This is the kind of bad attitude I’m talking about! But we could…

My husband and I, who both consider ourselves solid beer snobs, took a trip to beer Mecca last year: Vermont. We had a very tightly packed vacation schedule, which looked something like this:
To Do & See
1) Beer

While in Burlington, we took a beer tour of the city, visiting at least four breweries that I remember. Somewhere after the third beer the other couple on our tour invited us to come with them later that night to visit the brewery that makes Beer Advocate’s top rated beer: Heady Topper, an imperial IPA from The Alchemist. They are located in Waterbury, Vermont, a bit of a drive from Burlington. When Ben and I both admitted we’d never had the beer, the woman let out a somewhat inappropriate moan as her eyes rolled back in her head.

Numero Un

While she recovered her husband let loose a long string of superlatives to describe The Alchemist’s beers that gradually took on a British air. “Oh dear,” he fussed. “My accent comes out when I’ve been drinking!” Ben asked if he was from England, to which he answered, “no, but my grandfather was born there.”

The further into the tour we went the less either of us wanted to be stuck for hours with these people in a confined space. They epitomized every stereotype of beer snobbery that I hope dearly I do not myself embody. They breathlessly turned red in the face telling me everything they knew about any beery topic at hand. They started many of their responses to me with, “Well, actually…”. They snubbed certain beers and breweries that did not somehow live up to their vertiginous standards. (Except Magic Hat? Posers.)

Right on! …I mean, wait. I don’t know how to feel about this.

I do call myself a beer snob, and consider beer a fairly important part of my life, but for the love of Pete, it’s beer! Every beer has its place: when I go to summer cookouts, I drink cans of PBR; when I go to Halloween parties I drink one pumpkiny spiced concoction after another; perhaps, if I ever make it to Waterbury, Vermont, I’ll drink the top beer in America.

Allow me, if you will, to in a very non-snotty way, give some pointers on how to be a beer snob in a tasteful, constructive manner.

• Rather than telling a person their taste in beer is perfectly atrocious, try suggesting some new styles and breweries for them to try that are not too far a stretch from what their palate is accustomed to.
• Realize that, sadly, no one else cares that you know everything there is to know about that obscure brewery’s one-time cask-conditioned release of their fall seasonal. I’m sure it was delicious.
• Never look a gift beer in the mouth, regardless of how much you want to squinch up your face when the smell first hits you. Manners!

In other words, be a decent human being, even when beer is involved. Especially when beer is involved. Because: beer is involved! Just don’t pretend to know more than me.