Bob Wire Has a Point (It's Under His Cowboy Hat)

There’s a Right Beer for Every Occasion

By Bob Wire, 6-12-08

One of the most important rules in life is to use the right tool for the job. You don’t bring a Fiona Apple CD to your buddy’s garage when he invites you over on a Friday night to pull a tranny. That’s Stooges territory, dude, maybe some early AC/DC. Going to help somebody move? Leave the Prius at home. A hand truck has more interior capacity.

The right tool for the job.

This rule extends logically to choosing a beer. There is a right and wrong beer for every occasion, with one glorious exception, which I’ll cover later.

Watching a ball game with some friends? You’ll definitely be tipping back a few, especially if it goes into overtime. Recommendation: Miller High Life, Coors, Pabst Blue Ribbon, Bud, or some other domestic lager. But not light beer. Save that for when you’re engaged in some intense athletic endeavor like horseshoes or croquet, and you need to keep your edge.

Drinking in a bar? Don’t waste your hard-earned whip-out on that high profit-margin corporate swill (unless you’re there to watch a ball game). No, with the average bar visit lasting one hour and 37 minutes [source: C.E. Allen’s Compendium of Spurious Statistics, 2007], you want to maximize the quality of your experience with some fine microbrews. A nice IPA, pale ale, porter or seasonal brew will fit the bill and give you and your fellow drinkers something else to talk about. Plus, it’ll hold up to the shots that somehow always appear on the bar in front of you like mushrooms after a spring rain.

If you’re going to a poker game, bring something exotic or interesting. One of my friends—who shall remain nameless until the next sentence—used to bring a different import every time. Ron selected his beer du jour solely on the enjoyability of pronouncing its name.

“Hey, Ron, whatcha drinkin’ tonight?”

“Tsiiiiiing TAAAAOOOOOOWWWWW!” He over-enunciated it, and it sounded like a ninja star bouncing off the head of a stainless steel bull. He brought Grolsch one time, and every time he said the name with gutteral gusto, he coughed up a big wad of lung butter. I always loved it when he showed up with Negra Modelo. He’d roll that R, and purr out that last O in a way that would have given Barry White a boner.

It’s summertime now, prime time for swilling the suds. If it ever stops snowing, we’ll eventually get that one week of hundred-degree days, and that’s when your best bet is something Mexican, cold enough to hurt your teeth and shrink your kidneys. In Mexico, it’s always a hundred degrees, man, and you can bet your barley nuggets they know how to brew a good hot-weather beer. Tecate. Dos Equis. Carta Blanca. The real thing.

(Here in Western Montana, Pacifico and Corona seem to be everywhere; a Mexican cerveza readily available at any gas station just doesn’t have much camino-cred, if you ask me.)

The one situation where any beer is the right tool for the job is the backyard barbecue. Miller Lite? It’s a good choice if you’re driving, but still want to appear as if you’re drinking. Guinness? You bet. It’s butch enough to hold its own with a porterhouse. How about a few cans of Kettle House Double Haul IPA? You’ll be the life of the party, and maybe, just maybe, you’ll be the guy everyone’s talking about on Monday morning. You know, the guy who peed his pants and then fell into the bonfire?

From Busch to Beck’s, pretty much any beer you bring to the party will add to the egalitarian atmosphere of your typical potluck weiner roast.

Except for Bud Light. It is the Bon Jovi of American beers. Bland. Billion-selling. Ubiquitous. I am a cowboy. Feh.

[Why not pour yourself a refreshing adult beverage and bookmark NewWest.net/BobWire right now?]

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