Button it, beer snobs

Bulk beer and sneers

An industry event hosted by a rising star of British craft beer: the usual faces are there, drinking and talking beer. The guest speaker pipes up; lauds the brewer’s doubtless dedication and then, as an aside, bemoans a certain global lager brand’s seeming unfamiliarity with malted barley. Laughter erupts. Bellies wobble. Tipped tankards unmask smug smiles. The bellies wobble on, and on.

It was a cheap gag, given the audience. Said lager, one of the country’s biggest sellers, is the devil’s own brew to the beer snob. They cite the use of an adjunct in its grist (though of course not the presence of malted barley), its rock-bottom retail price, its ubiquity and the brand-owner’s at-times ruthless pursuit of profit amongst the litany of gripes they have with the brew.

This beer - let’s face it, any corporate bulk-brewed lager - will always get the bile of the beer snob rising. Bottles of it have been symbolically smashed on film in the name of, apparently in all earnestness, the ‘struggle against the faceless bourgeoisie oppression of corporate, soulless beer’. It’s been tipped as a great addition to your compost heap. Some have questioned the difference between the beer before and after its been drunk. It’s the beer beer snobs love to hate.

But few beers - so long as the date on its neck is still off in the future and it’s brewed to specification - are worthy of such bedevilment. The fierce resistance of some to the use of adjuncts shows either neglect or ignorance of beer’s evolution over past millennia. Beer will continue to evolve. Change, as the good old weeping philosopher once proclaimed, is the only constant.

That popular lager can be bland is not up for debate. In showing the sapid complexities of the interplay between grain, hops, yeast and water, it fails miserably. But that’s not what this drink’s about. It’s about sating growing global demand for beer to celebrate and commiserate, relax and ruminate with, using an ever diminishing pool of resources.

Beer, the really good beers like those produced by brewers such as the rising star we visited earlier, should stand tall on their own. The majesty of a good beer and the dedication of a brewer should be able to muster suitable ovation from a commentator without requiring snide references to what is deemed to be a lesser product.

Beer snobs do nothing for beer. They alienate people by sneering at the products that most people know as 'beer'. They waste words in the vain hope of fomenting distaste for what they find unpalatable, when they should be sharing with the world what it is that makes beer great. There’s no such thing as a bad beer, it’s just that some are better than others. Let’s talk about those.