Eating Food #5 - Becks Beer

Becks is the only beer that makes me feel like a teenager again. It's an engineered beer. It's a beer that, if asked on another planet, you would describe the taste of Becks as being the beer that most taste like beer.

It is everything a beer should be, but only very much duller. It is fresh and light. It is just bubbly enough and tastes good: not too strong nor weak. A uniform constant flavour. A type of flavour that holds no surprises and a holds all the prerequisites needed to be a beer. The people at Becks are the type of people who are sticklers for numbers and details. They are experts in beers, as in they have drank many beers and taken a average of all the good beers out there. If beer were to be made by committees, they would taste like Becks.

Do we want a beer to taste so clinical? Do we want our food to be made by artists or engineers? The only reasonable answer is yes. Yes, yes and again, yes. There is enough room on you palette to have both. Becks may be a well thought out and expertly designed beer, but goddam and goddam again, it does taste good. (And a thousand times better that Newcastle Brown Ale, which must be extracted from the backside of donkeys.) Why do we complain when something works perfectly? Isn't it a welcome change for once? Do you not want things to work like they should? Taste like they should taste?

(In saying that I also believe the complete opposite to be true. We need artistry in food, like we need anchovies in lamb shanks. It's just that high quality is often mistaken for banality and this is not what I am saying. A prawn cocktail should always be served in a wine glass in my opinion.)

So, yeah, Becks. The VW Golf of beers. I wanted one of those when I was 17 too. Cheers.