Beer
First published 3/23/2000

For me, there have always been two kinds of beer: the kind you drink, and the kind you take to parties.

Because, here’s my secret: at home, I drink Club. There. I said it. Yes, I drink the cheap beer. You know why? Because it’s cheaper. And it’s beer! Come on, you bunch of snobs, beer is beer!

People are marketing victims when it comes to beer. For years Molson Golden was the cheapest beer in Canada, while, simultaneously, it was a premium beer in the U.S. The same beer! So if you took a pack of Molson Golden to a party in Canada you’d have to worry about people thinking you were some kind of sub-proletarian goof, while if you took the same beer -- the same beer! -- to a party in the U.S. all you’d have to worry about is getting shot on the highway on your way there.

It makes no sense. Beer is beer! (Or, mathematically speaking, beer = beer.) Liberate yourselves! If you really want to spend more money, buy the cheaper beer and drink more of it. You fools!

Of course, there’s one type of beer looked down on even more than cheap beer, and that’s homemade beer. Nobody wants to drink somebody else’s homemade beer. If you make homemade beer and you think your friends like it, you’re living in a dream world. Nobody wants to drink a dubious liquid out of a pseudo-clean bottle while sitting in somebody’s basement and that guy’s looking at you with an expectant expression on his face, forcing you to smile and say, "Hey, that’s pretty good!"

Even so, beer is beer. And homemade beer is even cheaper than cheap beer. So I bought a home beermaking kit.

I thought this would be a relaxing hobby but, oh boy, was I wrong! I found beermaking really stressful, and it took me a while to figure out why. It’s the germs. They’re not supposed to get inside your equipment. So the whole time you’re making this beer, siphoning stuff from one container to another, boiling water, measuring sugar, slaughtering a goat as a ritual sacrifice to the Yeast Gods, the whole time you’re going through these arcane and seemingly-pointless procedures, the back of your mind is going, "Faster! Faster! The germs are coming!"

Little germs, all around you, tiny and unstoppable. They’re trying to get at you, ruin everything, and you try to move faster, faster and faster, but you know they’re coming… getting closer, they could be anywhere, they’re everywhere, microscopic, untraceable, omnipotent… the germs are coming!

This is what it must have felt like to be Howard Hughes.

Finally, however, I got through it, and I now have 66 bottles of beer-like liquid sitting in my basement, waiting for somebody come over and get forced to drink it.

And whoever comes over better not be a snob about it! Because beer is beer! Even when it’s just "beer". Wise up, you bunch of snobs!

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