What’s the best beer in the world? Well, it could be one of the winners of the World Beer Cup or the World Beer Awards… you know the hoppy, yeasty, wheaty craft beers from dedicated breweries. But are these really the best beers we’ve ever had? Beer we remember years after? Because the thing about beer is that it’s a social thing, not an intellectual undertaking. You drink with friends, you drink when you’re out, you drink when you’re celebrating, you drink when you’re sad (but not too much I hope as therein lies the road to destruction).
So, if someone were to ask me what the best beer in the world was, and believe me I’ve looked into the matter, I would instinctively name a time and a date, not a brand. The beer I had with mates after Chelsea won the Champions League… the quick pint I snuck in after my daughter was born… the first pint I had after open heart surgery… the beer I had with my ushers just before I got married… buying my son a pint when he turned 18.
These are the best beers. Can I remember exactly what those amazing pints tasted like? No. They could have been flat, fizzy, or tasteless to be honest. But they were the pint punctuation points of some of the best moments of my life. That’s why these are the best beers, maybe not in the world, but in my experience. I imagine it’s the same for you.
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