Every once in a while, the beer interwebs will bloom with the Old Wive’s Tale of “just drink the best beer” or it’s cousin, “it’s what’s in the glass that matters”.
Both are code for, it’s OK to drink beer from Miller/Coors, ABInBev or The “High” End, et al. But let’s dig deeper and put this fallacy to rest.
First, the advice is nowhere near practical. Why? There is no metric for either. I guess you could go by GABF medals or Untappd ratings or what Jeff in Accounts Payable says but if you are staring at a tap list of 20 beers or a stocked cooler at your local beer shoppe what do you do? Drink or to-go the highest rated beer and then go to the 2nd ranked and then 3rd?
No one does that. You pick based on a variety of factors. Maybe it is a local beer, a new brewery, by style, by rarity or because of global warming you just pick a dry-hopped pils instead of Imperial IPA.
Secondly, if I pick up a brown ale with a rating that is .02 less than the Gold Medal, Get Up Offa That Brown from High End Golden Road. Am I materially drinking a worse beer? Maybe if one beer is rated as 90 out of 100 and another is 70 out of 100, I might be drinking lesser beer but if beer two is rated 88 and I feel better because I am supporting a local brewery, I would say I am having a better experience even if I am “technically” down by 2 points.
So, if the advice isn’t practical, why do people say it?
It is the type of Gaffigan-esque beer type who bemoans that independent beer has gone around the bend. The type who have had too many mediocre craft beers and wish for a simplicity that quite frankly left the barn many, many years ago and is not coming back. And I get it, I have had to say, “Your beer is fine.” quite a bit. There are a lot more beers in the middle of the pack than at 10 out of 10 stars. Being able to count on the consistency of a Coors Light can be tempting.
And in a beer business world where breweries are in Co-Ops or ESOPS or owned 24% by this multi-national conglomerate or that one, wiping the whole who owns who off the table makes life easy. Having to really look at the pros and cons of say who owns Avery Brewing as opposed to saying, the beer is good so it doesn’t matter can take precious beer drinking time away.
But since we all take in a variety of inputs when we choose one beer over another, we can’t really say that it’s “all about the liquid”. Because for many, it is about much more. Community. Supporting small business. Encouraging creativity. To name some big ones.
You can’t ignore the world around you and how it affects you.
Peel the Label is an infrequent series with no photos or links. Just opinion.