Give Beer Some Respect

January 14, 2009

“Ten Commandments of Beer?
The cornerstones
of the Brewish faith!”      – Homer Simpson

We recently had a great guest post from Mark Brushaber about the lack of knowledge of servers. It reminded me that I had a post saved about my own beer pet peeves that would make a great companion piece.

It started way back in March on a road trip to Indy. We stopped at a chain to have a meal. I thought I could trust this place to get a Guinness. I should’ve known when the waitress asked if I wanted a straw with my Guinness that I was in trouble. She said everyone that orders a Guinness here gets a straw. After drinking it I knew why. The beer was too cold and over-carbonated. I had just heard on the Jamil Show that Jamil blows into a straw to reduce carbonation and then uses the straw to stir the beer to warm it up. I usually strangle my glass to try to warm it up but it takes a while and really only warms up the glass.

Here  are my other beer pet peeves…

Adding garnishes to the beer: There is a bar in my home town that serves Sam Adams Cherry Wheat. I’m not a huge fan of this beer but I’m even less of a fan of what this bar does to the beer. They add a maraschino cherry. This type of cherry is more candy than fruit and is the equivalent of putting a grape Jolly Rancher into a glass of wine. The idea of a fruit beer is to have the taste of the fruit but you should still be able to detect the style of the base beer. It throws off the balance of the flavors if you overwelm it with a garnish. This is also ususally when you add an orange slice to a pint of Bell’s Oberon.  I guess if you know more about brewing beer than Jim Koch or Larry Bell then, by all means, go ahead nad throw in your own ingredients. However, I will assume that you do not know more,  so leave my beer alone.

Frosted mugs:  This is fine when you are forced to drink a Labatts on dollar beer night. But when you see that a bar has New Holland’s The Poet and you are eagerly anticipating the flavor and it is destroyed by a glass with ice stuck to it. What do you do then? Sometimes it even develops ice chunks. I saw a polar bear float away on one and I wasn’t even drinking a Hamms. I don’t want to wait until my stout reaches a desired minimum temperature of 45 degrees.

No knowledge of beer/no beer menu: I could go on a tirade about the statement, “We have everything. Just name what you want” but I won’t. Mark covered something similar to that in his post. Instead, I want to talk about how beer takes a back seat to wine in restaurants. To me there is no meal a beer can’t go with. Think about the wide range of taste you get from beer. Citrusy,  smokey , sour, fruity, and bready are just a sampling of the flavors you get from beer. Yet, wine has it’s own menu. Places recommend the wine that goes with your meal even though most people will just order a bottle for the whole table because typically it is served in a bottle too big  for one person. Beer on the other hand has no list and you have to rely on the server’s memory to let you know what they serve. Usually they serve all the same style, any type of American Lager. Also, it is  served in easy to drink 12 ounces increments. And rarely, do they every bring you a glass without having to request one.

No  selection: This is my biggest pet peeve. I have complained about it numerous times. Our home town  has a buy local campaign. It  sounds like a great idea but there are huge problems with what they are pushing. I’ll stick to the subject of this blog and talk about the places that serve beer. They are asking us to go local with how we spend money yet many of the bars in our hometown don’t serve MI beer. If you want people to eat local maybe you should practice what you preach and have local products at your eatery.

I went out to one local restaurant  just the other day and had one of the best whitefish dinners I have ever had. I wanted an IPA to go with that beer. What were my choices? Twenty-plus lagers and three ales.  None of them were an IPA and none of them were Michigan beers. Ironically, the  name of the place was Michigan Bar and Grille.

I want to thank the places that serve great beer and do it the right way. You are greatly appreciated.

Posted in Beer Bar, Brewery/Brewpub, beer