Beers with a Stoic: Your luxury beer “list” reeks, so stop pretending it doesn’t

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Consider the following a composite.

One thing I’ve always tried to do is advocate for my segment.

It means nothing negative to me if an everyday tavern in the middle of the Great Plains carries only mass-market beer. That’s because there are no expectations, on my part or theirs.

But it’s different for the new generation of curated, collated and chic restaurants and bars. There’ll never come a time when I’m not triggered by the hushed availability of hand-tugged free-range goat’s milk for a mixed drink, while the beer list is comprised of AB-InBev mockrobrews, Coors Banquet, and various seltzers listed under the “local beer” column.

Pretentiousness about certain other genres of alcoholic beverages, when inflicted on me at the expense of beer (my own specialty) by the peak influencers of our day, just plain gripes my cookies.

Yes, pretentiousness is a word that might well have described me during selected moments in the past, and if so, these lapses probably stemmed from an intense frustration that Scotch, Bordeaux, Wagyu or Truffle enthusiasts gush all heavenly and rhapsodic about their passion, then order a Miller Lite or PBR to wash it/them down, subsequently babbling nonsensically about beers they evidently don’t understand by saying things like, “sometimes you just NEED a Mich Ultra.”

No you don’t, unless it’s time to shampoo your dog. As the Brits might say, “you dozy pillock.”

Admittedly there was a time when I’d think to myself that “two can play this barmy game,” and retaliate with my own exceedingly high standard of pretentiousness, to which I excel when challenged, although later in life I thought better of it and decided that if the latest, greatest cocktail crafter or champagne snob wishes to be that way, then I quite consciously won’t.

My plan may even have worked on occasion.

A few months ago a new bar opened in my general vicinity, and we were subjected to the usual media hyperbole about the unalloyed genius of the proprietor. Wheels were set to be reinvented and hitherto unknown vintage drinks conjured by means of a séance in the mysterious cellar speakeasy, or some other patented nonsense.

There’d be vast and suitably pricey selections of all known distillates, wines and bubbly, mixology, theology, pee-ology and whatever other bits of gibberish that “newspaper” reporters never bother questioning these days as they accept every last portion of bilge they’re shoveled.

The primary sources of information about the new bar didn’t mention beer, and eventually ...Read more