Devoid of Flavor

I went on a vacation to Florence after college - it was one of those things that Ivy-league students do. I know full well how pretentious that sounds. You know what? Bite me. :P

Anyway, my friends and I were using the Let's Go series of guides, because Ivy graduates only trust other Ivy graduates or somesuch. The entry for Florence discussed a restaurant that was good and cheap, and yet totally devoid of atmosphere. I think it actually said "totally devoid of atmosphere." Being a curious and contrary lot, we became fixated on what such a restaurant would entail, and decided to go. Turns out it was a great decision - the reviewer had written up the pizza parlor on the ground floor, but the heart and soul of the restaurant, La Mangiatoia, was in the basement, and it was: a. full of locals, and b. amazing, and c. still really cheap. Sometimes it pays to poke around in a review and see what the reviewer meant. I hope you do with my little write-ups. Push back if you think I'm wrong.

On that note, the following blurb was written up by Eric Asimov of the New York Times in this weekend's Magazine, specifically in the Drinks portion. I can't permalink to his blurb itself, so I'm going to rip it and quote the whole thing. Reprinted here entirely without permission:

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Bud Light, Coors Light, Miller Lite: Is There Any Difference?

BY ERIC ASIMOV

Denis Carrier

It's true that the craft-beer movement of the last 30 years has exposed a lot of Americans to the idea that good beer is complex, flavorful and distinctive. It's also true that Americans buy an enormous amount of terrible beer. Six of the 10 best-selling beers in the United States are light beers, including Bud Light at No. 1 (it outsells No. 2 Budweiser by more than 2 to 1), Coors Light at No. 3 and Miller Lite at No. 4. Because huge budgets are devoted to television advertising, industry analysts say that light-beer sales are "marketing driven." Basically, what the beers taste like is less important than the effectiveness of their ads — Bud Light's "Real Men of Genius" or Miller Lite's "Be a Man" campaign or Coors Light's labels that turn blue when properly cold. And apparently there is a need for the latter — sales of Bud Light and Miller Lite have declined for three straight years as Coors Light has shown modest growth.

I recently sampled the best-selling light beers to see if there was any palatable difference between them. The results: Coors Light offered no smell and no taste, but as the label indicated, it was indeed cold. Bud Light, which promises "superior drinkability," had only the faintest hint of bitterness but was otherwise devoid of flavor. Miller Lite was the clear winner. It seemed almost robust by comparison, but still hardly bitter. For added thrills, I drank a Michelob Ultra, the 12th-best-selling brand. Now here was a beer that truly tasted like nothing — no smell, no taste, not even the cold sensation of the Coors Light. If you want to drink basically nothing, Michelob Ultra is for you.

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I love this post for two reasons: 1. it's full of snark, and 2. it's blatantly elitist. As mentioned earlier this summer, about once a year, I drink a lot of Bud Light. I've had all four of those light beers up there, but not all at once, and I'd like to follow Mr. Asimov's and try to do a side-by-side comparison of all of them.

Slow News Day

Welcome to the slow news cycle... August has always been pretty lazy and boring, which is generally how I like things to be. Low on content, high on snark? Sign me up.

But when the Metro, that free and already content-thin newspaper that's distributed en route to the subway by 45-year-old vendors who have a look of pleading desperation in their eyes, decides to put a story about man-boobs, or moobs on its front page, I've had enough. Thankfully, September is here. Wha-wha-whaaaat? Where did my summer go? Oh right, it was eated by teh bar exam. Dear bar exam: get bent. I want my summer back. And not just more August - I want the good parts, like July.

We've both now discussed some canned beers: I've extolled the virtues of the Oskar Blues Old Chub, while Mr. West Coast just enjoyed the Anderson Valley Summer Solstice Cerveza Crema. Just as there's a movement toward the technological breakthrough of the screw-top wine bottle, there's a growing preference for the magic of canned beer. No more beer-skunking UV light penetration; ease of manufacture and shipping; durability - all of these things are great virtues for a beverage-containment-unit. Why don't more people use it? Maybe because we've come to associate the can with the noxious macro-brews that dominate the American market. Maybe the fresh-foods mantra has gotten to us, and we no longer trust anything that comes in a can (except for San Marzano tomatoes - those things are amazing). This demands more research.

In the meantime, more adventurous eaters (yes, I said eaters) can try deep fried beer. Via gawker.

Finally, if anyone's in the market for a kitchen redesign, may I suggest the BeerVault. Pretty...

Yes, I realize I'm re-posting instead of generating content. What can I say? It was August for far too much of last week. I'm off to the supermarket, to see what's left on the shelves after the swarm of hurricane-crazed shoppers went through after Gov. Patrick declared a state of emergency.

A Philosophical Question

So both of us are readers of Serious Eats, and a link came through today that I found interesting. Not interesting as in "wow, that's cool," or interesting as in "fascinating." More interesting as in "wow, this guy's full of crap."

Specifically, the blogger, Jeff, asks whether beer can be perfect. A few choice edits to tease out of the post:

• "Bill [a fellow beer judge] declared, boldly, that there's no such thing as a 50-point beer. A 49--theoretically possible. But no such beer exists that could not be improved upon."

• "If you don't believe in a perfect beer, then each sniff and sip is forensic; you're looking for the imperfection. Imperfections may be objective or purely a matter of taste. . . . I taste it meditatively. I try to see what the brewer was doing. . . . A beer must be perfect on its own terms--the realization of the brewer's highest goals."

If we may assume the best of brewers that they wouldn't send out or ship crappy product, then Jeff's relativism, in my opinion, means that every beer is perfect, since the brewer's highest goals would be to produce a beer about which he or she can be proud. And that's ridiculous. And even if we don't assume the best of brewers (imagining that they're weighing the cost of perfection against expected profit) we'd conclude that the guy who brews Firestone Walker Double Barrel Ale (or any other beer either of us isn't wild about) sent out beer he's not proud of because it's not in his economic interests to do so. Even then, if that's what the brewer's goal is, then perfect! - hooray. Somehow, I don't think Steve agrees that the DBA is perfect. But the guy who made it thinks it is. So cheers to that guy? Really?

Jeff also gets into some religious motif I'm not even going to wade into. And a commenter named "dr wort" decided to provide (copy & paste) a dictionary definition of the word "judge," as if the definition will help us wade through the argument somehow. Real helpful.

In his first post, my co-blogger put up some numerical scores for beer. I see nothing wrong with this, but I found his comments are much more compelling and informative, and ultimately, more useful than his numbers. For me, it's not about a score - it's about whether I liked the beer at the time, what I thought about it, and whether I can describe it in words. We're allowed this kind of wishy-washy descriptor: we're blogging about beer because we love it, not judging it for competition, I'll grant, but I'd much rather write a paragraph about a beer than attempt to assign a score or a grade, especially when nobody can agree on what a perfect 10 even means.