Oh, maligned beer. Thin, yellowish swill indiscernible from other swills- or at least rendered so over the last thirty years at the hands of the “Big Three”. You know, the guys with the Super Bowl commercials. Those pricey spots are are, of course, what distinguish the mainstream varieties of beer. I suppose little money remains for the development of styles.
But of those that my television tells me I ought to be drinking, I believe one type makes you say ‘Waazzzuup!”, one is to this day distributed across the Rockies on something called the “love train”, and the other is delivered most expediently to your face via the rifled, “vortex” bottle. At last my beer may enter my body in the same manner it exits!
But what of the beer itself? Are we, the lowly consumers, simply incapable of articulating a preference beyond light or lime? Are we what we drink?
I humbly offer a pompous solution to something you may not even realize is a problem: You are too good to drink swill, and your continued complacency puts you at risk of even further corruption of your soul. Even you, high-fiving, wing-scarfing bro – and you, perpetually-poor, ironically apathetic grungster, deserve better than that which most cheaply blurs your vision. Paint thinner has always been an option, but a dynamic and diverse craft beer culture is swelling around us and a staggering selection of legitimately excellent beers are available to you, oh blessed Philadelphian.
It starts with a simple move. When talking about beer, it should no longer suffice to say that you flatly like or dislike a certain kind. I implore you to go one step further- to discuss why you like or dislike it. It’s a question of vocabulary. We have been systematically impoverished, made inarticulate by decades of advertising that have caused us to relate beer most principally to things that have nothing to do with flavor or uniqueness and have everything to do with body image and social status- two things that I, for one, drink beer specifically to forget about.
Talk about taste. Equip yourself with the vocabulary required to articulate your individual taste preferences and take a little pride in them. Develop a base of knowledge that enables you to confidently approach beer, instead of dismissing the totality of it as what, to me, is a most unfortunate of rhymes: mere beer.
