Beer Guy: The mediocre. The familiar. The quotidian.

Fri Feb 10, 03:40 PM by

The mediocre. The familiar. The quotidian. In our more self-consciously human moments we scorn these concepts. We try to transcend these notions that tie us to our base, material existence, and we seek finer essences that remind us of our divine qualities as thinking beings. Thus we (Man, not me or you personally) create Art, making something that is not of this world; something irreducible and immortal that edifies our being in relation to the metaphysical world of concepts and ideas. This is article is not about Art. This article is about Beer.

Beer is probably the anti-Art. It has been refined and produced not to interpret Man’s existence, but to confuse and satiate it. It is specifically developed to appease the most base, immediate needs of the human body and mind. We make (and drink) beer not because we care about the order of the cosmos, but because we appreciate the disorder of it. So why all this hoopla about “craft beer” and “special reserve” and “seven dollars and forty-fucking-five cents for 22 fl.oz”? I love a varied and surprising beer palate, but we shouldn’t forget that beer exists to please us, not ‘tother way round. In this spirit I offer my appraisal of a mediocre, familiar, quotidian beer. You know it as The King, preferred by Clydesdales and Spuds McKenzie alike…

Budweiser. Ubiquitous. Urine-yellow. You shouldn’t be ashamed to enjoy it, though. It comes from a time and place in history that gives it some pedigree. A product of that first European migration to America (not counting the Mayflower), Budweiser is a mellowed version of the German pilsner (pils) style for those who might find a true pilsner a little too bitter. It is also a case of true American ingenuity and economy, utilizing a wide variety of adjunct grains rather than 100 percent barley. Any other domestic mega-brewery cites this as a fault, but Pete Coors lost his Senate race, so what does he know?

So, it’s a pilsner-style lager that uses barley, wheat and rice (yes, rice) in its grain bill. Who cares? Well, it’s also cheaper than Urquell, Becks, or any other European lager that will only skunk during the trans-Atlantic journey, and its bottles shatter much better under fire from a CO2 pistol. Not sold? Okay. I don’t really care. To be honest, the last two Buds I had were at a bowling alley and a gay line dance. The bowling alley Bud was 10 ounces and the gay bar Bud was frozen (which means I got a free one). So I’m fifty-fifty on this beer. The important thing is that you can usually buy it for less than nine dollars a twelver and it doesn’t ask too many questions. Serve cold and damn the critics! And sing God Bless America. And watch a Ronald Reagan movie. But you know, Pabst is half the price and twice as malty.

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