Coors launches an iced-tea flavored beer. On the one hand, this is disgusting, perhaps a sign of the impending Apocalypse. On the other hand, at least some form of Coors will taste like something other than the chilled piss of albino marmots. That’s not nothing.
The End is Beer, Er, Near
49 Responses to The End is Beer, Er, Near
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Elizabeth Anne says:
Wait, is that iced tea or sweet tea? I mean, I *guess* the chilled piss of a diabetic albino marmot will offer up some variety…
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MH - secular misanthropist says:
The crack about albino marmots was laugh out loud funny.
However all the mass produced Pilsners have the same problem as Coors. Basically pilsners are mild beers and the mass produced pilsners especially so, but they are easy to mass market and won’t be going away anytime soon.
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Not being a beer drinker, I must assume you feel about Coors the way I feel about Starbucks — tastes like it was strained through a cat box.
If only. At least then it would taste like something.
My best friend in college went to East Berlin one summer when it was still communist. He said such was the evil of communism that it turned Germans — Germans! — into makers of vile beer.
By the by, I haven’t found any Louisiana-made craft brews that approach the quality of any of the Philly-area craft brews. Tin Roof’s pale ale out of Baton Rouge is crisp and hoppy, and my favorite, but it’s not Yards. And get this: you can’t buy Delaware’s glorious Dogfish Head in Louisiana.
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AnotherBeliever says:
Hear, hear. Prozt! I’m drinking Weihenstephan tonight. Brewery’s been around since 1040. I am very fond of German beer. Fortunately there’s a guy two blocks from my house that sells a nice selection of it. Also some interesting local brews. He keeps restocking his shop with new stuff so trying it all promises to be a long process. A long heroic effort which I shall attempt regardless of the chances of success… Duty calls and all that.
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Not all cultures are beer cultures, sadly. I’m spoiled rotten by life in Wisconsin, but there are two hundred years of German immigrants making that happen.
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Jeff says:
We gotta get you up to east-central Ohio, sir; http://www.weaselboybrewing.com/brown-stoat-stout/4551027987 — just down the road from here in beautiful downtown Zanesville, Ohio.
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philosopher says:
*shudder*
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Cole says:
Why specifically *albino* marmots? Not being a beer drinker (I prefer scotch), I’m curious as to the effect melanin has on a beverage’s flavor. If you could support this with studies, that would be awesome.
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Charles Cosimano says:
Coors is not beer. It’s dishwater labeled as beer so making it taste like iced tea is an improvement.
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I like craft-brewed beers, especially the Stouts and Porters, but Coors Original and Coors Light have a special place in my heart as well. If you don’t think of it as beer, you might find them refreshing. Both are smoother than their other big-market Lager counterparts, and they’re both good additions to a hot day. The picnic, the pool, the haymow, the campfire, these are the places to enjoy Coors.
They’re made from better water, and they ship the kegs on a train. Just sayin’,
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Not being a beer drinker, I must assume you feel about Coors the way I feel about Starbucks — tastes like it was strained through a cat box.
Interestingly enough, buckwheat honey’s taste reminds me of the smell of wet cedar shavings from the guinea pig cage, but for some reason it is more pleasing than you would think.
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Why specifically *albino* marmots?
Paleness.
I will say when I was in college, and whatever was on special was the beer I was drinking that night, Coors was my favorite cheap lager. I guess it had to do with the quality of the water. None of its competitors were quite as crisp. Dollar domestic longnecks and 25 cent raw oysters at the Chimes was a great reward at the end of a young LSU scholar’s week in the 1980s. But man, was it ever a good day when I graduated and got a job and could afford to drink what I wanted.
You know what’s pretty horrible beer? Heineken. I used to drink it all the time, back when there wasn’t much else available. I tried Heineken in Holland once, and it tastes much, much better, for some reason. Still, I was told by Dutch people that it’s basically the Budweiser of Holland. And Stella Artois is the Pabst Blue Ribbon of Belgium. It’s kind of a joke among them that it’s so prized here. But then, some years ago I made a trip to Holland and was shocked to see a fad for drinking American Budweiser.
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Zach says:
Mass-produced beer might taste crappy, but in all honesty you’ve got to admire the big beer corporations’ ability for consistency – that is, a bottle opened in Florida will taste the same as a bottle opened in New York, and the same as a bottle opened in California. I’ll stick with Yuengling, though. The largest US-based brewer, but still fairly small enough to brew good beer.
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bayesian says:
Rod -
Good heavens, until I looked at the Dogfish website I had no idea how spotty their distribution was (though they do have Kentucky, oddly enough). You poor man: Internet problems are one thing, but what choices in a decently-bodied IPA _do_ you have there (presumably going to Baton Rouge for it)? I know Stone doesn’t ship outside of the West, Harpoon just finally reached Chicago a little while ago. Lagunitas? Firestone? Mad River? Shipyard? Bueller? (There’s much to be said for St Francisville, and you’ve said some of it very well, but, well, you have my sympathy).
OK, if you ever find yourself near Long Beach, CA, I’ll buy.
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I used to drink Wiedeman (which I think no longer exists) in college because it was cheap. My buddies called it “Waterman”, which was about right–it wasn’t even as bracing as albino marmot piss. As to sheer nasty, Moose Head has Coors beat by a long shot. Think septic moose entrails….
MH, try a real Pilsner sometime. Pilsner Urquell, actually made in Pilsen (Plzeň in Czech), is nothing like what we demean the name by calling in this country. It’s light but has lots of character, is very hoppy, and has a bit of a bite to it. It’s one of my favorite beers, which I’d recommend to all and sundry.
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Rich says:
I’ve spent a lot of time in India in the last few years. Budweiser is hugely popular there amongst the upper classes. So is Fosters. They have a local lager called Kingfisher which is their cheap domestic. I like it though.
Rod, change oysters to tacos and LSU to Texas Tech, and it sounds like we had similar 1980s. Coors was the big beer in Lubbock back then. I don’t think I’ve had a Coors in 20 years.
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Fran Macadam says:
And Mercedes are lowly taxis in Europe, too.
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Niall says:
I’m usually pretty parochial and Anglocentric about beer, specifically the glory that is English and Welsh real ale, but I have to admit that I’ve had some superb craft beers when visiting the northeastern US and Western Canada. As far as lager is concerned, with a few honourable exceptions, my attitude is very much “beers longa, vita brevis”. Our allotted time upon this earth is much too fleeting to drink bad beer.
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JonF says:
Coors is beer-flavored kool-aid.
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Sam M says:
Coors Extra Gold is the Banquet Beer. Why do you hate banquets? It’s also the beer that poured best through my tap system in college. Clearly it is delicious, in ways Proustian and others.
But generally, complaining that an American pilsner or lager is not packed with flavor is like complaining that your lettuce isn’t chocolatey enough, or that your saltines don’t taste enough like sardines. It’s not supposed to have a strong flavor. I once heard Alton Brown talk about pairing foods with Rolling Rock. He likes it for spicey stuff.
For me, Coors tastes like 1993. It tastes like Elks Club. It tastes like no muss, no fuss, let’s forget about hoppiness and talk about the Steelers or help cousin Billy move his furniture to a new apartment. It tastes like let’s not buy a case of Guinness because it costs too much and besides, 1/3 of the people there won’t like it and we’ll need to buy more of something else. It tastes like Uncle Paul only has Hamms at his house, but who cares, it’s rude to turn your nose up. It tastes like what we are really talking about here is people, and the beer is secondary, so let’s not worry about it. It also tastes like 80 or 90 years of tradition.
This might sound like lowest common denominator, but there is something to be said for that, actually. You might choose to not serve Coors at your house for the same reason you might not choose to play Slayer on the stereo when you have people over. A lot of people aren’t interested in pushing the envelope of hoppiness and exploring new territory.
It reminds me of college, when the musically inclined spent hours and hours concocting mix tapes for parties, aimed at shocking virgin ears or wooing nubile girls or making a statement about something or other. Despite all their best efforts, most of the virgin ears and nubile girls didn’t care one whit. They did not agree that’s what music was for, and were perfectly fine with the marmot piss of Pearl Jam or Led Zeppelin. It’s not that they actively rejected the mix tape. It was worse than that. They simply didn’t bother to notice it.
Long live tranparent, ice-cold beer. Long live tradition. Long live cousin Billys furniture. Long live the banquet!
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BCaldwell says:
Coors or Budweiser is excellent after mowing the lawn in the height of summer when you just want something cold in you. But if I’m buying for serious consumption then I prefer to go with Belgian like Chimay(Grand Reserve) Duvel or Achel-if you can find it. I do however like Lazy Magnolia Southern Pecan Nut Brown Ale. It’s only really available in the Deep South – Kiln, MS
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John M. says:
Beer marketers, like their tobacco selling siblings, have to find ways to market to kids to inculcate the next generation with their swill. It’s all about selling to kids . . .
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Rob says:
Pace your complaint that you can’t find palatable microbrews near your new home, are you surprised to find that the South is not a beer culture? Well, now you know. Welcome back.
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MWT says:
I believe Jupiler is the PBR of Belgium, not Stella.
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Mark the Zealot says:
Having lived in Brussels for three years, I believe I am qualified to confirm that both Stella and Jupiler are the PBR of Belgium. There was one beer that was even lower of the beer totem pole whose name escapes me (Marasou?), but there was certainly no need for that when you could get Chimay Blue at a grocery store for around 50 cents a bottle. Oh, and don’t forget to pick up some Chimay cheese, Chimay butter, and a Chimay bagette while you are at it. Any idea how I would spend sunny Saturday afternoons (admittedly, a rarety) in my garden on the Rue Americain?
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Steve says:
Craft beer sales going up, macro-piss sales going down (though of course the macros still have the market share advantage). This is just another gimmick, like the absurd Miller Lite “vortex bottle” and the revolting Bud Light Lime, etc.
I went to a beer event in NYC years ago that featured Garrett Oliver, brewmaster of widely loved (but IMO overrated) Brooklyn Brewery. He made a funny point: describing Budweiser/Coors Light/etc. as “beer” is like calling Wonder Bread, well, “bread.”
I live in Chicago, where there’s a huge “beer scene explosion” going on. Strongly recommend Half Acre’s offerings, if you ever come across it. They’ve been expanding lately, though probably not as far as Louisiana. You’re most likely to see four-packs of their Daisy Cutter Pale Ale tallboys. That’s a terrific, refreshing hot-day beer that could replace any of the piss-flavored macros out there.
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thehova says:
Coors is very bland (you might as well save cash and go for keystone light). But miller/budweiser aren’t bad. They are fine American style pilsners.
I love pilsners. I find the extreme, hoppy style beers to be overdone.
Nothing beats a fine, subtle pilsner. There’s a reason why most microbrewies can’t make a good pilsner. It’s hard. You can’t cover up your mistakes by pouring in the hops.
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Turmarion, I’ve had Pilsner Urquell and it’s not bad, but I prefer nut brown ales and stouts to lagers.
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Susan D. says:
I’m troubled by the thought that somebody actually knows what chilled albino marmot piss tastes like…
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“are you surprised to find that the South is not a beer culture?”
But it is a beer culture. It’s just focused on different aspects and definitionns of what beer is and what it’s for beer.
This is kind of like someone who wears $5,000 suits declaring that people who wear $2,000 suits don’t care about clothes. Or that something from a Brooks Brothers trunk show is “junk.” Or that someone who buys Dickies is somehow anti-clothing, or doesn’t care how they look.
The snobbery works in both directions, I know. But I think people need to be aware of the tribalism at stake here. Someone who drinks Genessee can take a Hamm’s drinker to task as part of a jovial internicine squabble. (Interesting that my Uncle Paul, the Hamm’s guy, referred to my dad’s Genessee as “panther piss” rather than “marmot piss.”) But someone from OUTSIDE the tribe is seen as hopelessly snobbish for making the same remarks from the world of Chimay. My mom and her fellow Italian-Americans have a similar tribal instinct with regard to the use of words like “dago.” They can use it. You cannot.
I could come to St. Francisville with a case of excellent, Pennsylvania-brewed Staub Beer and call Coors pather piss, because the beers are similar enough. But to come in and write an entire category out of the “beer culture” is a different thing entirely.
Think of it this way: A Saints fan would understand and perhaps even welcome the opportunity to counter my claims that the Steelers are actually the one, true measure of football greatness. Those same fans would be less open to claims that football is stupid and does not qualify as a sport, unlike basketball, which is awesome.
Worse would be a guy from Belgium coming in and telling the crew that neither football nor basketball qualifes as a sport, and are far inferior to cricket and soccer.
But the worst, by far, would be if someone from your hometown, who used to like football just fine, traveled to Europe then came home and declared that the American South does not, in fact, have a sport culture at all, because the preference for football is indicative of vulgar tastes, so someone please Fed Ex me a Chimay tut de suit.
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CK says:
I thought the end was signified by wine coolers?
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Brett R. says:
@ Elizabeth Anne- how right you are. I now know I can never leave Wisconsin because I cannot lose access to copious supplies of New Glarus Spotted Cow.
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TWylite says:
Having a Lone Star “beer” was the most revolting faux beer moment I’ve had in my life. That’s not counting my one attempt at homebrewing, since I’m an amateur. It’s been a long time since I’ve had Coors, but all those canned beers that come in 24-packs for about 50 cents a can taste about the same to me. Not good, but at least in the beer genus of drinks. Not so for Lone Star. That was some beer-flavored Kool-Aid.
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The snobbery works in both directions, I know.
But why is it “snobbery” to say that this tastes better than that? It seems to me that snobbery would involve a) making that call based on no substantial criteria, and b) assuming that people who prefer what you deem to be the superior beer are, because of that, superior people.
If you asked me to explain why Dogfish Head tastes better than Schaefer Light, I, who don’t know much about how beer is structured, would say that it’s like trying to explain why “Rhapsody in Blue” is superior to “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” There’s just a lot more interesting stuff going on in the Dogfish Head than the Schaefer.
I don’t know, Rob, why you say that the South isn’t a beer culture. Just about everybody I knew growing up drank beer. They still do. True, brewing beer isn’t a tradition here, but drinking it? Oh yeah.
To be sure, I like some of the beers down here, especially Abita Turbo Dog, and Tin Roof’s pale ale, which goes great with spicy food. It’s crisp but also hoppy. I’ve just not found the overall quality of Louisiana microbrews to be as good as microbrews in the Philadelphia area.
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Mr. Patrick says:
Mr. Dreher writes:
“I don’t know, Rob, why you say that the South isn’t a beer culture. Just about everybody I knew growing up drank beer. They still do. True, brewing beer isn’t a tradition here, but drinking it? Oh yeah.”I can’t speak for Rob, but I can say there’s the South and there’s The South. Where my family comes from, and still with the Methodist ones moved up north, the only debatable merit regarding beer is which one sends you to Hell fastest and deepest.
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Roland de Chanson says:
Since I have been making home-made beer, I have found the most difficult part is dreaming up names for the various recipes.
I think I will call my latest Kölsch Drehers Albinomurmeltierpisse.
This blog is indispensable. (Great bon mot, Rod!)
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“But why is it “snobbery” to say that this tastes better than that?”
But is that what people are saying? Do you read the original post and the cooments as, “Well, I certainly do prefer a hoppier beer than what’s on offer from the popular mass market beers”?
Isn’t that a little different than saying, “What you drink is marmot piss”?
Again, this cuts both ways. Trotting out a Chimay in some establishments is going to incite accusations that you are light in the loafers, or that you hate America, or that your prefered motorcyle is likely a rice-burner. Etc.
But I think that even a cursory reading of the post and the comments reveals something other than an ordinal ranking of how this tastes versus how that tastes. Marmot piss. Straining through the cat box. Honestly, to me it’s all in good fun. But if you are occasionally wondering why some people ask “Why isn’t this good enough,” but don’t consider your response in the most charitable way possible… this is part of the reason.
Questions about taste are never just about taste. Which is why people get so worked up about things like soccer and Wal-Mart. They are about culture. And places are kid of sensitive about certain things.
I spent years in Baltimore. I made fun of their accent and their terrible pizza. But some things I did not touch.
You admit that you live in a place that has a very strong beer culture. At least a beer consumption culture. You are right about that.
So when you enter that culture and say, “Your culture is wrong about beer, and you drink monkey piss,” that’s going to be received differently than, “I prefer a different style of beer.”
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But is that what people are saying? Do you read the original post and the cooments as, “Well, I certainly do prefer a hoppier beer than what’s on offer from the popular mass market beers”?
Isn’t that a little different than saying, “What you drink is marmot piss”?
Well, yeah, but I was having this conversation the other day with my dad, who said he did not like hoppy beers, because they tasted way too bitter. I said that I do, and that I didn’t think the kind of beer he likes has much flavor. That was the end of it. If I said to him his preferred beer tastes like marmot piss, I would do so with a wink and a laugh. If I thought he’d honestly be insulted by it, I wouldn’t say it, or I wouldn’t bring up the subject at all. I don’t care enough about beer to fight over it. I could be wrong, but I don’t think I know anybody who cares enough about beer to throw down over which tastes better, Michelob or Chimay.
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Public_Defender says:
“the chilled piss of albino marmots”
Mr. Dreher,
Does this mean that you find the warm piss of non-albino marmots tasty? Or the chilled piss of non-albino marmots? What about the warm piss of albino marmots?
Maybe this another Southern thing that non-Southerners just will never understand.
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Sean says:
This reminds me of an off-color joke:
Q: What do Coors Lite and sex in a canoe have in common?
A: They’re both f***ing close to water.By far my worst beer experience was in Egypt. Their most widely-available beer is called “Stella” (no relation to Artois, but owned by Heineken) and it tastes like a PBR that was exposed to the Egyptian sun for a summer month.
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“I could be wrong, but I don’t think I know anybody who cares enough about beer to throw down over which tastes better, Michelob or Chimay.”
You’d have no trouble finding those people in Portland, OR.
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Chafe says:
@ElizabethAnne: Thank you. After reading all of Rod’s recent food posts I had got to bemoaning the fact that Wisconsin’s food culture ain’t the greatest. (Bratwurst’ll only get you so many meals a year. Cheese is great, but rarely the main event.) But then you remind me that we’ve got it great here, beerwise.
Another thought that ought to resonate amongst the crunchies: drinking local beer is a great way to be an environmentalist. Because – seriously – think about how much energy it takes to transport that stuff.
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My version is a bit different, but Sean beat me to the canoe, as it were.
One possible other difference, though, was being told that by a very prim and proper young lady (on whom I had a big, college freshman crush) in upstate NY, where Genesee Cream Ale (Genny Cream) was the very cheap chugging beer of choice. BTW, it was in the ancient times before the drinking age was raised from 18.Pennsylvania has as long a brewing history as any place that was a British colony. Philadelphia has a Brewerytown (still home to Philadelphia Brewing Co. and Yards), and is the central meeting point for Flying Fish, Victory and Troegs (Gettysburg). Brewpubs of note: Nodding Head (thermonuclear chicken wings!), Dock Street and Sly Fox.
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Rod:
My response is twofold: First, the South (or, The South, as I’ve been corrected above) isn’t a beer culture in that it isn’t a brewery culture. Sure, every redneck drinks (beer can wind chimes and all that). But how many microbreweries are in the South? It’s a growing trend of course, but you’ll never find the sheer concentration and variety of locally brewed beers in any part of the South as you will, say, in Wisconsin or Portland. For one thing, beer requires Germans (or Belgians, etc.), and one thing the South doesn’t have is a lot of Germans. The confusion is mine, of course: I failed to distinguish between merely drinking beer and literal beer cultures, i.e., semi-holistic ways-of-life centered around beer, where beer consumption and production (and hence connoisseurship) is an acceptable, non-snobbish segment of life. Trust me: nothing like that exists anywhere in the South, except perhaps in a few trendy urban locales like Austin, etc.
Second, unless I’m mistaken, a substantial part of the South–the Old South, at least–is coterminous with one of the only regions in the United States that still enforces liquor laws–dry counties, state-monopolized alcohol stores, and the like. A substantial minority of folks in my community don’t drink at all for moral reasons. The Methodist/Baptist temperance complex is still powerful here, and the laws are not a dead letter. In my temporary exile here in Wisconsin, I am still in complete awe of how sheerly acceptable it is to drink. In my hometown, bars were few, and they were only frequented by a “certain kind” of people (mainly white trash).
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Fair enough, Rob. I concede that as far as alcohol goes, I am in an outlying cultural region. Even Protestants in south Louisiana are more “Catholic” with regard to booze than their brethren in the northern half of the state, who are probably more in line with the kind of Southern cultural norms you grew up with. New Orleans had breweries — when I was a kid, I vaguely remember Falstaff, Jax, and Dixie in supermarket coolers — but they all pretty much died out. Now there are craft breweries emerging out of Greater New Orleans.
I think you’re probably right, though, that beer connoisseurship is considered effete and snobbish in most of the South. I remember being at a social event in the Philadelphia area with working and middle class folks, with everybody drinking locally made craft beers, and talking about them — not as experts, but as people who had come to really appreciate the differences between beers, and why they liked one better than the other. I remember thinking at the time that this doesn’t seem like something that we would do back home in Louisiana. On the other hand, I do notice it happening a lot more with people my age and younger (I’m 45) than our parents’ generation.
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” I think I will call my latest Kölsch Drehers Albinomurmeltierpisse.”
- Roland de ChansonHilarious!
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“Sure, every redneck drinks (beer can wind chimes and all that). But how many microbreweries are in the South?”
But this is begging the question. People who argue that soccer “isn’t a real sport” do the same thing. “There are no crishing hits, so it’s not a sport.” And presto, you define away any competing versions.
As to Rod’s progression, I find in interesting. The initial post says most beer drinkers drink monkey piss. Later, it became, “I am just talking about which tastes better.” Near the end, it became, “I don’t think I know anybody who cares enough about beer to throw down over which tastes better, Michelob or Chimay.”
But people do care enough about which tastes better. They care enough, in fact, to say that other people who prefer something else are drinking monkey piss.
Again, this can be good natured ribbing. My dad and my Uncle Paul had that Hamm’s/Genessee for decades. later, my uncle’s daughter married a guy who drank Michelob. The guys on the porch ribbed him as an effete snob. He lambasted them back as hillbilly old men. They had fun with it.
There are limits, however. Maybe I am more cautious by nature. Or maybe it’s simply that I have been back in ye olde home town longer than you have. But I usually tred very lightly on such things. Whether it’s how I educate my kids, how I deal with church or what kind of cheese I buy.
My wife buys a lot of fruit. It costs a lot of money. People think we are nuts. That we eat weird. They make fun of us for wasting all of our money. If we can’t afford to hire a sitter to go out, we get remarks about how we’d have more money if it weren’t for all those strawberries. I could respond in kind and talk about things they waste money on. Sometimes I do.
But I err on the side of clamming up when it comes to criticizing the consumption patterns of the locals. I am one. Sort of. But sort of not.
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I dunno, Sam, maybe you’re overthinking this. I don’t think I know anybody who feels so passionately about the beer they drink that they would be offended by someone saying, “Dude, that tastes like piss.” I could be wrong. My dad thinks the stuff I drink is horrible and bitter. I keep that in mind, and try to have something he likes when he comes over. I really don’t care. Beer is fun to argue over with people who take it seriously, but I haven’t yet met anybody here who takes it seriously enough to argue over — or at least we haven’t gotten into an argument. I was just making a wisecrack about iced-tea beer.
To be honest, I’m pretty sure that the super-hoppy beers I prefer taste more like cat piss really tastes than the watery brews the mass market likes. But again, I honestly don’t care. I mean, I care what I drink, but it doesn’t bother me if people don’t share my taste in beer. I have a new friend who really loves Bourbon. I like the taste of Bourbon, but I don’t know Bourbon well enough to be able to discern good Bourbon from mediocre Bourbon (though I do know that Jack Daniels is too sweet for my taste). He’s passionate about Bourbon, and I love to hear him talk about it. It helps me learn what to pay attention to when I’m drinking it.
I generally think connoisseurship is something to be encouraged. I can’t imagine thinking that having good taste in beer, wine, whisky, or anything else makes you a morally superior person, though. It only makes you somebody whose parties are extra-fun.
Not being a beer drinker, I must assume you feel about Coors the way I feel about Starbucks — tastes like it was strained through a cat box.