by Shawn Vest » Thu Jan 10, 2008 12:38 pm
ok
the adolescent argument doesn't hold true with wine? many first exposures to wine are to lower quality more readily available wines (my first wines were Boone's Farm and the ever popular Mad Dog - all of which can be argued are not even really wines)
but as adults, we don't stick with the drinks we had in the secrecy of our underage drinking extravaganzas
additionally, i differ in opinion about many first exposures to "exotic" beer
Sierra Nevada and Sam Adams may well be as available and popular as Guinness and Bass
but you are right the first transition from a domestic lager to either an import or a micro/macro brew can be an adventure fraught with peril and contradiction
but any new experience with food/drink can be just as adventurous if not more
(consider going from a fast food fish fillet to a blackened salmon or raw Ahi tuna)
my first exposure to beers were as follows - Lite beer by Miller (a horrible childhood experience that left me despising beer for a good long while) - Sam Adams Boston Lager - (to this day my least favorite "micro" brew) - then i found La Chouffe and the world of Belgium beer
and the price differential that everyone talks about
essentially a good beer will cost about twice that of a domestic swill beer - either in the retail, wholesale, or restaurant environment
good beers are not meant to be consumed in the same quantity or manner that swill beers are
- you drink bad beer to git rid of it and get the alcohol into your system, so you drink as many as possible, as fast as possible, the colder the better, the less you taste the better
- good beer is meant to be enjoyed, like a good wine, not up ended in the bottle and finished in a few swift gulps, but poured into a glass and enjoyed at a leisurely pace
SO YOU DON'T NEED TO DRINK 6+ good beers
in a typical sitting, i may only drink 15 or 20 ounces of great Belgian beer
compare that to what you would drink of a common domestic lager
Additionally, the price point is equivalent with a certain level of quality
the comparison between, fresh tuna and canned tuna is a good example
canned tuna is cheaper and most of us enjoyed it as kids, but when we go out to dinner at a nice restaurant - would we order a tuna fish salad sandwich or seared Tuna?
there is no question that mass market beers dominate the market and account for the majority of beer consumption
but the fact that they are still present in the fine dining world is inexplicable to me
Without question, the greatest invention in the history of mankind is beer. Oh, I grant you that the wheel was also a fine invention, but the wheel does not go nearly as well with pizza. D Barry
www.ctownpizzaco.com 850 MAIN 812-256-2699