Tag Archives: beer snob

It’s Just Beer(!)

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#whatimdrinkingnow #whatdoyoumeanyoudontcare

#whatimdrinkingnow #whatdoyoumeanyoudontcare

I’ve always had a difficult time mustering up a sufficient amount of care for my own hobbies, which is what I call my beer drinking, because hobbyist sounds better than drinker. I don’t spend time posting in beer chat forums, I don’t post #whatimdrinkingnow pics anymore (I bored myself), I rarely drink out of proper glassware, and I don’t spend a lot of money on it. Because after all, it’s just beer.

But I’m a total beer snob. This is the paradox in which we beer appreciators are stuck.

Beer is a beverage celebrated and sold for its relaxing properties. It’s the drink you have when you get home from the office or from the factory; it’s the drink with which you celebrate both special occasions and your slow days off from work. It’s the everyman drink; the drink to chill out with. When some of us turn up our noses at certain beers, pay $18 for a bomber, or go so far as to call beer our hobby, we risk running contrary to the beer drinking ethos.

For me, this is beer, exclamation point

This is beer(!)

Once you admit that, yes, beer is a hobby — you know a lot about it, you spend time and money on it, you really, really look forward to that seasonal releasing today — you are effectively rendering null the it’s just beer sentiment. Obviously beer is more than just alcohol to you. It’s beer, exclamation point! When you take it a step further and start caring about hop aroma and mouthfeel and shit — well, then you’re the kind of snob that drinking beer is supposed to keep you from becoming. Continue reading →

Taking a Page from the Wine Snob Playbook

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Tools of the bookseller

What non-writers imagine writing to be

I’ve been drinking a lot of wine lately. As a bookstore manager, it is in my contract to provide several gallons of economically priced wine for every store event and occasional slow afternoon. We’ve had many events recently and it occurred to me that I’m probably drinking the wine equivalent of the High Life. It got me to thinking: as much as beer nerds may love to pick on wine snobs, there are many things we could learn from them. Examples:

1) Take time to taste your beer. There actually is a right way to taste a beer, and it doesn’t involve punching a key into aluminum. Much like wine, the appearance and smell have a lot to do with forming an educated opinion of the beer.

howtotastebeer

  • First, take in how it looks in all respects: color (natch), but also how the head appears (frothy, thin), the opacity (clear, hazy), and how it presents itself (bubbly, creamy, dull and a horrible conversationalist).
  • Secondly, stick your nose in there and take a big ol’ whiff. Beer comes in an astonishing array of scents. Each ingredient–malt, hops, and yeast–bring their own unique smell, as does the actual alcohol. Swirl the beer to better release the scents. Breathe in as you drink.
  • Lastly, take your time sipping. Let the beer sit in your mouth to note the mouthfeel (do you know what that really means?) before swallowing. (Don’t spit! That’ll get you tossed out of a bar, tout suite.)
Comfy bean bag chairs are like quantum physics, only occurring in theory

Like sober beer tastings, comfy bean bag chairs only exist in theory

2) Treat it like your mother. You wouldn’t invite your own mother to your place and then force her to sit in a dirty beanbag chair and eat SpaghettiOs out of a can, would you? Wine snobs know to treat their beloved beverage with the respect it deserves. Continue reading →

There’s Only One Way to be a Beer Snob and You’re Doing It Wrong!

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This is the kind of bad attitude I'm talking about! But we could...

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 Uno

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.) Continue reading →

How to Become a Beer Snob

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And proud of it!

When I was little, my dad drank Busch. He called it his “skunk juice,” which made six-year-old me giggle, because it did, indeed, smell awful. This is also the man who once told me he got drunk on orange juice, a claim I shared with my third grade teacher — her expression was concerned in a way I didn’t understand till many years later. By the time I had my first (and only) can of Busch, I accepted it with a smile I hoped was gracious and sipped on it as convincingly as I could. How did this happen to me? And more importantly, how can you, too, become a beer snob?

One) Make your early experiences with skunky beer as unpleasant as possible. Drink as many green bottles of Rolling Rock or Heineken as you can in a tiny, stinky dorm room with a bunch of other nerds who haven’t yet learned how to drink. You’ll never drink beer in green bottles again.

Two) Set your own low standards slightly higher than others’. When you go out to bars order Killian’s or Labatt, and scoff quietly at your compatriots buying pitchers of Bud and shots with names like “buttery nipple.” Continue reading →