There are a great many reasons for enjoying a beer. It is a consummately refreshing drink, one of the very best on hot summer days; beer pairs well with food at the table; it helps you to relax after a long day of work; it tastes good on its own; and beer is one of the most sociable beverages on the planet. Oh ya, beer can also get you drunk.
I started thinking about why people drink beer the other day as I contemplated row upon row of "hard" lemonades and similar drinks lined up on the shelves at my local liquor store. I haven't tasted a great many of these currently popular drinks, but I have sampled enough to know that most of them are too sweet to be very refreshing, don't partner well with food, and to my palate, don't taste very good. Which leaves as the main reason for drinking them the "alcoholic soda pop" effect. Or in other words, the fact that they contain alcohol but don't taste alcoholic.
Now don't get me wrong, I like alcohol. For all the vilifying of booze that goes on in modern culture, most honest drinkers will admit that the buzz which goes along with a beer or a glass of wine or spirits is part of the drink's allure. That's where the "relaxation" and "sociability" come in.
What I do not understand, however, is alcohol for alcohol's sake. Sure, I enjoy the liberating effect that a couple of drinks can have on my inhibitions and insecurities. But I also enjoy the flavour, aromas and aftertastes that are intrinsic to the beer, wine and spirits I choose to drink. That's why when I attended the Jazz and Heritage Festival in New Orleans earlier this spring, I chose to forego the Fosters, Miller Genuine Draft, Miller Lite and Icehouse that were the only beers available on the Fairgrounds. Simply, they were not to my taste. This insistence on flavour is also the reason that it can sometimes take me five to ten minutes or more to decide what it is I want to drink.
The brewers of mainstream beer, of course, don't want you to think this way. They want you to believe that the right way to drink beer is to choose one largely flavour-free brand and stick with it. Or that the best way to drink is to opt for the most effective, socially acceptable conveyor of alcohol. (In most social milieus, this rules out slugging bottles of rot-gut sherry but includes malt liquors, jug wines and, yes, "hard" lemonades.) They certainly do not want you thinking too much about the taste of what you're drinking.
This approach to alcohol makes about as much sense as selecting one food to eat for your entire life. You need sustenance, you have to eat, so why not make it broccoli three times a day, seven days a week? Absurd, right? But no more so than drinking the same brand of beer every time you get thirsty for a brew.
(As an aside, it is a source of continual fascination to me that some people blindly accept the advertising that repeatedly tells them what to drink or eat, yet get annoyed at me for suggesting that they might want to try something different. For these folks, it seems that it's only acceptable to recommend beer if you have a multi-million dollar advertising campaign and a Madison Avenue ad firm behind you. Lacking these assets, you're just a "beer snob.")
So go ahead and drink beer for the sociability, the relaxation, the refreshment, the alcohol. But don't forget the myriad of different flavours that conveniently come along in the same package. In fact, demand them!
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