Hip Hops: Why are curated luxury beer lists so unremittingly mediocre?

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Hip Hops: Why are curated luxury beer lists so unremittingly mediocre?

It’s a lovely July day for a rant, don’t you think?

One thing I’ve always tried to do with consistency is to advocate for my segment, which for more than 40 years has been the wider and better world of beer.

As this pertains to bar and restaurant beer offerings, my position remains that beer is subject to the same patterns of thought and planning typically deployed to create balanced, representative wine and spirits selections for consumption on the premises.

There’ll be chardonnay and cabernet sauvignon. Vodka and bourbon. A choice of flavors and characteristics, light to heavy, neutral to bold, down the line. A well-chosen wine list might have as few as six choices, yet still offers defined options and flexibility.

I’ve always understood differences in context and intent. Consequently I’m indifferent to an everyday tavern in the middle of nowhere that stocks only those insipid mass-market beer brands that I’ve been avoiding since the 1980s. That’s because there are no expectations on my part, or theirs.

While confident that in a dire emergency, I could choke down a Busch Light, allow me to petition the tear-bender to ensure the specimen is freezing cold because that’s a sure-fire “flavor” remover.

As for “demand” prefiguring supply, it remains that none of us are capable of spelling words immediately upon emerging from the womb; rather, we must learn how. Beer comprehension itself isn’t nature. It’s nurture. The same goes for needlepoint, open heart surgery or playing the tuba.

For me, the whole dynamic flips the very moment when someone makes claims that generate expectations.

You say that you’re the best golfer around? Show me, then. There are ways of confirming this assertion.

Disturbingly often, a newer generation of curated, collated and self-referentially chic restaurants and bars seem to be advancing the proposition that everything they know about beer, they learned in kindergarten. Unfortunately their beer lists prove it, and these scorecards usually reveal a great many triple bogeys, as opposed to an utter dearth of holes in one.

Given how unimpressive many beer lists are, even par is elusive. Perhaps they should consider putt putt.

Mind you, I detest golf, and also never fail to be negatively triggered by the ready availability of hand-tugged free-range goat’s milk for a “craft” cocktail at $15, while a few feet away the frozen reach-in cooler “boasts” a purely derivative “curated” beer list comprised of AB-InBev mockrobrews, numerous taste-alike IPAs, Coors Banquet, Blue Ribbon, and various...Read more