Philosophy of drink

Many of you will already know that I believe there are three factors that are relevant when choosing a beer:

1) Personal style
2) Economics
3) Politics

Notably absent from this list is the way the beer tastes. This is deliberate. After all, all beer is an acquired taste, and which beer one chooses to acquire a taste for must be determined by other factors. I have never heard of anybody picking up her first ever beer and thinking, "My, that's tasty!"

Washington Post staff writer Don Oldenburg understands. But where is his reporter's "objectivity"? He calls it like it is in this article, and our beloved Iron City comes off looking vastly better than Seattle's microbrew-for-people-who-like-to-think-they-have-class. The best part is that it's a quote from Red Hook's spokesperson that seals it.

"Our beer's claim to fame is that it delivers double the satisfaction per beer," says Shipman, who founded Redhook Brewery in 1981 with Starbucks co-founder Gordon Bowker. (Redhook sells a "double black stout" that boasts of being brewed with Starbucks coffee.) "If you are a very oral person who needs a lot of oral satisfaction, light beers like Iron City are good. But our beer is contemplative. With our beer, you might say, 'I need some time alone to enjoy my beer.'"