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Beer Snobs

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Turkeytop
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Beer Snobs

Post by Turkeytop » Sun May 12, 2019 3:56 pm

Spare me your craft beer


An aficionado can persuade me to try nearly anything. A snob makes me want to order a 12-pack of Miller Lite just out of spite.
Sometimes you just need a cold one. Dave McGinn defends the simplicity of ‘crappy’ beers
All I wanted was a beer. It was a few weeks ago, when the warm sun finally arrived in Toronto after an interminably long and cold winter. The brightness, the warmth, it made me think of days at the beach or afternoons at backyard barbecues. And because these thoughts usually make me thirsty, I met a friend at a bar.

He ordered some IPA I’ve never heard of. I ordered a frosty Coors Light.

“What are you drinking that for?” my friend asked.

I didn’t need to ask what he meant. I’ve been on the receiving end of this question for years now. The question comes in a few different forms, but the implication is always the same: I am an ignorant moron, lacking all taste and discernment, stupidly blind to the many splendours of craft beer.

As summer approaches and the frequency of this question rises like mercury in a thermometer throughout peak beer drinking season, I beg everyone tempted to ask it: Please, spare me.

Before you thrust a snifter of your favourite barrel-aged imperial stout under my nose with a lecture on the finer points of the brewing process, know that I have no problem with craft beer. I enjoy lots of it. But sometimes I just want to knock back a cold Budweiser or Coors Light. It goes down easy, tastes great with just about any food and is incredibly refreshing. Plus, I just don’t care that much.

Unfortunately, with the explosion in craft beer since the late 2000s, quaffing a watery lager from a macro brewery has become a cultural affront on par with blithely sauntering through your local farmers’ market clutching a takeout bag from McDonald’s. Beer has become a marker of taste and identity, and beer snobs will often weigh in with well-intentioned lectures when they see you grab a lowbrow brew.

“Beer geeks think they have really open minds and people who drink a mass market lager are just dumb and don’t see the inner workings of beer,” says Jeff Alworth, author of The Beer Bible: The Essential Beer Lover’s Guide.

Until the turn of the millennium, the term “beer snob” would have been an oxymoron in Canada. Sure, Labatt’s Blue and Molson export drinkers could bash one another, but they were bickering over branding, really. Those beers were all the same.

In 1985, there were just 10 breweries in Canada, which were owned by three companies. By 2015, the number of breweries across the country had risen to more than 640, the vast majority of them microbreweries, according to Economic Perspectives on Craft Beer, a book published in 2017.

“After the 2000s, craft brewing definitely had become a culture thing,” says Matt Williams, the Victoria-based writer behind the Great Canadian Beer Snob blog. By that he means that suddenly there weren’t just beer drinkers, there were types of beer drinkers – broadly speaking, craft aficionados on one side and the rest of us on the other – and judgment was upon us all.

One’s choice in beer has become an emblem of the cultural values, and snobby debates that emerged during craft brewing’s beginnings have been inescapable ever since: local, artisanal and small batch versus massmarket swill from international conglomerates.

Beer geeks are especially vocal when it comes to this debate. After penning a defence of “cheap beer,” such as his favourite, Bud Light, in GQ magazine in 2014, chef and restaurateur David Chang said he’d never gotten so many hate e-mails in his life.

Similarly, in an interview in 2016, chef and television show host Anthony Bourdain told the website Thrillist that “the angriest critiques I get from people about shows are when I’m drinking whatever convenient cold beer is available in a particular place and not drinking the best beer out there.”

Public figures are easy targets, but that doesn’t mean the rest of us are immune from the casual condescension or sometimes outright raving of beer snobs.

What many of these over-hopped devotees may not recognize, however, is that their lectures might turn people away from craft beer. An aficionado can persuade me to try nearly anything. A snob makes me want to order a 12 pack of Miller Lite just out of spite.

“That’s actually a big [topic] in the craft beer community. We need to be more helpful and embrace people who don’t know a lot about the category,” says Scott Simmons, president of the Ontario Craft Brewers.

Craft beer accounts for less than 10 per cent of total volume in Canada, so there is still plenty of room to grow. “Being a beer snob isn’t going to hurt the category, but it’s not going to help it,” Simmons says.

So please, the next time I order a Coors Light, allow me to enjoy it in peace.
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HD74
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Re: Beer Snobs

Post by HD74 » Mon May 13, 2019 9:47 am

If you're outta Bud, tough Schlitz!


You're never too old to learn something stupid.

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Bryce
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Re: Beer Snobs

Post by Bryce » Mon May 13, 2019 11:50 am

HD74 wrote:
Mon May 13, 2019 9:47 am
If you're outta Bud, tough Schlitz!
That joke was a little Lite on humor.


New York and Chicago were all in with respect to their sanctuary status — until they were hit with the challenge of actually providing sanctuary. In other words, typical liberal hypocrisy.

FET-500
Posts: 464
Joined: Sat Nov 10, 2018 9:22 am

Re: Beer Snobs

Post by FET-500 » Mon May 13, 2019 12:28 pm

Beer queers have really wrecked the scene. I've been a brewer for 30 years but I seldom admit that today.



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TC Talks
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Re: Beer Snobs

Post by TC Talks » Mon May 13, 2019 6:47 pm

I was a judge at Great American in 1994 and 1995. Most of the stuff out there today is a weak Ale or Wheat infused with all kinds of B.S.

We have some great breweries in Michigan and boatloads of mediocre ones.

I love PBR, I own a Red, White and Blue t-shirt, but I still won't be seen with a corporate cum guzzler (bud light, miller lite etc).


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Deleted User 14990

Re: Beer Snobs

Post by Deleted User 14990 » Fri May 17, 2019 11:55 pm

IPA's taste like drain-o to me. YUCK.

Nothing wrong with PBR at all. I do like my share of import beers, Right now I am sipping on a bottle of Beerlao.

I always think of this scene from The Movie Blue Velvet when it comes to these craft beer types: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HK7dDAm3NAk



WC8KCY
Posts: 154
Joined: Tue Dec 14, 2004 4:09 am

Re: Beer Snobs

Post by WC8KCY » Sun May 19, 2019 12:30 am

HD74 wrote:
Mon May 13, 2019 9:47 am
If you're outta Bud, tough Schlitz!
And if you drink a case of Blatz, you'll get a case of the Schlitz.

The first beer I ever tasted was a PBR. It was delightful then and still is today.

These things go in cycles. I would not wager against a regular ol' mass-market brewski becoming fashionable again.



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Turkeytop
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Joined: Mon Aug 16, 2010 9:27 pm

Re: Beer Snobs

Post by Turkeytop » Sun May 19, 2019 12:40 am

As I've often said, Craft Beers represent a middle class appropriation of our working class drink. They can't accept beer on its own terms. They have to gussy it up and give it flavours like Pumpkin Spice or Rhubarb and catchy names like Downhill, Green Fields or Clitoris.


I started out with nothing and I still have most of it.

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audiophile
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Re: Beer Snobs

Post by audiophile » Sun May 19, 2019 8:25 am

All beer tastes like fungus poo to me :eek


Ask not what your country can do FOR you; ask what they are about to do TO YOU!!

Deleted User 14990

Re: Beer Snobs

Post by Deleted User 14990 » Wed May 22, 2019 1:00 am

Good point TT. Enjoying a Carlsberg right now as I type this.



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