Is this a bit or something?
Yes, there is beer brewed by local companies on the subcontinent. You can even get some of it here in the US. There are now relatively few countries that do not have at least one, if not several, local brewing company.
A quick search shows that there are a lot of beers brewed in India today.
Thanks for the info. Since my micro brewery makes its own beer, it is probably the recipe. They wouldn’t actually import beer when they make their own.
See, now I have to ask the guy who runs the place about this. Is it actually a recipe for Indian Pale Ale, or did he just wing it and decide to call it that because he was somewhere in the ball park? This is very complicated. LOL
And then there was a parody with John Candy, probably on SCTV, where he said, “It’s got one-third the calories of a regular beer, so I can drink three at once, and not have to worry!” He then proceeded to grab three bottles and chug them simultaneously.
Basically, it lets them binge drink like Real Men, but without as much effort. Among this crowd, there’s a lot of bragging about how many beers you’ve drank. “Man, I slammed 17 beers last night!” “That’s nothing, I slammed 26!” No way is anyone drinking that many super-hoppy, expensive craft beers.
No, this is a Bit:
IPA merely denotes a hoppier type of ale beer, and has nothing to do with its origin. Most micro breweries make IPAs, as they’re very popular.
It’s “India Pale Ale.” Also, it’s not a recipe, it’s more of a general category of beer type, like stouts, wits, lagers, Hefeweizens, porters, etc.
I think you’re onto something here. Light beer is great if you value quantity over quality.
Also, light beer is what you reach for when you want to drink something that’s the least filling or least inebriating thing you can get and still not look like a kid or a teetotaler for drinking it.
My guess is that light megabrew is something they consider to be “of the people” or “down home” or whatever, and other sorts of alcohol (save straight bourbon) is considered effete and something that women, northerners, liberals, and/or snooty folks drink and think they’re better than them for it. It’s a sort of signifier of commonness/being a regular guy, if you will.
From time to time, I’ve had more rednecky types give me a hard time for drinking other beers, but they usually STFU if you offer to buy them one, and then they find out that what I’m drinking is usually more intense and more alcoholic than what they’re drinking. Nobody who drinks Coors Light is going to call a Dunkel effete, much less a double IPA.
As to why they don’t drink full-octane Budweiser, Coors, or Miller? That I don’t know.
Got cha’. 
If you believe the old ads (and why wouldn’t you?), “less filling” is a genuine selling point.
I think people who drink light beer often do so as an accompaniment to food and/or activity, where they don’t want the beer to fill them up (and paying attention to the beer as they drink it isn’t the point).
This is true of Lone Star beer. I grew up in the Midwest, but as a kid, whenever we went on a trip that happened to take us through Texas, my dad would always buy a case or two of Lone Star for him and his buddies.
Years later when I moved to Texas myself, I was surprised to discover that very few locals drank it, and many saw it as bargain barrel swill, the sort of stuff you might get for a buck a can at a dive college bar. The local beer of choice seemed to be Shiner Bock, which I don’t think I had ever actually heard of until I moved there.
I’m still convinced it’s an in-crowd signifier more than anything else, other than being the lowest cost option. In other words, if people can afford better beer and still choose the megabrewery light beer, it’s because they’re making a point by what they drink.
Like @joebuck20 points out, Shiner Bock is extremely popular in some parts of Texas, and it’s not because it’s particularly cheap, overly good or easy drinking. It’s because it’s local and different enough to be one of those in-crowd signifiers that you’re Texan, white, and likely going/went to one of the state’s universities.
Bud is 5%. Bud Light is 4.2%. The bit about the Guinness is correct. Guinness is actually a very good beer if you’re watching calories at 125 cal per 12 oz, which is less than some “light” beers. (Bud Light has fewer, at 110).
Whoa. Synchronicity. About two hours ago on a local radio station Q101, there was a trivia show. One of the questions was “what does IPA on a beer stand for?” The caller answered “India Pale Ale” and the host marked him wrong. “No, it’s Indian Pale Ale.” I was literally yelling at the radio to the befuddlement of my children. (OK, who am I kidding? They’ve heard me yell at the radio many times before.) Apparently, many people were, as after the commercial break he told everyone to stop texting, he was wrong, it was “India Pale Ale.” (I personally would accept both. Oh, and the caller won, anyway, so it didn’t matter. Just found the coincidence of the post at around the same time as the show funny.)
And the story for why it’s called India Pale Ale is that the beer was created in order to survive the long journey to the British Colonies, like India. So a beer with higher hop content (which acts as a preservative) and higher alcohol was developed. That’s the story I’ve always been told, and the one that is endlessly repeated by zymurgists and zythophiles. But I feel like I’ve read recently that that is not quite the correct story. I did find it somewhat ironic that the first IPA I ever tried was in the UK and it was neither particularly hoppy nor high alcohol (around 3.5%). I believe it was Green King IPA.
Right. It’s more about the “conservatives” appropriating anything that is identified with “regular common folk” working/lower-middle class tastes or values.
The past 40 years of marketing (and the absorption of local brewers by conglomerates) made American megacorporate light beer into something identified with “common-people-ness” , what you get in a bucket with the buddies for wings and pizza at the bar on game night, what you get at the ballgame, the “aprés Lawnmower” drink as mentioned upthread, the “starter beer”, the safe familiar brands that you KNOW every bar has.
And as with other things that technically could be enjoyed by everyone and anyone, like the national symbols, Country Music, big pickup trucks etc., “conservatives” have picked it up under the “we’re the Real Americans” pretense. Many of us just rolled our eyes and kept drinking/saluting/listening to/driving whatever we felt like.
But in all those areas they have moved into directy claiming “this is OURS”. Which we see now when they go as far as to say a corporation can’t reach out to a different demographic w/o suffering reprisals. We already saw something like these a few Superbowls ago when they complained about a Coke ad that had America The Beautiful sung in multiple languages, or the one from Gillette talking against toxic masculinity.
Which is oddly anticapitalistic but go figure.
You did. I came across the same story recently, I just don’t remember where.
Huh…this thread made me realize my dad never drank light beer (or if he did, it was a one-off). He went from Milwaukee’s Best to Natural Ice to most recently Budweiser. Not sure if it was because he thought “light” would be “sissy” or if he gave it some serious thought and being underweight all of his life and getting 90% of his daily calories from beer, he’d better stick with the “full calorie” stuff.
The Wiki article I mentioned says that it was originally a paler version of the typical dark ale one found in Britain, and that a lot of it was exported to expats. The name “India” was attached to it by Brits living in GB because of that, not by the company making it, and probably to distinguish it from the regular, heavier brew, although most of it was exported to India, where there was a larger market. The original version was lightly hopped, but hoppier beer better survived the 6 month shipping time.