Don’t cry over spilled beer; get angry.

Last week I wrote a mini-manifesto that centered on my conflicted feelings about the current state of craft brewing. I kind of figured I’d get my usual response: some double digit hits, an occasional “nice job” from people I know off-line, but mostly the usual ambivalent silence.

Instead, I seemed to touch a nerve, and the response was overwhelming; I saw impassioned posts on Facebook, retweets to the article on Twitter, a steady stream of comments and responses beneath my piece, and a wave of traffic to the blog that was downright humbling. A lot of folks really loved the piece, and that was enormously gratifying. But what surprised me most was that another blogger had written an entire article in response.

Okay, so it wasn’t exactly a glowing response, but seeing how this is the Internet we’re talking about, the fact that it was well-written, polite, thoughtful and didn’t once insult my…