The Craft Beer Snob is one of the most peculiar social animals to emerge during my lifetime. When I was born in 1980 there were only eight craft breweries in the United States. Today there are over six thousand and they’re all being propped up by beer snobs.
Ironically, the term ‘American Beer Snob’ is itself a punchline in most of the world, particularly in Belgium where their Inbev conglomerate snatched up our most iconic brands with the Anheuser-Busch acquisition.
Like any good drunk, once they got the first taste they only wanted more and went on to also take our classic Miller brand.
I tried to get behind the craft brew movement when we lost our major brands. I thought I’d miss American beer, but it turns out I just liked the patriotic advertisements. Last Fourth of July those foreigners put the word America on my Budweiser can and I happily lapped it up.
The marketing campaign was universally panned as a bad public relations stunt, but I think they should keep it on the can all year round. Seeing the word ‘America’ on a can makes a guy feel good about what he’s drinking.
And that’s what beer is supposed to do, make you feel good.
What ever happened to the adults I saw on TV as a kid who knew drinking beer was supposed to be fun? The beer-swilling pretzel-eating joke-telling barfly who made being an adult look enjoyable? Instead of the skinny-jeans-wearing hipster using “adulting” as a verb.
I was promised a future at bars with fun guys like George Wendt and Chris Farley eating wings and busting balls. Today’s beer drinkers are obnoxiously pretentious. It’s as if all the characters on Cheers turned into Frasier.
We went from throwing darts and playing pool to having intellectual conversations about our beer’s yeastiness in between rounds of pub trivia.
My rule of thumb is to instantly walk away from a conversation if I hear the words barley, hops, or yeast. It’s not a conversation. It is just a performance that’s a little too rehearsed about a microbrew nobody has ever heard of.
Alcoholics in lederhosen singing polka songs are charming. Alcoholics ironically wearing trucker caps while lecturing on aeration are simply obnoxious.
I don’t trust any drink that needs to breathe. It shouldn’t be counter-cultural to expect my beverage to be dead.
Another thing that irritates me about our microbrew obsession is the proliferation of cute names for each and every beer. I’ve actually been forced to, with lowered eyes, order a “Naughty Nurse” while standing next to a woman I respect.
But brewery snobs are far outpaced in this area by the cannabis culture warriors. It’s one thing to listen to a hipster prattle on about the quality of their microbrew, but wait until he’s stoned and rambling about the crystals in his buds.
If you think ordering a “Hoppy Ending” in a professional environment is bad, just wait until legal marijuana hits your home state and you’re stuck ordering something named “Dopium.”
Craft beer snobs tend to form in their early twenties, which is a very impressionable time. Young men who just passed through the teen-years gauntlet, which stripped their personalities of any spontaneous displays of emotion suddenly feel emboldened to pour their pent-up enthusiasm into their personalized craft beer steins.
Despite the fact that most of the beers taste like moist sourdough bread, these emotionally stunted Brett Kavanaughs are so happy to find a safe space for expressing passion within their social circles that they dive into it with enthusiasm, often becoming unnecessarily aggressive against mainstream beers.
Kids who habitually got blackout drunk on Natty Light in high school turn against their past drinks with the bitterness of a balding divorcee who lost the lease on his sports car.
I have sincere respect for the brewers themselves, even if they’re taking liberties with the meaning of the word artisan. But for the swarms of people outside the doors pretending that they’re creative simply by tasting? Not so much. They’ve mistakenly labeled consuming as a means of artistic expression, which it is not.
Beer is just a drink. Drink it.
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