Snider: Likes It Lite
Because I often end up in bars with younger, supposedly hipper folks, I sometimes get dogged out for drinking mass-market American lite beers — apparently bad form in joints that sell thick, rich, foamy beers from microbreweries in the Northwest or somewhere in the Alps. What could possibly cause me to commit such a pedestrian act? Do I like Bud Light?
Not really. I mean … I don't mind Bud Light. Put it this way: I dislike Bud Light a lot more than I dislike Achlastevenoventanen Amber Stout.
So why then, you ask, do I bother with beer at all? It's the buzz. If beer had no medicinal properties, I would never raise another one to my lips. Why not wine? Or spirits? Because I like the taste of wine less than I like the taste of beer. And when it comes to liquor, I prefer the least offensive of them all: vodka, and only if mixed with something like orange juice.
It all comes down to buzz management. I can down a strong screwdriver in about five minutes if I'm not paying attention. But with a Bud Light I can pace myself. Oh, and three bucks for a well-paced Bud Light makes more fiscal sense than double that for a five-minute vodka-and-OJ.
Mass-market American lite beer doesn't taste like much of anything. Thick, hearty beer tastes like ass. The buzz is about the same. A simple equation.
I expect I'll have the last laugh on you brew-hipsters who claim to be primarily taste aficionados, as if the buzz is secondary. In time, you'll realize the folly of your ways. And when your taste buds come to their senses, see me at the bar. The first Bud Light's on me.
Ries: Hates America?
Contrary to popular opinion, I am not a snob. I'm just a man who likes to have the best of everything. Is that so wrong? I don't feel the need to defend this position, so in the classic tradition of politics and marriage, I'll spend my time attacking my opponents' so-called reasoning.
Argument 1: Cheap domestic beer is a refreshing beverage on a hot summer day.
Sure it is, but only because it's cold. You want refreshment? Drink water. This argument also presupposes that good beer is not refreshing, which any fan of German hefeweizen or Czech pils will tell you is not the case.
Argument 2: Cheap domestic beer is, well, cheap.
Is that really how you want to live your life? I think you're selling yourself short. You deserve better than day-old bread, Motel 6 and dungarees from K-Mart, my friend. If you want a cheap buzz, just head to the liquor store for a $10 gallon of Popov vodka and fully embrace your incipient alcoholism. Or, instead of an $8 case of Natty Light, buy a sixer of something tasty and complex and drink a tad slower. You can always hit the Popov when your buzz mellows, lush.
Argument 3: Cheap domestic beers are good because they don't taste like anything.
Sigh. Do you also eat boiled meat, wear over-sized T-shirts and watch network sitcoms? If the sum of all your worldly desires consists of avoiding things with flavor, then I'm giving up. Perhaps tasteless beer suits your washed-out, featureless existence.
Feel free to continue drowning your self-esteem in a tide of cheap, beer-flavored industrial dreck. I have more pride and respect for myself than that, so I will continue to feed my body beer that actually tastes good.
Polk: Hates It All
I don't like beer. Period. In fact, if beer were removed from this earth entirely, I would throw a good riddance party and toast my friends with a shot of whiskey, which I also happen to dislike but which does the job of getting me drunk quicker.
Yeah, I'll sip a beer in a social setting, when it's offered to me, and there's nothing else aside from water, and I don't want water. Yes, that very first sip is refreshing, but only because it's so cold and fizzy. Inevitably, I'll only choke down half the beer and abandon the rest after it becomes tepid. Drink it faster, you say impatiently, don't let it get warm. But I don't like it, and I don't enjoy not liking it, and it leaves me feeling bloated and unsatisfied. Why am I drinking it faster, again?
You're probably drinking the wrong beer, you respond knowingly. Maybe. But I've tried a vast cross-section of beers in the hopes that I'd find one I'm actually partial to. Fruity, wheat, dark, pale, oak-aged, served on tap or in a bottle or can — all I can taste is the musky bitterness, which is just as unappealing as the sour back-of-the-throat aftertaste.
Beer brings people together and makes them happy, you say. So do good music and birthday parties and (God help me) sports and some forms of organized religion and European vacations and chocolate cake. So why do I have to drink beer to feel a kinship with my fellow man? It's an acquired taste, you scoff, you just don't understand. Well, yeah, obviously — that's the point. And you know what? I don't want to acquire it.
This article appears in Oct 17-23, 2007.