Cultural Attitudes toward Beer

I have this hypothesis that alcohol snobs tend to favor wine or certain types of liquor as a "high class" sort of drink. In this view, wine and spirits are infinitely more complex, varied, nuanced, subtle, difficult to produce, etc. than beer could ever aspire or hope to become. Beer is lowbrow: the stuff of frat parties and sporting events. Like store-bought generic Mr. Pibb, one wouldn't be caught dead serving a drink so pedestrian at a dinner party. This snobbery, then, has a tendency to work its way back into the youth culture who are trying to be more refined than the generation before them, where it becomes de facto "knowledge".

I confess, this was my attitude until I sampled some IPA at a Whole Foods five years ago, and my whole world turned upside down. Now I'm a beer drinker from start to finish. Yeah, I'll have the occasional glass of wine with dinner or mixed drink at a party, but dammit if I'm not spoiled on a heavy porter, or a hoppy IPA, or a strong barleywine, or a refreshing hefeweizen for my after-work or weekend mainstay.

As a side note, I recently spent a lunch hour debating with my boss over which was healthier -- wine or beer. I won

Yup - To most beer is BMC, which should not be served at dinner. But I think that attitude is slowing changing with the resurgence of craft beers.

Sam Adams is pushing this point in some of their commercials

Personally I prefer beer over wine any day - even at the fanciest of dinners. I drink wine occasionally, liquor very rarely.

Special Hops said:

Personally I prefer beer over wine any day - even at the fanciest of dinners. I drink wine occasionally, liquor very rarely.

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I totally agree, but most of the places I go, even for a nice night out, have extensive wine selections and crappy beer selections. A full page of wines, separated by type and vintage......then the beer menu is verbally "Bud Light, Miller Lite, Coors Light, Heineken, Corona, and Stella Artois." WTF? Where are the real beers?

but most of the places I go, even for a nice night out, have extensive wine selections and crappy beer selections.

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I find you have to go to a restaurant that has the words "brewing company" in its name to get a good beer selection. Many of these places also put their beer into a good number of their recipes as well. One place near where I used to live served beer steamed littleneck clams -- can I get a OMFG?

The only problem is as these styles of restaurant become more popular, mainstream companies have picked up on this trend and I'm now seeing "brewing company" franchises because as far as I know there is no legislation against what you are allowed to name a restaurant.

Agree there. We just don't have very many of those in the area. Maybe I should just bring my own?

Back to the main topic though. I agree that beer is every bit (or more) complex in its variety, flavors, and mouthfeel as wine. I don't know how it became so different. I wonder if this mindset existed 100 years ago.

you are all such EACs.

Yeah If I go out for a nice dinner I either want a nice beer or ill just have water. Maybe a nice scotch if they have a nice list. In this area its also hard to find an area that offers a nice pairing of beer with food. Its just still a foreign concept to most people still. I started pairing my beers with foood a few years ago and honestly I enjoy it more then when I would get a glass of wine that was suggested with my dinner.

adrock said:

Agree there. We just don't have very many of those in the area. Maybe I should just bring my own?

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Interesting. Most fine dining establishments allow you to bring your own wine, and charge a "corking fee" for the waiter to open and decant it. I wonder if a "capping fee" will ever catch on?

There are two brewpub/restaurants in Nashville that I know of: Big River Brewing Co. and Blackstone Brewing Co. I know Big River is actually a franchise but they still have a decent selection. I haven't been to either lately because I moved to Franklin which is a suburb 20-30 minutes south of the actual city.

I'll have to check one or both of those out next time I'm in the area (SWMBO is from Dickson). If you had to pick one, which would it be?

Also, I might just look into the idea of bringing my own, though it was a joke at first. Maybe when I make a beer worthy of touting! I didn't realize you could do that with wine.

adrock said:

I'll have to check one or both of those out next time I'm in the area (SWMBO is from Dickson). If you had to pick one, which would it be?

Also, I might just look into the idea of bringing my own, though it was a joke at first. Maybe when I make a beer worthy of touting! I didn't realize you could do that with wine.

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Blackstone has very southern, BBQ-style fare and the menu focuses on that and sandwich and burger style entrees.

Big River is a southeastern chain and would be more comparable to a traditional "family dining" atmosphere with cajun influences. Their fish tacos are orgasmic.

I would also check out Bosco's in Nashville (I just heard of this the other day, haven't been yet) which bills itself as a "restaurant for beer drinkers".

There's a restaurant down onlower broad down by 2nd Ave. I grew up in Nashville and still go back quite often, but it's been a while since I've been down to the 2nd Ave./Broadway area. They have decent food there and they have 100+ taps. Not fine dining, but it'll do. If only Jimmy Kelly Steakhouse had 100+ beers on tap. Mmmmmmm. Jimmy Kelly's.

I was extremely lucky. I grew up in a time in England when CAMRA was just getting organised enough, and strong enough to save England from going totally BMC. They arrived just in the nick of time to save my beer drinking life! Sure there was plenty of poo around to drink, but thanks to CAMRA, I've never had to drink poo if I didn't want to, and there have always been plenty of beer snobs around to point me in the right direction if I ever strayed off the path of the good and rightous God of the malt and hop.

It also helps that the vast majority of commercially made wine made in England is complete monkey doo doo!

While it's very easy to be complacent about the English situation regarding beer and snobbery, I am finding the situation in the US to be improving by the day regarding our move away from heavily advertised BMC.

America is heading down a good path I think regarding good beer. A quick glance at the shelves in the liquor stores proves that.

I find more and more restaurants will usually have a couple of microbrews on hand. If not I usually suggest the waitress/waiter that they should start carrying the beer form our local microbrewery in town.

May not do any good most of the time but if more people start requesting it they may eventually start carrying more vareity.

We have 4 local microbrews-

So I never have to drink BMCs

I think EACs or Beer snobs have fun at tasting events. Who needs a dinner jacket to taste stuff?

BMC = Bud/Miller/Coors?
EAC = ? Something that means beer snob?

bernerbits said:

BMC = Bud/Miller/Coors?
EAC = ? Something that means beer snob?

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yep Become a member today!!!

I have three honest-to-god brew on premise pubs within striking distance from my commute (I'm not counting GB or Rock Bottom). Problem with them all is that their food is exorbitantly expensive. My previous favorite has seen a dramatic decline in their quality of beer (soapy ale, anyone?). The second treated me like a lower-class git when I tried it. And the third is downtown Frederick, and nigh to impossible to get to without making a full trip out of it.

Besides... I always hate going alone to pubs. Makes me feel like a troubled loner.

adrock said:

I agree that beer is every bit (or more) complex in its variety, flavors, and mouthfeel as wine. I don't know how it became so different.

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BMC killed it. for a long time it was the only beer you could get.

BMC killed it. for a long time it was the only beer you could get.

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Then I wonder why people started drinking BMC beers, and what the original ad campaign was to get customers to stop drinking real beer.

"Tired of flavor? Can't handle the pressure of deciding what beer to drink? Now, for the first time ever, a beer that tastes like cold, carbonated piss and has no redeemable qualities!"

fortunately, i live in an area that has a vast amount of brew pubs, tasting bars, and fine dining restaurants with excellent (and seemingly endless) supplies of wonderful beer.

just to name a few of my favorites:

Speisekammer - Excellent German restaurant with imported beers. Franziskaner and a Helles on tap anyone?
Luka's Taproom - Pricey but decent ("classy" i guess?) food and a good selection of beer
Cato's Ale House - great pizza and sandwiches plus tons of craft brews. this is two blocks from my apartment
The Trappist - 15 rotating taps and over 140 specialty bottles
City Beer - a wonderful tasting bar and amazing selection of bottles
The Monk's Kettle - my new personal favorite with hundreds of beers constantly rotating

ok, i'm bragging...but this is the way every town should be damnit!

now...when i go back to Iowa, it's a different story. yay, miller light and bass ale...

bernerbits said:

Then I wonder why people started drinking BMC beers, and what the original ad campaign was to get customers to stop drinking real beer.

"Tired of flavor? Can't handle the pressure of deciding what beer to drink? Now, for the first time ever, a beer that tastes like cold, carbonated piss and has no redeemable qualities!"

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Sorry, that's just a myth that we EAC's like to perpetuate to keep us warm at night...but it ain't the truth.

I just finished Maureen Ogle's book on the history of beer in America...When AH released Budweiser with it's corn and rice adjuncts in the 1860's it was the most expensive beer out there; a single bottle retailed for $1.00 (what would equal in today's Dollars for $17.00) this was quite difference when a schooner of beer usually cost a nickel.

The American populace ate it up!

It wasn't done to save money, it was done because heavy beers (both english style Ales and the heavier Bavarian malty beers) were not being drunk by American consumers any more. Beer initally was seen around the world as food (some even called it liquid bread), but since America, even in the 1800's was a prosperous nation compared to the rest of the world, and americans ate meat with nearly every meal, heavy beers had fallen out of favor...

Bush and other German Brewers started looking at other styles of Beers, and came upon Karl Balling and Anton Schwartz's work at the Prague Polytechnic Institute with the Brewers in Bohemia who when faced with a grain shortage started using adjuncts, which produced the pils which was light, sparkly and fruity tasting...just the thing for American tastebuds.

So the brewers brought Schwartz to America where he went to work for American Brewer Magazine writing articles and technical monographs, teaching American brewers how to use Rice and Corn...

The sad moral of the story is....The big corporate brewers did not foist tasteless adjunct laced fizzy water on us, like the popular mythology all of us beersnobs like to take to bed with us to feel all warm and elitist....it was done because our American ancestors wanted it.

As much as I hate to admit it...Americans just weren't drinking that much American Ales before the germans came. That's why I've had f*&@-all luck trying to find a late 1800's ale recipe.

ambitious brew said:

In the early nineteenth century, Americans didn't drink beer - they drank whiskey instead, more than seven gallons per adult a year. There were 14,000 commercial distilleries in the United States but only about two hundred small breweries.

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It wasn't until the German introduced thinner beers that Americans began to drink it.

Myth: After World War II, brewers lowered production costs by adding corn and rice to their beer.

Reality: German-American brewers began adding corn and rice to their beer in the early 1870s, and did so not to lower their production costs (in 1878, a bottle of Budweiser cost the equivalent of $17 in today’s money!) but in order to accommodate Americans’ demand for a light-bodied beer.

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Listen to this from Basic Brewing;

November 30, 2006 - Ambitious Brew Part One
We learn about the history of beer in the USA from Maureen Ogle, author of "Ambitious Brew - The Story of American Beer." Part one takes us from the Pilgrims to Prohibition.

http://media.libsyn.com/media/basicbrewing/bbr11-30-06.mp3

December 7, 2006 - Ambitious Brew Part Two
We continue our discussion about the history of beer in the USA with Maureen Ogle, author of "Ambitious Brew - The Story of American Beer." Part two takes us from Prohibition to the present day.

http://media.libsyn.com/media/basicbrewing/bbr12-07-06.mp3

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You might want to take a look at her book.



Her website and beer blog are great reads.
http://www.ambitiousbrew.com/index2.htm

She's been covering the AH/Inbev thing from a historian's perspective on her blog http://maureenogle.com/blog/

By the way...this one Po'ed me even more...

In recent years, beer drinkers have worn t-shirts decorated with a quote attributed to Ben Franklin: "Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy." Just one problem: Franklin didn't say that. It's a mangled version of another Franklin quote about the pleasures of wine. In a 1779 letter, he wrote that the rain that fell on vineyards and transformed vines into grapes for wine provided "a constant proof that God loves us, and loves to see us happy."

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off topic
adrock: there is a fairly new brewery in Bowling Green you might want to check out called ( drunken fish?)

on topic:
I was always a liquor drinker until I met Arrogant Bastard Ale. I haven't looked back since.

Sk84BeeR said:

off topic
adrock: there is a fairly new brewery in Bowling Green you might want to check out called ( drunken fish?)

on topic:
I was always a liquor drinker until I met Arrogant Bastard Ale. I haven't looked back since.

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Have you tried the Oaked Arrogant Bastard yet? I haven't...hmmm maybe I'll pick some up on the way home.

Thanks Revvy for all the info... gonna take me a couple readings to digest all that!

Have you tried the Oaked Arrogant Bastard yet? I haven't...hmmm maybe I'll pick some up on the way home.

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Ditto that!

jpsloan said:

I always hate going alone to pubs. Makes me feel like a troubled loner.

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Me thinks you need to find a good local pub with a quality crowd to become a regular at. That way you never have to be there alone

Revvy said:

Have you tried the Oaked Arrogant Bastard yet? I haven't...hmmm maybe I'll pick some up on the way home.

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Oh the oaked Arrogant is the only way to go. This is one of the better oaked examples IMHO. It really works with this beer to make something special.

Haven't tried the Oaked yet, but it's definately on my radar! Pardon my NooBness but exactly what style of beer is Arrogant Bastard Ale?

I'm sure the book Revvy showed us is right and all that, but the false theory about prohibition screwing everything up is a lot easier to swallow and sounds so historically probable!

OK, I know it's wrong, but it's just so tempting to believe the easier version!

Pardon my NooBness but exactly what style of beer is Arrogant Bastard Ale

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Phylum Awesomeness
Genus badass

Boerderij Kabouter said:

Oh the oaked Arrogant is the only way to go. This is one of the better oaked examples IMHO. It really works with this beer to make something special.

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Sk84BeeR said:

Haven't tried the Oaked yet, but it's definately on my radar! Pardon my NooBness but exactly what style of beer is Arrogant Bastard Ale?

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MikeFlynn74 said:

Phylum Awesomeness
Genus badass

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I got ONE single 12 ouncer at one of the beers stores in town..and the pisser is it wasn't even counted in the ones you can make a mixed sixer of...

It's chilling down now..

Regular AG made my teeth want to explode and my tongue dance for joy...so I have high hopes for this mofo...:rockin:

OhioBrit said:

OK, I know it's wrong, but it's just so tempting to believe the easier version!

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Yeah it's alway easier to swallow a good delusion than to accept a painful truth. For example I constantly tell myself that those "19 year old bisexual strippers" that send me messages on myspace actually did read my profile and really do think my 43 year old sorry ass is "hawt." I never write back, (I wouldn't want to deprive them of their fantasies) but simply bask in the glory of my uber-studliness...It keeps me warm at night while I sleep in my bed...alone.

My journey started this February with me buying a beer kit. I made an IPA out of a box and was hooked. Now I (we) have 4 carboys and have something in the fermenter at all times. My wife even got into the act by making a batch of EdWorts Apfelwein and a Blue Moon clone. I have a Dogfish Head Ale 120 min IPA in the fermenter right now. Beer is as if not more complex than wine.

I really think I have found my next line of work. I plan on opening a B&B somewhere interesting.


That's Bed and BEER.

VatorMan said:

That's Bed and BEER.

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Brilliant!

I'm no connoisseur (sp?) but I did try the Oaked Arrogant Bastard a few weeks back, and..........I wasn't a fan. To be fair, I'd never had Arrogant Bastard at all, and I'd never had an oaked beer; so it's possible I don't like the beer and/or the style. But I didn't taste any oak flavor, and the beer seemed overhopped for the style. Meh, that's just me. I'm interested to hear your judgement Revvy, so when you try it let us know what you thought.

Sk84BeeR said:

off topic
adrock: there is a fairly new brewery in Bowling Green you might want to check out called ( drunken fish?)

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Thanks for the tip; I'll check it out if I'm ever down that way. I usually only see Bowling Green as I drive past on my way to the in-laws' house though. I'm about 3.5 hours away, near Cincinnati.

Okay Here it is...my review of Oaked Arrogant Bastard Ale.

Notes Poured into a Belgian Goblet for tasting purposes.

Appearance - Poured a deep/dark reddish brown, with a beautiful 1/4" creamy head which dissapated within a few minutes, leaving a nice lacing on the curve of the goblet and a surface layer of both large and small bubbles that remained on the surface of the beer throughout the drinking session.

Aroma - Cold, the ale has an almost smoky/woody aroma mixed with both resinous and floral hops, along with hints of brown sugar and bourbon. The wood nose that comes through is definitely oak, and it predominates the aromas. There is also a hint of coffee.

As the ale warms, the coffee, oak, bourbon comes richly to the surface, yet the hops still clearly comes through the center of the aroma...very citrussy.

At the warmest there is even a surprising hint of roasted coconut coming through.

Overall, the aroma is very porter-like...

Mouthfeel - The best word to describe the mouthfeel is "tangy," there is definitely a hop "bite" to it that touches the tip of the tongue, roof of the mouth and the back of the throat upon swallowing. My favorite salty snack is wasabi coated peas, and the bite is very similar, though not as hot.The bite dissipates quickly and the ale coats the mouth smoothly, like a Belgian strong ale...or a chcolate milkshake, but with a bit more carbonation.

This definitely warms as it goes down..at about the half way mark in the glass one feels a warming of the belly.

Taste - There is a lot going on here...The flavors are nearly identical to the aromas...chocolate, toffee, coffee, oak, bourbon, smoke, and a definite hop bitterness...but the hops are mellowed, or smoothed over by the oak aging, which drops it out of the level of "hop bomb" like it's un-aged brother...It moves it into the realm of chocolate/coffee stout.

The flavors are there from cold to room temp, but grow more pronounced as it warms. A noticeable smokiness comes through as it warms, either from smoked grain or because of a toasting of the oak...it is not overpowering, like in a Rauchbier, it reminds me of a porter I once tried that had peat smoked malt as 1/32 of the grainbill...just a hint in aroma and flavor.

Overall - This is an amazing ale...at 7.2% ABV it is not a Barleywine, but in terms of drinking pleasure...taste, aroma, mouthfeel, it could very well be. Maybe drinking it in a different glass would have changed this impression, but in my Belgian maudite goblet it brings the barleywine tendencies out...

I found regular Arrogant Bastard to be very much a hop bomb (which I can only take in small doses) but this version is mellowed quite a lot. It is mellow, but it is not "sissified," this is still a very aggressive ale.

Despite the aggressiveness, this is a very sexy beer...It's a hot blonde in a velvet dress, with a stiletto in her garter belt. The kind of woman, where after a night of unforgettable passion, you wake up in an ice filled bathtub missing a kidney...and spend the rest of your life wanting another night with her.

The hoppiness still is reminiscent of bashing your head against the wall, but this wall is padded, like in a mental ward...The complexity of the aromas and flavors, especially the smokey/oakiness, makes this very drinkable...

I wish I had another bottle...I wonder if there is an decent clone recipe for it.

This made my top 10 list of beers.


Grade - A+

Cliff notes for Revvy-

This is one sexy ****ing beer.

MikeFlynn74 said:

Cliff notes for Revvy-

This is one sexy ****ing beer.

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You got it buddy

It's a hot blonde in a velvet dress, with a stiletto in her garter belt...:rockin:

If it was female, I'd tap it, and probably wake up the next morning, in an ice filled bathtub missing a kidney...and spend the rest of my life wanting another go at her!!!!!

Boerderij Kabouter said:

Oh the oaked Arrogant is the only way to go. This is one of the better oaked examples IMHO. It really works with this beer to make something special.

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Got my six pack. After a glass of wine, 12oz of homebrew, and half an oaked AB... I'm already drunk.

Sk84BeeR said:

Pardon my NooBness but exactly what style of beer is Arrogant Bastard Ale?

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I believe it's considered a "Strong Ale".

I was just reading the Beer advocate reviews of OAB, and did you know that it got rated higher than Sam Adam's Utopias in the strong ale category!?!?!

I'm so glad you guys started talking about it today, I was gonna try it a month ago and forgot about it...