Figured this would entertain at least one person here, it’s definitely entertained my parents.
Backstory: I don’t really drink alcohol of any kind, not a fan of the taste. I expressed my mild frustration at lack of drink variety (i.e., water and tea) to my parents, and they suggested I try a couple different beers to see if there are any I liked.
I then escalated things as I normally do, which has resulted in a spreadsheet built over the course of several months. So if anyone here is interested in the in-depth beer opinions of someone who doesn’t like beer, this post is for you! I mostly just went to a local liquor store that let me build my own six pack and randomly grabbed stuff that looked interesting.
For reference, filtered tap water is probably a 70/100 for me.
I added the beer advocate rating just to see how my scores compared to beer nerds for fun. The subcategory column is sourced from BA, if anything is wrong there, blame them and not me. The main category is me though, if I screwed something up in that column I will take the blame. I don’t really understand the differences between types of beer, other than stouts/porters being generally decent.
I added the Alc/Vol column early on to see if there was any correlation to my scores, but in the end there wasn’t. It’s kind of unnecessary at this point, but I left it in for the hell of it.
Lastly, I say I don’t like beer, but honestly the top 3 or 4 I would call “good.” Not sure if I’d ever buy a 4/6 pack of them, but I enjoyed the singles. With that in mind, if someone has a recommendation for me, feel free to send it. Maybe I’ll expand my spreadsheet in the future, lmao
Well, I’m with you. I’ve tried some of those, and on my personal scale of enjoyment, I wouldn’t put any of those over a 20, much less as high as fifty.
When I drink beer, I want low hops, yeastiness, and a strong malt forward flavor, or it’s a non starter. I’ll take a sip, and it can fuck right off. I’ve made okay friends with belgian wheat beers though. Not something I’ll go out of my way to drink, but if I’m going to provide beer for guests that will want me to drink with them, that’s what we’re having lol. Or they can bring their own.
Like you, alcohol in and of itself isn’t something I enjoy. So, even with bourbon, which is my preference when I’m drinking something on the rare occasion I want a touch of the effects of alcohol but still enjoy the flavor, I go with lower proof stuff. Tbh, chilled, even stronger bourbon becomes more enjoyable. Ice when necessary, but I prefer it to just be cold; if I want it watered, I’d rather add water.
But, and I think you might end up in a similar way, there are things other than beer that contain alcohol. I love cider. Even the usual store brands like angry orchard is enjoyable on a hot day. If you have any local makers, it’ll be better though. If you’ve never tried anything other than name brands, it might be worth finding and trying something more crafted.
Same with mead, tbh. Mead runs really sweet though. At times, too sweet.
But there’s also a ton of options without alcohol. There’s things like rooibos that can make a great hot or cold drink. Dandelion tea is great either way too. Hell, for that matter, dandelion wine is something special.
Around here, beer is essentially the default adult beverage. I never really liked it. But other people did, and I wanted to at least figure out what I was missing. What I found out is that most beer is pretty crap on my tongue. There’s nothing wrong with that. You don’t like beer either, it seems, or at least you’re even more picky than me about what’s going to be passing over your gums.
It’s all in how the tongue, nose, and brain mesh up to interpret the chemicals in things. It’s why earl grey is anathema to one person, and nectar to the next. You get whatever pattern of taste buds you have, those are sending signals alongside those from your nose, and your brain has to figure out what it means. You could have a an identical twin, and still end up having differences in food preference because no matter how similar you start out, the brain shapes via experiences. At some point, tastes can diverge, and usually do, even if only in detail.
That’s from some old twin study I read back in the nineties. Twins end up liking mostly the same things, but they’ll not always like them to the same degree, and there are things that they disagree on. So, the rest of us having differences in preference is the norm, not an oddity. It’s why I poke fun at food snobs. They literally do not taste things exactly the same as the next food snob, so it’s an accident whether they like or dislike a given thing. Yeah, we have proclivities as humans; we favor things that have the right nutrients, things that trigger our brains as being desirable. But the proportions of those things are still variable. You might like 10% salt content in your chips, and the next guy thinks that’s way too much, but you’ll both want some salt.
It is cool as hell that you both tracked and shared your experiences :). I don’t believe I would have thought to do so.