I Drink Beer

Last night I tweeted that "I like beer that tastes like beer".

Speaking purely for myself, if I want to drink something that doesn't taste like beer, I'll drink something other than beer, cider for example. Indeed, during the summer months there are many times when I would much rather have a pint of cider than some flaccid "lawnmower beer" drunk at the temperature of Antarctica on a particularly cold day. Heck, I'd sooner have a long glass of cold water than some of the beers, whether "craft" or otherwise, that are apparently good for refreshment after a session in the garden.

I am not a Reinheitsgebot fundamentalist, but there have been several times in the last few weeks when I have wondered if some brewers have gone from "pushing the envelope" to "jumping the shark"?

There are enough flavours from the malt, yeast and hops to keep a beer drinker happy and enjoying the complexities of beer without resorting to chucking fruit, honey or whatever happens to be at hand into the boil. I realise that there are beer traditions which use judicious amounts of fruit and spices, and strangely I have no issue with that, it is the "innovative" brewers making strange concoctions like gorilla snot and coconut bitter that bug my head.

Perhaps I am just a staid and boring, happy to sit in a proper pub, drinking a proper pint of properly made beer. Thankfully there are plenty of brewers out there making classic beers, that taste like beer, to those brewers, I salute you.