Every Time for a Beer and a Beer for Every Time

Time for a blog on beer.

One thing that drives me absolutely nuts is people who dis American beer especially what one can refer to as American standard lagers (ASL) light or otherwise. They will trot the old joke about making love on a canoe or point to obscure micro brews or imports. It all gets rather tedious hearing yet another white person go on about MilCoorWeiser. Especially silly are Canadians or Aussies engaging in the same act, as their big beers are pretty darned close to ALS.

The ALS especially the light ones can be viewed as short beers. A show on the History Channel noted that the short beer (maybe an ale as opposed to a lager beer, IIRC, lagers were not developed until the 19th Century) was the staple beer of Europe in the times when water was practically poisonous due to unsanitary public health and hygiene practices (i.e. before people learned about microbes and their role in diseases and that removing such microbes from water rendered it okay to drink) and this means it was drank all day long.

Now, when you are outside and working in the middle of a summer day when the temperature is 87&#deg; F what do you want when the work is over? A heavy bodied highly alcoholic beer? That is not what I crave, I want a light bodied beer low in alcohol.

I am not saying there is anything from the heavy bodied beer, it is just the time and place for that is different. For example, after a day of skiing nothing satisfies as much as a Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. Another summer favorite is the heffe-weizen class of beers.