Light Beer, Part I: No, I Can't Taste It. And Neither Can You.

During this past month's NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament, world famous swill-slingers MillerCoors LLC ran a promotion entitled "Can You Taste It?"  Presumably, the slogan had a double-meaning; the "it" referring to both the premature tasting of victory in their contest, as well as the beer sponsoring the contest.  As a reference to the beer, yes, the slogan makes for an an easy target.  Frankly, I'd think less of myself for taking the bait.  However, I can use it to pivot onto one of my favorite hobbyhorses.*

*Fair warning: this will be a multi-part rant and may well become a recurring theme here on The Half-Drunken Scribe. 

Understand: I come here not to bury crappy regular beers.  Those exist, sure enough, but some things really are a matter of taste and there are some tongues you can't argue with (however obviously right your tongue may be).  No, this is about that special scourge upon the alcohol and party industries: the light beer.  Because--however I try--I cannot understand the mind that thinks a bland, hollow, often stale light beer is a reasonable beverage in any situation.  Of course, without sitting down with that person who genuinely likes light beer and sharing some of my favorites with him and him sharing some of his with me, this debate cannot be close to settled.  But I can try to explain where I and the other sneering, haughty beer snobs are coming from. 

Now, thankfully, the craft beer market is growing.  And that means that higher-quality beer is becoming more accepted and thus should become more accessible.  But there's a lot of room to go before it's on any even par with the mass-produced beers.  Or at least before large brewers take it, their product, and their target market seriously.  And there's the rub: the large, lumbering manufacturers and distributors.  There wouldn't be any point in this post--or in any of the invective hurled at the big beer companies by petty, angry beer snobs--if not for the fact that so much of it seems so earned.  It's not merely producing (I will not denigrate the noble word "brewing" by using it in this context) and advertising a lousy product and insisting that that product has "more taste" that make us yearn to hit back.  No.  It's the clear contempt they have for, well, everyone.  Allow me to demonstrate. 

To stick with our original target, I'm sure everyone's familiar with Miller's Man Card/Man Up series.  The ads that insist that not only do men face penalties from their friends for behavior that's annoying and borderline anti-social (though, honestly, those could be nice), but that drinking light beer is one of, if not the, major offense among these laws.  Consider this: not drinking light beer is unmanly.  Really think about that for a moment.  At which point did the concept fail to process?  Was it the sad, obvious appeals to an arcane version of masculinity?  That's where most people go, I think, and I can see why but, again, the obviousness of it obscures the larger point.  Maybe it was the part where drinking something that is by definition an abbreviated, sanitized version of something else is more in line with the lumberjack crowd?  That's where I had come down--and would still award points for it--until I thought about it a little longer.  See, the lampooned men in this series--though apparently given to poor-decision making--are being judged and threatened by their friends for their beverage choice.  And while this is a slightly exaggerated version of things men really do (if jokingly), how is it different from the supposed imperiousness of the beer snob?  I'll explore this further in a bit, but imagine how events would transpire if the defendants in the Man trials had instead purchased, say, an Anchor Steam and then said to their friends, "Light beers?  Really, gentlemen?" 

Or how about advertising executives overly large beer-producer Budweiser?  These guys assume that your need for their product is so great that you'd abandon hope of rescue after a plane crash if your other option is a rockin' Bud Light party.  Not "let's get back to land so we can taste Bud Light and maybe see our families again;" that I'd get.  No, this is more along the lines "screw the rest of our lives--the one I was leading doesn't compare to all this Bud Light!"  More than that, your addiction is so great that you're willing to overlook clear and present danger and the objections of your relatively on-the-ball significant other in order to get a taste of that sweet, sweet, low-calorie nectar.  And just because I think we need the reminder, this same publicly-traded company is also responsible for the farting horse ad and the Wassup guys.  Not to mention the "drinkability" campaign (how much deserved shit do you think McDonald's would get if they advertised their food as "edible?").

Then there's Coors' Blue Mountains ads that assumed there were beer-drinkers out there who were having trouble telling when their beer was cold enough to drink (this is how, if you hadn't figured it out).  I'm not even going to bother with the fact that beer being as cold as possible is actually bad for the beer.  The point is: they really think people are this stupid.  And they're telling us so to our faces.  And people keep buying Coors.  

Conceited shit like this is the problem.  It's not about beer snobs wanting to lord our knowledge appreciation of Belgian Trippels and seasonal IPA's over people who just want to relax with a cold one.  Yes, those snobs exist and you have my permission to shove that tulip glass with the tall, frothy head into their eye (or my eye).  We sometimes need that.  But have we grown so intolerable that we're the ones to be loathed over the mega-corporations who insult you in exchange for your money?  Or is this another one of those culture war battlegrounds, where good and decent middle Americans can write off perfectly good beers solely because they're enjoyed by European socialists and coastal elites?  And the chasm grows so wide that we can never attempt to understand each other, lest our cliff crumble, killing us all and, more importantly, losing the war? 

Is this where beer--mankind's impetus for giving up that whole hunter-gatherer thing--has been dragged?  If so, then truly nothing is sacred.  And if these greedy and cynical mega-brewers have really so debased one of my most beloved pastimes and hobbies, then hold on, because I have a lot more where this came from. 

Next time: the health implications of beer of all goddamn things.