The bitter hoppy IPAs became a trend because people CHOSE it because they enjoyed the taste. Others decided on other styles. I’m quite fond of the Sours and Goses that have been in vogue recently.
One of the biggest jokes against the macrobrews - Bud, Coors, Miller - is that it’s like having sex in a canoe… it’s fucking close to water - meaning they have no taste and hence some people don’t want to drink them. Which seems to me to be quite antithetical to the point you are making.
Basically. It very well may be true to the person who wrote that, but the unique nature of individual addiction and, more broadly, human experience is such that one can’t confidently generalize like that. I mean, look what I wrote about tobacco. People say it’s harder to quit than heroin. I just stopped a two-pack-a-day habit by just not smoking. Does that mean I should take up heroin then? Does that mean I’m superhuman or somehow a great person for being able to do that? Does that mean the original claim is patent horseshit? Well, no, none of those. I’m just wired such that it was not a problem for me, and I didn’t experience the withdrawal others I’ve seen trying to stop cold turkey endure. (Incidentally, that’s exactly how my father quit, so I suppose my genetics had a lot to do with it.)
Similarly, the idea that nobody drinks alcohol for its taste is untenable. I no longer drink, but I’m fully stocked with various near-beers, because I do love the taste of them, and the non-alcoholic industry is growing, such that a couple of breweries have enough NAs in their line-ups to offer variety packs (right now, I have a 12-pack of Brooklyn Brewery’s sampler.) Guinness just released an NA beer here in the US over the last few months that, to me, is pretty darned close to the fully leaded product, and that makes me so happy, because I missed the taste and mouthfeel of Guinness. There’s a lot of decent-to-very-good NA beers out there – it’s a growing industry if not a minute fraction of the overall industry. But it ain’t all O’Douls and Sharps, and it is not solely marketed to people who can’t drink alcohol, but also to people who choose not to for health and fitness reasons, but who like the taste. There are people like that out there. Hell, my wife only buys the NA stuff these days because the calorie count is lower (and not only because of me, as there is other alcohol in the house.)
Now if they could only make a wine that tastes even remotely like the real thing. I’ve tried a couple and they are all absolutely terrible. It may not be possible, as wine has more alcohol and alcohol is needed to carry certain flavors. And I’ve tried the NA whiskey out of morbid curiosity and … well … that’s all that needs to be said about that.
It’s the same error of overgeneralization that leads to people saying stuff like “oh, you only eat sushi because it looks cool” or “I don’t understand why you love hot peppers so much. I like to taste my food. Must be just an exercise in machismo.” No, sushi is fucking delicious, and I taste my food just fine – hot pepper tolerance vary wildly among individuals and their experiences with it. I don’t try to tell you that cilantro doesn’t taste like soap just because it doesn’t to me (or more that I’ve gotten used to the flavor such that I don’t notice it.)
Seltzers are the latest thing. Kind of like a hard soda pop and every alcohol company is making them. The companies are making money hand over fist because these seltzers are just grain alcohol, carbonated water, and flavorings, they don’t even need to be brewed in any way to create them.
I don’t know how long the trend will last but for right now my local bar can’t keep them in stock. Hard soda pop, I understand that Mountain Dew is coming out with one but I have not seen it yet. From a business viewpoint it is a dream product that just needs to be mixed and bottled or canned. They are the new Zima but many more flavors.
Yeah, they’ve been a thing for a couple of years now. Before I stopped drinking, I’ve had a few and … I don’t quite get it except that it is a low-calorie alcoholic drink with the ethanol buzz. That one I don’t see being drunk so much for the taste, as I could just have a regular seltzer for that. But who knows.
Lagunitas has been making NA Hop Water for a spell now. That’s just basically seltzer with hop flavors in it, as you might guess. I love that stuff, but it’s like $6 for a four-pack. Why LaCroix or some other mass market seltzer brand can’t have their own hops flavored seltzer, I don’t know. I would love to buy a 12-pack of the stuff at like $6. (I assume probably not enough market demand, of course.)
Yeah, I don’t think anyone loves their very first taste of booze, but “it’s an acquired taste” is not remotely the same thing as “nobody really likes it”.
This was going to be my contribution to this thread.
This got me thinking…if historically (we’re talking thousands of years ago, up to the present) people drank beer because it was safer than tainted drinking water, and some people these days want to drink a beer as a substitute for water, perhaps this helps explain the lingering appeal of macro brew?
The inoffensive flavor profiles of macrobrews are a feature, not a bug. Not even a result of poor decisions in the brewing process. They are, very deliberately, prioritizing a feature called drinkability. They don’t want you smacking your lips and commenting on the subtle undertones of corn. They want you to say, “sure, I’ll have another.”
Whatever else you care to say about macrobrews, they’re easy to drink and maximally versatile. If (gun to my head) I absolutely had to have a beer after two hours running around in the heat and you gave me the choice between any of my favorites and a bud light, I’d probably choose the bud light precisely because of how easy it is to drink.
I don’t like their taste at all, but I’m sure you are right about their being engineered to satisfy. “Drinkability” is an interesting idea. I’ll look into it. (I know a bit about engineering optimization; no doubt they have some metric they’re gunning for. Whatever it is, it doesn’t work for me.)
Vaping rarely bothers me, and no second hand smoke dangers afaik. SHS kills around 50000 Americans a year.
I was talking to a recovered heroin addict, who could not quit smoking for any time, and he explained it as cigs are a social thing and so easy to get. Go behind a bar where the addicts are lighting up, and one can almost always bum a cig, whereas that doesn’t happen with heroin, etc. He hated the detox for heroin, but once clean, he rarely had the desire to go back (He became a Sponsor). But nicotine kept nagging at him.
I’m firmly in the “nope” camp on this. I love good beer (but mainly stouts and porters) and good wine and hard cider and a well made muddled strawberry margarita makes me very happy but I very much dislike the effects of alcohol and if I could get drinks that taste the same but don’t have the shitty after effects I would 100% drink them in preference to the alcoholic versions. Unfortunately the only nonalcoholic beers available suck sweaty donkey balls and if you want the flavor a good tequila brings you must suffer the alcohol too. Man, I would love being able to suck down five or six 'ritas with my Mexican food but nope, gotta drink iced tea instead and that’s just not as good. Dammit.
I meant in the sense of a drink intended to be inoffensive and easy to drink, like wine coolers, Zima, etc… as opposed to more traditional alcoholic beverages that you have to develop a taste for.
Oh, I absolutely have no doubt this is true for many people – it’s certainly a viewpoint I’ve heard reported more than a few times. It’s just that everyone is different, though I would not be surprised if the studies validate the anecdotes. I found it somewhat odd that while at a hospital for detox/rehab, cigarettes were freely provided three times a day to anyone who wanted a smoke (provided their doctor signed off on it.) Trade one addiction for another, I guess. (But more like harm reduction, I suppose.) I did have the first cigarettes of many, many years then, but had no desire to go back after I was released.
They really don’t these days. There’s some good ones out there. Athletic Brewery’s line is pretty good. Lagunitas IPNA is quite palatable. The Guinness NA is good enough that I’m not sure I’d be able to blindly pick it out. Maybe side by side, but if you handed it to me at a bar when I was drinking, I’m pretty confident I would not have noticed, and if I did, I’d simply chalk it up to normal variation from bar to bar. Big Drop has a solid line. If you’re into Euro lagers, Heineken 0.0% is close to the real thing (which may be damning with faint praise.) Like I said above, it’s not all Sharps and O’Douls these days. I do find IPAs lend themselves (probably for obvious reasons) much better to de-alcoholization. But don’t hold your breath for a good non-alcoholic “spirit” like tequila. I haven’t had anything even remotely close.
See now, there’s the problem. Do NOT like lagers and pilsners and IPAs even one bit–and I respectfully submit that nobody’s bothered to tackle making a GOOD NA stout or porter. In fact, one of the reasons I like stouts and porters (I mean, aside from tasting awesome) is they tend to have a lower alcohol content. As for Guinness, not sure why but I have never warmed to the stuff. Someday I hope that they’ll make an NA Black Butte Porter or Anchor Steam Porter or Rogue Hazelnut Brown or Shakespeare Stout but I won’t be holding my breath in anticipation of it!
Big Drop’s NA Galactic Milk Stout is pretty decent if you like milk stouts. Got a good mouth feel, sweetness, nice roasted, chocolate-y flavors. But, yeah, it’s still missing a little something. Not bad, though. I know I’ve tried a few others, but nothing else has left an impression enough to seek more out. But I would recommend trying that one, though it may be difficult to find. They brew it here in Chicago (I believe contracted from some UK company). I’d give it around a 3.5/5.
AAUI, beer in around the middle ages, more or less, was liquid bread. I mean, look, it has yeast, and has holes in it, just like bread. It was a lot like near beer in alcohol content (0.5~1%) but was non-pasteurized and brewed to retain most of its food value. It was rather a staple in many homes. The water thing (most water was pretty dangeous drunk straight) was why people like jesus of nazareth drank wine all the time, because it tended to be safer.