More common misconceptions about beer…
Myth #6 – Cold-Filtering
Here’s one from the marketing geniuses behind the big breweries. Simply, all beer is cold-filtered, since only a fool would run their beer through a “hot filter,” even if such a thing did exist in a brewery. What the use of this phrase is really saying, usually, is that the beer is not pasteurized, as are many of the world’s biggest selling brands.
Myth #7 – Draught Gets You Drunk Faster than Bottled Beer (or Vice Versa)
Here’s what gets you drunk: Alcohol. Whether it comes from bottled or draught beer, wine, cocktails or straight spirits doesn’t matter.
Myth #8 – Imported Beer is Better than Domestic Beer
Almost every brewer exporting his or her beer to a foreign destination exploits this myth at one time or another, whether implicitly or explicitly. But that fact remains that beer from any given country is not necessarily going to be better than that from another, as witnessed by some of the great beers I’ve tasted from non-traditional brewing countries like Italy and Brazil, or some of the poor ones I’ve had from brewing powers like England and Belgium.
Myth #9 – Wine is More Complex Than Beer
Give me a break! I enjoy wine as much as the next drinker, and I appreciate the complexities and nuances of a truly fine zinfandel or sauvignon blanc, but how can a drink made from a single ingredient, grapes, be necessarily more complex in flavour than one made from a minimum of water, malt and hops and an almost limitless diversity of other ingredients? Ever find coriander or cumin notes in a wine? No? Well, you can in a beer.
Myth #10 – “That Beer I Had last Night Made Me Sick”
Maybe the scallops you ate at dinner made you sick, or perhaps you picked up a contaminant from somewhere else or simply drank too much. But being a boiled and fermented alcoholic beverage, the chances of a beer causing illness is very, very, very slight.
