A Reader Demands that We Stop Being Beer Elitists

Here is a comment a reader recently left on my post ‘Always Remember, It’s Just Beer.’  In my post, I lament the oft nauseating approach some beer drinkers take to craft beer.

There is a reverence given to certain bottles and cans of beer that makes us forget that it’s just friggin’ beer.  I, too, have been guilty of being a didactic beer zealot in the past.

Let’s keep the preaching and drinking separate.

Here’s the letter:

Dave,

Read your ‘It’s Just Beer’ piece. Boy, can I relate. I wanted to scream this out at the top of my lungs while at my favorite craft beer joint a few weeks ago.

I am not a hop head and I can’t believe how I almost have to apologize for loving Marzen styles, wheat beers, Kolsches and Scotch and Old Ales.

One young bartender, she was about 22 years old, about as old as I have been brewing my own beer, told me that ‘it’s drinkable’ when referring to my choice of a Great lakes Oktoberfest, which I totally look forward to every year. She then suggested I drink it accompanied by salted chocolate.

Jesus Christ! We’ve become France, or something.

Drinkable? A classic beer style done just about every way right can be is barely drinkable to these elitists? Salted chocolate? This food pairing stuff is getting real old too. Like you can’t enjoy a beer without a little cherry-smoked quail breast on the side.

I’ve had bar owners and other bartenders make ‘clicker’ sounding noises with their tongues to the roofs of their mouths to indicate their disdain for sticky maltiness when I’ve ordered some fine Mai Bocks and other more malty seasonals.

I’m also tired of all the B.S., that’s Beer Sniffers, waxing eloquently and endlessly about a drink that was once the beverage of “every man” or “every woman,” a populists drink, it truly was. There was a time when the man or woman on the next bar stool engaged in small talk with you not big talk about ‘Big’ beers. Or worse, using their phone to look up AND READ ALOUD the profiles of every damn beer in the place.

It’s to the point where I’m tempted to go out and buy a cheap six pack of low-end beer, good ol’ belch propellant stuff. I think I’ll pair it with a bag of pretzels, the all-time food partner of beer.

Ein Prosit.

Mike