2002 to 2008, saw PBR embracing growing sales in the “alternative” crowd by continuing to forgo traditional advertising in favor of sponsoring house parties, art shows, and bands. Soon, there was a can in every hipster’s hand, with full saturation around 2008. The third phase is now, post-2012, when PBR’s moment has subdued a bit and we sit here scratching our heads over why we all had mullets and wore bandanas around our necks.

McHugh says that PBR was fortunate to be “relevant without trying too hard,” in his words. Instead, it allowed its fan base to come to it like a watering hole on the savannah, then gave the people what they wanted, where they wanted it. Part of its strategy was maintaining affordability whenever possible, McHugh says.

So what else had space on the hipster plate (or in their brown bag, or Klean Kanteen)? Take other dietary underpinnings from punk rock and the weirdo underground, spin them on the Wheel O’ Gentrification, and you’ll find out.

The hipster was an on-again off-again vegan who ridiculed corporate interests but wore Budweiser paraphernalia and ate Jack-in-the-Box tacos, attempting to uphold the easily dispelled but still common rumor that their ground beef was actually just soy protein. She juiced her own wheatgrass while listening to Minor Threat with her roommates, but did loads of cocaine, too. He made a point of eating a fuckton of kale, but also loved cheeseburgers and chicken liver. Which makes sense, since he worshipped both Joy Division and Gucci Mane.

Irony, it seems, begets irony.

Another watery, mildly alcoholic beverage that also saw its sales skyrocket on the coattails of the hipster is kombucha. Between 2008 and 2009, sales of the fermented tea quadrupled from $80 million to $324 million in the US. While other industries crashed with the global economy, the vinegary beverage gained massive visibility as hipsters yanked it from the shelves of health food stores. Brewing your own kombucha was once a thing of necessity, based on the scarcity of the beverage. But food blogs also rose to prominence during this time, taking DIY culture from Oakland warehouses to the remodeled kitchens of bored young housewives.

Is it good for you? Maybe. But it could also be total bullshit. That didn’t matter. Once found mostly in crust-punk kitchens and on the porches of old hippies, kombucha picked up steam as the hipster changed form and soon found itself bringing things like fungus-ridden green tea, kale chips, and vegan bratwursts to the masses.

While it’s now publicized as a get-thin-quick diet for preened celebrities, veganism’s first appearances in the mainstream were hardly rooted in a widespread health kick. The meat substitutes on the market in the mid-aughts were far fewer than the veritable butcher shop’s worth of seitan chicken and tofu dogs that you’ll find in a Whole Foods today. For the alt kids who came to represent the quote-unquote hipster demographic, high-school animal rights groups crossed with nihilism to create a menu of decidedly processed vegan products washed down with Four Loko, foods that nonetheless trended their way into ever-greater prominence. In 1995, Tofurky sold 500 of its signature gluten-based holiday roasts; in 2006, about 200,000; and in 2011, roughly 400,000. In 2010 and 2011 alone, 110 new faux meat products were introduced to the market.

You can probably guess the types of neighborhoods where the restaurants serving these meat substitutes centered: college towns, once-seedy neighborhoods that were being overtaken by artists and young entrepreneurs, streets with high concentrations of record stores… Need we include the “g” word? In Williamsburg, there was (now-closed) Foodswings and (still-thriving) Champs; in San Francisco’s Mission District, Herbivore and Gracias Madre; and in Los Angeles’s Silverlake/Echo Park, Sage Bistro and Flore.

The only problem with hipsterism’s promotion of veganism was that after the realities and cynicism of actual adulthood set in, a lot of people gave it up. Once veganism wasn’t obscure, its allure wore off. There were other, more artisanal food avenues to explore, such as small-scale butchery and home pickling. Back patches became flannels when punk died (it seized the second curious journalists started calling punks “hipsters”). Lamb kidneys and blood sausage had new appeal, based on their former lack thereof.

A hilariously concerned article from 2014 titled “The Hypocritical Diet of the Hipster” published by US News and World Report argues, “While many hipsters love to eat healthy, and pride themselves on their diet of organic foods, kombucha, and kale, they also love to indulge in calorie-heavy craft beer and bacon.”

Of course, the reason for this perceived hypocrisy is that the word “hipster” had simply come to represent too large of a group. Balding thirtysomething men who worship John Zorn were being tossed in the same cultural salad as anyone who reads Kinfolk. A devout fan of anything that is not totally and completely well-known, be it a Bolivian pseudograin or a black metal band? You, too, would be marked a hipster.

Hipsters, by definition, loved the unusual, the special—things that weren’t initially widely appealing. But unknowingly, they made things like artisanal coffee, CSA boxes, and offal into the very commodities they were avoiding. Eventually, the word “hipster” has somehow come to equate eggs Benedict-loving bitters-drinkers who work at creative agencies and Instagram photos of their avocado toast with face-tatted bike messengers who singlehandedly pound 12-packs.

What is artisanal anymore? In the eyes of the law, any beer is a craft beer, anyway. What was once “DIY” is now just Pinterest. Hell, even Beyoncé’s riding the half-assed vegan train. Which may be why it’s safe to say that the hipster as we once knew it has ridden into the sunset.

Is the moment of the hipster over, in PBR’s eyes? McHugh says that since 2012, when the “third phase” began, the company has “embraced change” but wasn’t inclined to comment on whether or not that was the result of a loss of a specific subculture as opposed to just changing tides.

As to whether Pabst Brewing Company was ever concerned about the sometimes-pejorative implications of the word “hipster” in regards to its association with the beer, McHugh was relatively nonchalant. “We tried to avoid using the word hipster … PBR doesn’t discriminate, we embrace all consumers who enjoy PBR and we embrace the things that they are interested in,” he answered tactfully.

It seems many people followed suit and embraced the things they were interested in. Just not the idea of hipsters themselves.