Beer Team's Draft PlayersGag Internet Site Attracts A Barrel of Real Members By Reilly CappsWashington Post Staff WriterSaturday, August 2, 2003; Page C01 Dennis Buettner believes he's got the next big trend in beer. Bigger than the wide-mouth. Bigger than the 40-ounce. Bigger even than the kegerator. He's the founder and commissioner of the U.S. Beer Drinking Team, and aims to unite America's roughly 90 million beer drinkers. And eventually the global beer-drinking community. Buettner (pronounced BITT-ner) is quite serious about this team, a club driven entirely by the Internet and by an idea so advanced it could only have been born at NASA.That's where Buettner, 40, works. He helps fly satellites. He was working late at the Greenbelt facility one night when he announced to co-workers that he loves beer. A lot. He loves beer so much he might as well be captain of the U.S. Beer Drinking Team. In fact, he joked, he was the captain.No one believed him. They went back to flying satellites.So Buettner searched the Internet, and finding no beer-drinking team, he created one, complete with logo and Web site -- usbdt.com. He named himself captain. He created membership cards and showed them off to his co-workers. Their general reaction was, "Dude, no way!" It was all a big prank, until Buettner checked the space he had left on the site for "membership." About 450 people had signed up to join a team that technically didn't exist."Holy [cow]," Buettner said to a friend. "What do I do now?""Sell 'em T-shirts," the friend said.Which is pretty much what the team does. In the 18 months since its birth, the team has sold nearly 1,000 T-shirts (they call them "uniforms") and signed up 20,000 people. The team makes money -- T-shirts go for $19 each and sweat shirts for $30 -- and Buettner would like to turn this into a full-time gig. He's looking forward to spending his days in his home office, where he has a kegerator, a refrigerator just large enough to fit a half-keg of beer.But good ideas ferment like good hops, and Buettner and his buddies meet once a week or so to discuss the possibilities: They could hire lawyers to make the world more beer-friendly, striking down laws against public consumption. They could form teams in other countries, and have international summits. They could open a Beer Drinker's Hall of Fame, with more beers on tap than any other establishment in the world, and a sheet of ice running down the center of the bar to keep your beer cold. Buettner got that idea from Capital Ale House in Richmond. But in Buettner's bar, a mini-Zamboni would come through every once in a while to smooth the ice.The dream that may soon be implemented is sending out weekly e-mails to members to let them know about local beer events.Buettner is a beer-bellied, hard-working guy. Everyone he meets is either "my buddy" or "my brother." He calls his wife "dude." He loves to sit around telling stories, and every story has a sub-story and a back story and you have to hear them all to understand. He can go off on beer-related tangents that last weeks.New members sign up every day, which means essentially that they type in their name, e-mail address and Zip code onto the Web site. This week, Scott Mann of Greenville, N.C., found the site while he was searching for the Baltimore Orioles (Buettner owns the domain name orioles.com, as well as BeerHallOfFame.com and many others) and started laughing. He called his buddy. He said, "Hey, we finally found an Olympic sport we can participate in!" Mann signed up his buddy and 20 other beer-drinking friends. Every new member gets an official certificate of membership. Mann printed out his and hung it on the wall. Right next to his college diploma.There are team members in England, Germany and even Australia. Mark Walker wants to start a chapter in South Africa, where he lives. "We're really making social progress," he says. "The whole point of having a beer is the social discourse that goes with it."Buettner and team "trainer" Stew Smith, a former Navy SEAL, are at the team's world headquarters now, training. HQ is pretty much the dock behind Buettner's Severna Park house, and "training" seems to consist of sitting on a lawn chair, talking, sipping beers -- very, very slowly. This is America's beer-drinking team? Nobody's doing 12-ounce curls. Nobody's loading up on carbohydrates. The Latvians are gonna kill us!"It's not a competition," Buettner says. "It's about the brotherhood of beer, which is a step above the brotherhood of man -- or maybe a step below it. The competition is finding the best beer on the best day with your best buds." He stresses moderation and responsibility to the point that even MADD can't find anything wrong with his team. Buettner says he drinks only six to eight beers a week (Smith drinks two to three), and refuses to post messages about drunkenness on his site. He says he's never been drunk in his life and doesn't want to be. He likes the experiences he's had with beer: drinking 25-cent beers in Honduras, lounging over a cold Corona in Cancun, where he fell in love with his wife. It's not the brand, it's the moment. The best beer he ever had was in the Navy, given to him by his captain, on his way to shore leave on the French Riviera. It was a Busch.
an idea so advanced it could only have been born at NASA.
