The Fire Inside
Why do Americans insist on taking their beer so cold that it kills off half the flavours? Could it be that some of the American beers taste so bad…? — I. C. Double
Your name seems familiar to me. Perhaps you come from the Hampstead Doubles? Surely you’re not Makeit A. Double’s son? Well met, young fellow, well met.
Though I find your diplomatic ellipses – and the pretense of phrasing your opinions as questions – quite charming, let’s speak plainly. Despite great advances in the past twenty years, the majority of the beer sold in America is still so bad that it is rendered palatable only by excessive refrigeration. Only with numbed taste buds can one drink any quantity of “Bud,” “MGD,” or “Natural Ice Lite.”
But the American penchant for cold beverages is not limited to their depressing lagers. Remember that they also like their ice-water glacial, and their soft drinks Arctic, and that it was necessary for them to coin the term “brain freeze” to convey the chilling side-effect of drinking “Slurpees” and “Slush Puppies.” They are a people in every way extreme, and though I live among them and find them often charming (the way one still loves a puppy who wets the floor), I still struggle to explain this phenomenon. I can only hypothesize that, because Americans burn too bright, too hot, they struggle daily to put out the fire inside. And they do it with very cold drinks.