Beer Shouldn’t Stress You Out

Cara McDonough is calling out us beer nerds—and we should pay attention. In a piece for McSweeney’s Open Letter column, she bemoans:

It’s official. A trip to the liquor store – once a relaxing and uncomplicated endeavor – is now an experience rife with anxiety and booby traps.

Why, you ask? Because we’ve entered a phase of beer consumption in which there are more beer choices available than at any time ever in history and there is a culture of both snobbery and novelty. It is now possible for a beer run to cause as much tension among friends as picking a movie to watch or toppings for their pizza. Worse, probably.

And we’re to blame. Us. The beer drinkers. We’ve gotten so carried away by our passion that we’ve created a situation where our spouses and partners almost literally cannot please us when they buy us beer.

My wife texted me the other day to ask if she could bring me some New Glarus home from Wisconsin. She was probably only at a gas station, maybe one of those cheese huts, but I took a good 5-10 mins. to research some beers and then sent her a list.

She brought back a pick-six of three pretty common styles—none from my list—saying she didn’t have much time and the selection was thin. I was still grateful, but truth be told, inside I was like, “meh, these aren’t that exciting,” meaning not that I wasn’t looking forward to drinking them but only that I had already tried them all.

Really? Is this what we’ve come to?

Fortunately, I didn’t dwell on it; it wasn’t worth it. I got over myself pretty quickly, in fact. I didn’t have any New Glarus in the house before she went to Wisconsin, and now I had six of them. Not bad, at the end of the day.

And I’m really glad I didn’t act like a baby about it. McDonough continues:

I was getting mad, to be honest with you. I felt tense and ill-at-ease, because picking a beer has become one of the more difficult tasks in my life, marked by decision fatigue and self-doubt, which is notable considering we have three children and responsibilities such as home ownership and whatnot.

Set aside your defensiveness for a minute, and, especially you guys, really listen to what she’s saying there. Choosing a beer has become one of the more difficult tasks of her life. How stupid would it be for me to turn my wife’s generous offer to buy me beer into some test of her diligence in hunting down the right bottle?

How likely would she be to buy me more beer next time she has the chance?

Sure, there’s only so much time to try all the beers, but we need to be reasonable and not make everyone around us hate us in the process.

What can you do to change the conversation? I have a couple ideas:

• Next time someone asks what beer to get you, suggest a brewery or a style and leave it at that.
• Or, make yourself a list of 3-5 readily available beers that you can suggest for such a situation. For me, that would be something like Goose Island IPA, Two Brothers Domaine DuPage, and anything by Revolution.
• Next time someone buys you beer, say to yourself, regardless of whether you like it, “I didn’t have beer before, but now I do because this person was so generous,” and then thank that person and mean it.

That’s not unreasonable now, is it?

Image credit: Aidan/Flickr