The beer necessities

You dream of being an Alstrom brother in your next life.

Todd and Jason Alstrom are the Boston-based brothers who have helped both to define and expand America's burgeoning craft-beer culture. Consider what they do on a daily basis. They personally sample beers, often hundreds a week, and write about what makes them distinctive. They operate a popular website, Beeradvocate.com, that encourages members to share their opinions and passions about all things beer-related. Eleven million brew enthusiasts visit their site each month, a tenfold increase from five years ago.

They also publish a monthly magazine, BeerAdvocate, that covers brew culture from the consumer's perspective, not the beer industry's. And they run a variety of beer tastings and festivals, one being the American Craft Beer Fest, which will take place this weekend at the Seaport World Trade Center. The East Coast's largest such festival, it is expected to attract 75 brewers and 300 craft beers, none carried into the hall by Clydesdales.

"We've put brewers in the forefront of the movement, where they can meet consumers, and I'm happy about that," says Todd, 40, the older Alstrom brother. "In Europe, brewers are treated like common workers. In the US, they're treated like rock stars."

Ironically, says Jason, 37, Europeans have come to look enviously upon American craft brewers, not the other way around, as it used to be.

"And not just for ideas, either," says Jason. "They're looking at us, because their own beer cultures are slowly dying. Younger generations don't want to pick up the torch for family breweries. Here, though, brewers are educating consumers. That's a good thing."

How the Alstroms became avatars of beer culture has the flavor of a piquant homebrew. They grew up in western Massachusetts; their parents sold accessories from a Faneuil Hall pushcart. Todd joined the Air Force before working in the advertising industry for a decade. Jason was in the family business until 1993, when he went to work for Delta Airlines. In 2006 he left the airline to join Todd in a venture whose credo is "Respect beer."

Their website, originally Brewguide.com, went online in 1996 as an extension of their hobby of brewing beer in their apartments. Two years later they changed the site's domain name and opened it to product reviews and discussion forums. In 2002, CNN aired a feature on the Alstroms that solidified their growing reputation.

"It was still a borderline hobby for us back then," recalls Todd. "Soon after, though, we started doing beer festivals and realized our hobby was turning into a full-time gig."

There was never a coherent business plan, Todd admits. "All our growth has been very organic. I mean, how many people drink beer in the US, and there's no monthly beer magazine? We should do one." By late 2006, they had.

"I don't know a craft brewer who doesn't know about BeerAdvocate," says David Yarrington, executive brewer at Smuttynose Brewing Company in Portsmouth, N.H., one of hundreds of microbreweries that have ridden the craft-beer popularity wave. "It's the type of site that keeps the real beer enthusiasts informed, even if it's hard to take some of their critiques seriously because they're not blind-tasting tests or peer reviews."

One local brew, Kate the Great, a Russian Imperial stout made in Portsmouth, was named best domestic brew by BeerAdvocate in 2007. The next time the annual batch of Kate the Great was released to the public, says Yarrington, it disappeared within hours. "We don't have the dollars to spend on marketing or advertising," he notes. "The ability to generate these underground buzzes is something we can't buy."

Richard Doyle, CEO of Harpoon Brewery and president of the Brewers Association, calls the Alstroms "true believers" who always put the consumer's interests first. "It's more like viral awareness than viral marketing with them," Doyle says. "They facilitate points of view and have a genuine enthusiasm for beer and beer culture. They don't come across as aggressive guys - they're a little laid back, actually - but they're productive, too."

Not everyone regards the Alstroms as infallible tastemakers. Polls and lists are subjective, after all. On the foodie site Slashfood.com a few months ago, Mike Pomranz questioned whether experts like BeerAdvocate, "towering over us with their puffed-up egos," do a disservice by publishing lists like "All-Time Top Breweries on Planet Earth." Pomranz also wondered how one brewery, Stone Brewing Company, could place five beers on BeerAdvocate's list of top 25 beers.

Says Todd, "We definitely have haters. In my opinion, though, that's a true sign of success. If you're surrounded by just a bunch of people who agree with you, you're doing something wrong." As for critics who complain that BeerAdvocate is biased toward certain American beers - those that are "hoppy" and have a high alcohol content are often mentioned, he notes - it isn't the Alstroms who prefer one style of beer over another; it's the "beer geeks" whose opinions they track.

"I can't sit there and drink those beers all day," says Todd. "And I don't think many people can."

Besides, both brothers say, there is not even a good working definition of what constitutes a craft beer. The Brewers Association, which represents about 1,500 so-called craft brewers, offers three criteria: small (a brewery producing under 2 million barrels per year); independent (one that cannot be more than 25 percent owned by a non-craft brewer); and traditional (a label's flagship beer must be made with no more than 50 percent adjuncts, e.g. rice and corn).

"We're still struggling with the definition ourselves," says Todd. "For consumers, it's just confusing. Anyone can call themselves 'craft.' We feel it's a term that needs to be reclaimed."

Expect that to be merely one topic of discussion that gets washed down by a few beers at this weekend's festival.

Joseph P. Kahn can be reached at jkahn@globe.com.