Beers are separated into lagers and ales – the difference being in how they’re brewed and the way the yeast settles in the process. Lagers tend to be lighter in color whereas ales run the full spectrum of light to dark. Most beers you buy in America are lagers, whereas in Europe, the majority are ales. Malts give beer a sweet flavor, hops a bitter one. So when you hear beer drinkers using words like "malty" and "hoppy", that’s really what they mean. Ales are usually more complex and full-bodied than lagers, hence the reason why beer snobs stick their noses up at the latter. Anything out of a can is too obscene for a beer snob to comprehend. Draught beer – that is, from a tap – is always the way to go. Most beer snobs drink a lot of malty stouts and porters, which are usually dark black to the point of not being able to see through the glass. You’ll rarely find a beer snob drinking anything lighter than a red or amber-colored beer. Most tend to think that dark ales like Guinness are the be-all end-all of alcohol consumption.

Beer snobs are created in several ways. Most are initially introduced to dark ales by other beer snobs who feel the need to enlist recruits. They try a Guinness, read about the brewing process on a pub menu and suddenly think they’re beer gurus. The worst snobs though are the ones who have lived their entire lives in America, then spend a month in Europe. They come back thinking they’ve had an epiphany – and not just about beer, but about life in general. If you should dare to drink with them after that, be prepared for an ejaculation of beer trivia that they’ve learned overseas. "You know, in Europe they serve beer warm, so it has to be made well. American beers have to be served cold because they don’t put in the time to brew it right." These pricks will even give the waitress at Wally’s Topless a hard time because all they have on tap is Budweiser. They curse and sputter and finally settle for a bottle of Heineken. Occasionally, guys take their snobbery to the point of actually brewing their own beer, thinking they’ve somehow gleaned wisdom from the pints they’ve raised.

I admit that I too was once a beer snob – which is why I feel completely justified in writing this. It began the summer I waited tables for a restaurant & microbrewery in Boston – which, if you’re going to be a beer snob, Boston (home of countless independent brewpubs) is the place to be. As part of our training, we were given a brief history of beer, an explanation of the brewing process and a thirty-minute tasting session where we were taught how to recognize hops, malts, and other elements. Up until that point, the only foreign beer I had ever drunk was Corona. I honestly didn’t know that beer came in more than one color or flavor. I quickly warmed to the house porter. Loaded with malts, it was like drinking chocolate milk compared to the flat keg beer I had been used to. My conversion to beer snob happened overnight. The rest of that summer was spent savoring fine dark ales and harassing my cretin friends about the Coors Light they were swilling.

I had apparently slept through the part of my training that talked about matching beers to food. A true connoisseur knows that no one beer – or type of beer for that matter – complements every situation. If you’re eating spicy food, you want to match it with something a little bit hoppy and bitter like a pale ale. For mild food, you don’t want a beer that’s going to overpower your taste buds, so a smooth light pilsner is the way to go. Dark malty beers are traditionally "sipping" beers, to be drunk on their own, or after dinner for dessert. I could never figure out why my normally delicious Cream Stout tasted so horrible with hotdogs. Likewise, I never put two and two together to wonder why I felt so sick and weighed down by dark heavy beers on hot days. All I knew was that dark ales were supposed to be good, and everything else, substandard.

Guys are usually the ones who become beer snobs – although my friend Mary Ann joined me the summer I began that lovely phase of my life. It usually happens in college or soon thereafter when people begin to realize that drinking can be a social thing and not simply a means of getting shit-faced. Fortunately, as with anything else learned in college, the snobbishness goes away after a year or two. Either the snob realizes that he can’t perpetuate the pretense any longer, or else he finally wakes up to the fact that he really would prefer a Michelob Light to his Murphy’s Irish Stout.

I came out of my beer snob phase as suddenly as I went into it. I was in Missouri of all places in the middle of June. It was ninety degrees, one hundred percent humidity, so I went to the store to buy a six-pack. After complaining under my breath that they didn’t have anything weightier than a pilsner, I settled for a six-pack of Miller Genuine Draft. Let me tell you, on that hot summer day, nothing ever went down so sweet. I was instantly thankful that I was drinking this and not something even as heavy as a Sam Adams. From that day on, I said to hell with whatever was supposed to be good beer, and just drank what I liked. Now, if I’m eating a heavy dinner, I’ll drink an amber. If I’m relaxing in a pub, I’ll drink a dark. But for any other situation, whether it be backyard barbecues, dancing at clubs or just chilling with friends, I’ve reverted back to my early college days of inexpensive light beer that goes down easy. I no longer claim to know anything more than I do. Just enough to know what I like.

So, if there’s a beer snob plaguing your life, simply relax, grit your teeth and realize that it’s just a passing phase. Instead of getting annoyed, do what I do now that I’m a "reformed" beer snob: sit back, drink your Amstel Light, and smile knowingly as they grimace, choking down yet another pint of Guinness with their buffalo wings.