I'm Distracted

One thing that home-brewing has done for my appreciation of beer is forcing me to think about the distinct process that every bottle of beer on any given shelf goes through. There is an impressive chemistry behind beer that upon further thought is well worthy of pause as well as praise. It is this very respect for the ancient process that should force any beer drinker to think more deeply about the beverage of their choice. As Garrett Oliver discusses in his essay The Beer Matrix: Reality vs Facsimile in Brewing, there is a gigantic difference between beer and beer-like beverage. Oliver draws on the example of a well-known ‘American-cheese’ brand which boasts that it is comprised of 70% milk which, as Oliver states is the problem with the extent of over-processing of food and drink in American mass industry, it should be made of 100% milk! This is the problem with the huge industry beers; they are not 100% beer. The macro-brews are comprised of only a fraction the basic ingredients that a beer should be made of, substituting instead cheap alternatives to full-grain recipes such as rice and corn which hinder flavour, colour, and body of the beer. Because these beers are not made of the correct ingredients, or at least in the correct proportion, they like the ‘American-cheese’ cannot be fully regarded as beer.
As a home-brewer one becomes more sensitive to these differences between well-made, hand-crafted beers and those created simply to sell mass quantities to unassuming drinkers.*
Slainte!

Oliver, Garrett. ‘The Beer Matrix: Reality vs Facsimile in Brewing’, from, Beer & Philosophy: The Unexamined Beer Isn’t Worth Drinking, ed. Stephen D. Hales (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2007) 31-44.