I have found the taste of beer to be truly nauseating. Haven’t tried it in decades.
I make up for ALL of the people who don’t like the taste of beer, so this one’s a draw.
When I was in Germany, beer was cheaper and more available than iced tea or soft drinks, so I drank a lot of hefeweizens, for that very reason. I don’t care for the taste of beer or, really, any alcohol at all. The hefeweizens weren’t great, but they were tolerable.
I disagree. Beer has the same disadvantage as soft drinks and other carbonated drinks - you can’t gulp it down in large quantities; at least, not without generating a huge belch. (Which, admittedly, has its own appeal…)
If I’m really going to be literally gulping it down, I don’t want anything, even water, to be ice-cold.
And as you have left no people to make up for, I tip the scales massively in favour of beer. Though I admit I did not much like the first two I drank (yes, I do remember: they were two cans of Löwenbräu. They weren’t even properly chilled, my bad). But then it flowed freely from there on.
But I am very tolerant of people who don’t like beer. The more that is left for me, the better.
When I say I like beer, I mean I like beer with respect to alcohol. If I just want a cool refreshing drink, I can think of a hundred things more tasty than beer.
I mean, it’s possible you perceive the flavors more strongly than others, but some people just hate bitter flavors, and most beers are bitter. Me? I really enjoy bitter, so that aspect of the flavor profile is easy for me to not only not bother me, but enjoy. These days, I only drink non-alcoholic beers, because I love that flavor and find it refreshing. But it’s not at all unusual not to like the taste of beer in general (though there are a wide range of flavor profiles, and not all are bitter.)
I started drinking beer heavily in my late teens, and invariably found it disgusting. I enjoyed alcohol, and being intoxicated, I did not like beer. But a very cold, crappy light beer has minimal taste and you pound them and get drunk. It wasn’t until many years later when I genuinely enjoyed the taste, and it required me essentially understanding the various different flavors out there and also the U.S. beer industry has actually changed a lot since the 1970s–lot of diversity of both quality and taste all over now. I do think there’s an underlying common taste profile to all beers, and no particular reason to think someone is guaranteed to acquire a taste for it–I did, many other people have, but no reason to assume everyone would/will.
Yeah, when I grew to enjoy beer it was actually the bitterness that I liked, and I know some people who cannot stand anything even slightly bitter.
Back in the day… I remember my mother asking a bartender if I was ok to have a pint of cider. He looked me up and down and said yeah, he looks big enough. I was fifteen. So drinking wasn’t a novelty. But I distinctly remember my first beer (still under age) and thinking yep, we’re going to get on just fine.
But then, I’m not a big fan of sweet things.
j
Do you find the taste of non-alcohol beers to be comparable to regular beer? I’ve always been curious about that.
I love beer with a passion (but not in the drunken passion kind of way). I love the varieties and flavours of micro-brews out there. But I am not a fan of IPAs and I don’t get why there are so many of them. But yes, I love beer.
I also really enjoy wine as well but, oddly, about 20 years ago I had a red wine crisis in which a glass of red would give me a head ache without any of the buzz. So began a year or two period in which I really explored the world of micro-brews.
Like others, i quit drinking beer due to gastro issues. Now I have developed a taste for high end whiskeys. 2 or 3 drams a week and I am happy.
I never liked beer as a kid. That means i didn’t like my father’s Budweiser. Eventually, i visited Germany and discovered i enjoy German beer. I like that it’s a little bitter and a little fizzy.
Last Sunday i went to an event to which a guy brought some beer he had brewed. He had two, one of which was an IPA with 2% alcohol. It had a very pleasant floral hoppyness. And if course it was totally fresh. He had another small beer, which was fine but less interesting.
I may look for more low alcohol beers. It was really refreshing and i would enjoy having something like that after gardening.
Non-alcoholic beers have gotten a lot better since the Sharps and O’Douls days. If you like IPAs, then the NA IPAs can be pretty darned good. Lagunitas IPNA tastes like a regular IPA to me. Athletic Brewings beers can be quite hoppy, with their Run Wild being my favorite of the bunch. Brooklyn Brewing even has a sampler 12-pack with 4 beers. Of their offerings, I like their Hoppy Amber and IPA the best. Heineken’s 0.0 tastes a heck of a lot like regular Heineken (whether that’s something good is up to your tastes), with perhaps a softer, maltier backbone. I’m drinking one now, as I find it quite refreshing. Guinness 0 I find damned close to regular Guinness. Like surprisingly so. There’s a locally contract brewed beer brand called Big Drop that makes an NA milk stout (Galactic Milk Stout) that, while not really quite tasting like a real milk stout, is quite enjoyable in its own right. They also have a Brown Ale that is supposed to be good that I haven’t tried. Oh, and Sam Adams Just the Haze IPA is another excellent NA quaff.
And besides the no alcohol, some of these beers have crazy low calorie counts. The Athletic Brewing are usually in the 50s or so. One of the Brooklyn Brewing ones is like 26 calories or something.
I say, give it a try. There’s SO many out there now to try compared with, say, five years ago.
I love beer. I must brew 5 gallons / week.
I can’t stand most American hops, which means American IPA’s are out. This translates into 90% of beers on the supermarket shelf. Crappy brewers make IPA’s because it covers up shoddy brewing. The mettle of a good brewer would be a 3% alcohol lager or blonde ale as there is nothing to hide behind. IMHO, the worst combination would be what can only be described as dank, skunked cat whiz. Not for me.
Some good English or “Nobel” European hops and I’ll pour pint after pint down my neck.
I hated beer when I should have loved it (college), but acquired a taste for it years later. Still prefer fine wine and aged rum, though.
For some, peer pressure makes them keep sipping it. I mean, a kegger at a frat party and you aren’t drinking c’mon! One day you don’t mind it. For others, the buzz makes it worth the effort. I think we trained our tastebuds.
One benefit of beer though is that you can get sick on it and later go back to it. By way of contrast, I once got sick on Southern Comfort. When you barf up something sweet you never want it again.
I think it’s bitter, but doctor it with some sugar and cream and it’s pretty good.
I used to put Grapenuts in my yogurt just to give some texture—that bothered me more than the flavor. And it was always fruit on the bottom type, never plain yogurt. But the plain stuff is awesome for grilling steak, tandoori chicken, etc.
I don’t think I’ll ever be able to eat cottage cheese out of the container, but a small amount baked in lasagne is fine.
Beer-battered food was my gateway. Then soup made with beer. Then one day I tasted it, and hey! It doesn’t taste terrible any more.
I mostly prefer dark beer though, imperials and stouts.
I distinctly remember disliking the flavour of beer when I first tasted it, but I kept going, because it was beer and I was a teenager and it was beer. Mixing with lemonade (the UK fizzy lemon soda kind) to make shandy, or mixing with lime or blackcurrant cordial, or half and half with cider (which was called ‘snakebite’ at the time, although that term seems to refer to lager and blackcurrant now).
Eventually I acquired a taste for it.