Despite an all-consuming personal and professional association with wine, there are times when only a beer will – and can – do. Ice-cold and necked straight out of the easy-to-grasp 375ml bottle. No habitual sniffing of the surface to assess its aromatic complexity. No tentative analysing of the first small initial sip from which to make sensorial deductions for further pondering.
It is a bottle of beer to be drunk in huge non-plussed draughts. The dry cold liquid of easy and familiar malted hoppy flavour, perked up with the titillation of sparkle and bubble and foam, all going down like a cheerleader on Florida Spring Break. Refreshing, sating and hitting all spots requiring momentous satisfaction.
My personal beer of choice is Castle Light, and that’s the other cool thing about beer. Upon entering the liquor store it is, unlike with wine, a non-debatable choice. No deciding on what cultivar, style or terroir-driven product one is in the mood for, or should sample so as to keep up with current vinous modes. Just head to the walk-in fridge, grab two six-packs, done. You know what you want, and you know that those green bottles of Castle will guarantee you getting it.
Drinking beer is easy. Unlike with wine, you are free of making notes on what you are drinking, filing them for further use in articles or as topics of conversation with wine industry people. There is also no need to style a photograph of a bottle of Castle Light, beaded with condensation, and post it on Instagram for impressing the followers. For they, too, don’t need influencing or persuasion or opinion, because everybody knows that beer is good.
Beer is why pubs are better and more popular places than wine bars. Because in pubs, beer in hand, there is conversation and talk to be had on life in all its greater, as well as trivial splendours. Go to a wine-bar, and it’s boring. Punters gazing at the minute words chalked on the blackboard listing tens-upon-tens of wine marques, cultivars, geographical origins and styles. And once the wading through the list has been done and the smidgen-portion of liquid poured into the glass, wine bar frequenters are obliged to limit themselves to discussing, commenting and debating the contents of their glasses.
Back at the, pub we just take another slug of draught beer to replenish the vocal cords before continuing to ponder the merits of the TMO in international rugby or debate world politics. Such as whether Donald Trump, now and again, gives Melania one.
If criticism on beer must be made, then it is the general poor quality of draught beer to be had in South Africa. Without the generational beer culture of the UK, Germany and Belgium, local pubs tend to mistreat their kegs, allowing for the beer not being cold enough and – equally offensive – lacking the correct degree of energetic foaminess.
And that’s the other great thing about beer, in that there are only two types: Good, and flat and warm. Easy choices rule the world, and here beer is king.
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