Beer

As I've mentioned before, I'm more or less a "live and let live" kind of person and only have a tendency towards snobbishness when it comes to: books and beer--don't know enough about wine to consider myself a snob there.

Anyway, I spent the weekend working one of the beer stands at downtown Fort Worth's Art Festival. The event is typically sponsored by Coors beer distribution. The main stage area beer stand sells the normal choices that every other stand has: Coors, Coors Lite, Killian's Red, Mike's Hard Lemonade. But it also sells specialty beers such as Blue Moon, Tecate and others. Then there is one stand that carries Miller Lite--the only stand in the event that does so.

This year I worked the "Miller" stand on the second day. We don't advertise at this booth that there is Miller--we just tell people or they come, sent from other stands looking for Miller specifically.

Now, I don't care for any Coors product, nor Miller products, nor Budweiser products--we did get many queries for Bud as well--I've never understood how anyone can actually stomach Bud--it is THE worst tasting beer I've ever had. At least with Coors, if it's cold enough, you can tolerate it.

Anyway, (here's my snobbishness), I just don't understand America's love affair with crappy beer? Especially when you look at beer history in America before Prohibition. There where many beers and breweries.

But, it was deeply disturbing to hear people be offended at being offered Miller over Coors and vice versa--I mean, a shit sandwich is a shit sandwich--arguing one tastes better because it's on rye bread instead of wheat makes no damn sense. Thank god for the late 80s and 90s when micro-brews where introduced and now the rest of us don't have to suffer having to choose from imports or crap. Now, we can patriotically hold our heads high and drink great American beer.

Ah, if only our international affairs was as good as our micro brews....