Light Beer, Part III: What's It All About?

**This is Part III of an ongoing series.  Make sure to read Part I and Part II.**

Having examined the light beer industry's disdain for it's market and the dubious health claims of the product, all that remains is the final question: why.  Why have the American people (already afflicted by onerous problems in a changing world, requiring adaptation) so embraced the pale man's rendition of the proud lager beer?  This is admittedly difficult for me to examine on my own. 

I'd love to hear from people who genuinely like light beer.  I really would--this whole thing has been about trying to understand the hold that the lights have on the beer industry as a whole.  In lieu of that, I've come up with some of the fairest, most honest reasons that I think light beer maintains that hold: 

-It's just what I drink
I covered this a bit more dismissively in the last post (the oh-so-classy urine analogy), but in all seriousness, I do understand being a creature of habit.  At the end of a lousy day, or at a party with friends, we default the familiar comforts.  We just want to drink and relax and not think about tasting notes or hop profiles or write down our thoughts about the beer (I actually do this and it sometimes baffles me).  And there's something to be said for retaining the simple pleasures.  However, to me, this is a better explanation for the slummy regular beers--Budweiser, Coors, etc; those have more taste than a light, even if that says very little.  But why tout the--previously explored--half-assed health benefits?  Is it a throwback to our high school drink of (lack of) choice?  And how many other high school habits do you retain? 

-It's what Dad drank
We all are at times, for better and worse, creatures of the traits bestowed on us by genetics and upbringing.  If there was a lot of light beer in your house when you were a kid, it makes sense that you'd be attached to it as an adult; that old "familiar comforts" thing.  And while I don't think that my dad ever kept a lot of it around (I'd be more of a red wine guy, if I took after him in this regard), I do know that that taste he gave me of Coors Light when I was about ten probably informed--unconsciously--a lot of my future drinking habits.  This, to my mind, is an even more nostalgia-driven version of the above.  And as with the above, how many of your parents' habits do you usually exhibit when you can help it?  And, surely in this case, you can help it? 

-No interest in trying others
When I was in high school, my family moved to a rural area, where I met a probably 60-something-year-old man who had never gone more than ninety or so miles from his place of birth.  This was fairly common for his generation, but completely foreign to me.  He would never say that he had simply "settled," and neither would most light beer drinkers, I imagine.  However, that guy had a decent case for not roaming too far: it's a pain in the ass to move and he had never had a pressing need to do so.  What's keeping the light beer crowd locked into their habit?  That $2-3 extra per six pack?  That's fair but, similar to the health claims, if that amount will break you, you'd think you'd do without the booze altogether.

Some of this may be because craft beer can be hard--or impossible--to find in some parts of the country.  But this is slowly changing; as craft beer becomes more popular it will find more stable, if smaller, markets throughout the country.  The State of Alabama--a long holdout on this--recently raised the legal ABV limit in beer for sale from 6% to 13.9%, granting Alabamians access to a host of new craft brews.  More personally, while it's true I live in a very good beer town, there's still something heartening about seeing New Belgium beers stacked next to Budweiser at the grocery store.  Or when I'm wedding planning and I hear stories of weddings where guests (many of whom were of the light crowd) were offered the usual Miller Lites, but only went through a handful of those, while depleting the Abitas and Sierra Nevadas and later gushing about the beer selection.  Such breweries and their products are becoming less alien and more familiar to the casual beer drinker and someday they, too, may think, "yeah, sure, I'll splurge this once."  And that's how good beer spreads.  I don't demand that people drink higher quality beers, but I do ask that they try once in a while.  You might be surprised what you find.  Unless...

-You genuinely like it
Ah, yes, the (literally) inexplicable matter of taste.   We can go up and down a list of good-sounding reasons for why we've gravitate toward a certain type of beer, or music, or dating partner, but our preferences are based much more in irrational feeling and emotional attachment than many of us would like to accept.  I can explain my preference for Belgian Trappist ales and English session porters until you understand it, but never so that you share it.  For that, you'd have to drink some yourself, at which point you either begin to share that love or it was never meant to be.  The same way I've had many different light beers and have never once not wanted to gag.  And therein lies the problem. 


I stand by my opinion that the light beer marketing departments think people are stupid (more so than do most marketing departments).   I also stand by my take down attempt on light beer's health claims.  This is not solely about snobbery and I hope it doesn't come off as such.  I believe that the experience counts for as much as the ephemeral buzz and the fleeting taste on the tongue.  That experience ties into everything: the crowd (or lack thereof), the location, the reason.  The beer exists, by and large, to enhance those things.  You may not feel the need to enhance things any further, at least via the taste of your beer, but what's the harm?  I've survived the light beers I've had, just as I've survived bottom shelf whiskey and fast food.  But are we merely surviving?  What's the occasional excursion away from McDonald's and into even a three-star place?  You probably won't want that all the time, nobody does.  But done every once in a while, it'll open up new horizons and broaden experience.  Why should there be any resistance to that? 

This isn't a refutation of the light beer drinker (of the industry, perhaps definitely, but not the individual drinker).  It's an urging, a prodding to expand the scope of our collective experiences and not stick with the same old beverages just "because."  To push beyond the bland, narrow, and empty borders laid out for us by mega-conglomerates, who care nothing for their products (let alone their customers).  To deepen our understanding and appreciation of well-made, heart-driven beers that help make life worth living that much longer. 

What have we to lose?