Life Is Far Too Short To Drink Cheap Beer - 10 Ways To Maximize Your Beer Value

Found a wonderful article about enjoying quality beer and thought it deserved a post.


By Al at Hop Talk

Editors Note: I wrote a piece on how to save money on beer awhile back and Al chasized me for only considering how to save money and not about how to get true value. In response, he has put together this list of how to get the best value out of the beer you buy.

First, stop thinking of beer as a commodity. It’s not toilet paper, or screws, or an all-you-can-eat buffet. Stop thinking of beer in terms of the bland, yellow, fizzy beverages foisted on the American public by huge brewing conglomerates. Not just the big American brewers, who have spent countless marketing dollars convincing most of us that beer is supposed to be bland, yellow, and fizzy, but also their overseas counterparts who offer essentially the same product but use the additional marketing message that theirs is better because it’s imported. In spite of being upwards of 80%+ of the American domestic beer market, American light lagers are by no means the entire universe of beer. In the U.S. alone, the Brewers Association recognizes well over 100 distinct styles of beer, and even within those styles are the brewer’s own variations.

Beer is a food. It is made from grain (almost always barley), hops, yeast, and water. Except for the hops, and if the grain was milled into flour instead of malted for brewing, you’d have a basic bread recipe. When is bread best? As fresh as possible. It is just as true for beer. To stretch the beer as bread analogy a little further, industrial-brewed American light lagers are the beer equivalent of Wonder Bread. Don’t you want a nice, hearty loaf?

So, if you are ready slough off the misconceptions of maximizing quantity of your beer and instead get the most value, i.e., enjoyment, out of your beer, here are some simple tips.

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Life Is Far Too Short To Drink Cheap Beer - 10 Ways To Maximize Your Beer Value