Chapter 1
A great man once said the world can be divided into two groups: beer drinkers and everybody else. He said it when he was writing the The Man Show on Tap: A Guide to All Things Beer and needed something bold for his introduction. He later thought it over and realized it was kind of cliché and stupid, so he decided to bury that observation in the body of the book near a picture of a girl with huge tits. Which brings us to the beer lover's lifestyle. Beer drinkers the world over share a common love for their personal brew that affects the way they drink, think, dress, and talk. The next several pages will help you choose the path of how to live your life around beer. After that, you're on your own.
BOTTLE V. CAN In life, beer drinkers may face many choices, but one of the first forks you'll come to in the road is whether to drink your brew from a bottle or a can. Maybe the choice has already been made for you, because your brand comes in a can, but not in a bottle. But let's say, as a hypothetical, you walk into the store and they have your brand in both bottles and cans. You're going to have to choose one or the other, and which one you go with could say a lot about you. Here are some criteria that may help you decide which camp you fall in.
Weight
The typical bottle and can of beer carry about 12 ounces, so they're even there. But bottles are heavier than cans. They take up more room. You can't fit as many in the cooler, or in the trunk of your Civic for that matter. On the other hand, the increased heft of a glass bottle just may give you a little more "Sez me!" in a bar fight. But then again if, like John Belushi's Bluto in Animal House, you're prone to smashing your beer container against your head, you may want to go with the can.
Round goes to: Too close to call.
Beer Delivery Rate
Unless you're one of those freaky beer "deep throaters" who can pour beer directly into your stomach, the BDR round goes to the can. You can shotgun a can of beer. It forces you to drink faster. With bottles, beer creates a vacuum at the top when you invert them, slowing your guzzle speed. There is no vacuum when you pop the top on that shotgun, just Newton's law of gravity doing its thing to get you wasted. Want to guzzle even faster from the can? Make a bigger hole in the side.
But bottle enthusiasts have turned to high technology to address this problem and created the Big Bertha of beer delivery, the 40-ounce, which has a wide enough spout to offset the bottle's "vacuum drag coefficient" and even take on the latest in can technology -- the massive shotgunned 24-ounce can.
Round goes to: Tie.
Empties
A throne that faces the TV and is made entirely of Lone Star bottles would be a dangerous piece of furniture for even the most nimble pledge. However, with a little creativity and a hot glue gun, such a thing made of Olympia cans would be a handy and attractive addition to any fraternity. But if you're planning on filling your empties with gasoline and rags to burn down the ROTC building, the bottle is your only real choice here.
Round goes to: Even.
Taste
Some say canned beer takes on the flavor of the can, whereas bottled beer remains untainted. Seems plausible, yet that same guy goes to the ballpark and drinks bottled beer out of a wax cup.
Round goes to: Bottle may win on taste, but gets disqualified for wax cup. No decided advantage.
Cost
Here canned beer seems to have a slight edge. Some of the premium, and thus more expensive, beers aren't even available in cans, which should give cans greater popularity. But thanks to the combined efforts Dixie beer's long-neck bottle and the great and drunken state of Louisiana, bottled beer consumption balances out all the canned beer sucked down by the rest of the nation.
Round goes to: Dead heat.
Tiebreaker -- The TV Toss
In America we have freedom of speech. And what better way to voice your disgust and rage than to hurl your empty at the offending television? Here the advantage overwhelmingly goes to the can. With an empty beer can in his hand, the voiceless American TV viewer becomes like Elvis with a .38, blowing away the tube of any TV that pissed him off. If you've never taken the time to throw an empty at a TV, you owe it to yourself to experience one of life's simplest joys. It's like throwing rotten fruit at a bad singer...only it's an empty beer can and the State of the Union address. Throw a bottle at the TV? You'd get a shower of glass that, even if it doesn't break the TV, shatters all over the floor. Nice going, dummy. Now making you have to wear shoes when you get off the couch to change the channel. Let's be honest, if you had a remote, you would have just changed the channel to begin with.
The Decision: Can wins.
However, if you're watching the TV at a bar, and you're planning on never coming back anyway...
LIGHT BEER V. DARK BEER The light beer/dark beer debate -- it's a quandary that has vexed mankind going all the way back to the 1970s.
Here's the deal. Ready? All light beers suck. There, I've said it. They're all bad, watered down versions of the real thing. Light beer has one purpose: To keep our women from getting fat. But why do guys drink it? Well, it's kind of like what happened with milk...
You started out getting delicious, whole-fat milk right from your mother's loving breast. Nothing could be more nourishing. So, like any guy, you ride that train as long as she'll let you. But as some men approach college age, they apparently stop nursing and start counting calories. They cut back on the blessed, white gazonga gravy, going from whole-fat to low fat, to 2% and finally the dreaded, tasteless nonfat. Eventually they've got nothing left to pour on their Cocoa Puffs but a cloudy milk-water. Pathetic.
Everyone knows at least one guy who cares more about his appearance than the taste of his beer. And while we all know that such a "man" can never be trusted, at least the silvery label on his brew makes him easy to spot. Let's face it, those "light beer" guys and their "abs" are a definite buzz kill.
The jolly beer gut was once considered an achievement -- proof of one's fulfilling the American Dream. But the growing "light beer" faction is trying to turn your tubby testament to a life of luxury into some nonsense about you being "out of shape" or "dangerously close to a heart attack."
Truth be told, that bottle of light suds is a "gateway" beer to the more sinister stuff, low-carb and no-carb beers. Of course, the only reason for a guy to drink no-carb beer is because it doesn't stain when he spills it on his dress.
The 40: It's Not Just for Black Guys Anymore
Malt liquor is essentially an extra-strong American light lager. Also, in some parts of the United States, any beer over a certain strength must legally be called "malt liquor." It's a "bang for your buck" drink that for years has mainly been marketed toward, and favored by, African Americans.
At more than 7.5% alcohol, malt liquor is to beer what fortified wine is to Kendall-Jackson. Crap. But crap that will put wings on your feet. Whether it's St. Ides, Olde English, Schlitz, or the holy mother of them all, Colt 45, this stuff has one purpose -- to knock you on your ass and fuck your girlfriend.
Maybe it's a result of marketing, or maybe there's something cultural going on, but white guys have traditionally not been big buyers of malt liquor. Instead, they'll have a few beers after work, to relax or whatever. But black guys drink malt liquor to get the party started. Let's not bullshit each other. For years, the only white guys who drank this stuff were suburban teens who didn't know that drinking a six-pack of Olde English talls would make them wake up the next day in a puddle of their own piss.
But with hip-hop supplanting rock-'n'-roll as the predominant soundtrack to our cultural demise, something has happened to malt liquor. Its endless appearance in rap videos has made the mythical "40" a cool thing for white guys in search of an identity to latch on to.
The cultural divide was finally bridged when drinking malt liquor was made secondary to spraying it on a hot video vixen. Here at last, whites and blacks could move one step closer to Martin Luther King's dream. You no longer have to drink this swill to enjoy it. Because white or black, we all love wet tits.
Light of My Life There comes a time in any avid beer drinker's life that he must decide: "What's the right lighted beer sign for my basement?"
Well, that really depends. Is this basement the slowly evolving fulfillment of your lifelong dream to have your very own bar -- with a real keg, fancy coasters, and a pinball machine -- in your home? Or is this basement just the place where you'll sleep until your parents die and you finally get the house?
Well sir, if your basement is the former, then only one lighted beer sign will do: Hamm's.
The best Hamm's beer signs paid homage to the great outdoors -- like a Schmidt's beer can. But unlike the Schmidt's can, which might feature a hunter's wet dream of elk in the woods or pheasants taking wing, the greatest Hamm's beer signs had a backlit wildlife scene with water that flowed for eternity, thanks to a motorized scroll of "water."
For generations Men have sat drinking in local joints, mesmerized by never-ending frosty mountain streams flowing into eternity, thanks to that gently cycling, endless scroll. The sign's soft azure glow forever beckons Men to the land of sky blue wa...
