I’m pretty sure that everyone knows by now that I love beer. However, you should also be aware that as a student, I also love free stuff. By the time a student reaches postgrad level they become keenly aware of any prospects for free food and drink. Whether it be a departmental poster session or a guest lecture, there are actually very well catered events relatively common across campus. At such events it is interesting to note what is provided in terms of beer.

I’ve attended a couple of such events recently. The beer range is always composed of relatively mainstream beers (no craft beer), but generally the mainstream beers that are chosen are the ones that are perceived as being of higher quality – premium lager. (That being said, one event I attended not too long ago had Ranfurly as well, so this is admittedly a generalisation). The most recent event I went to had not 1, but 3 premium lagers – Heineken, Stella and Steinlager Pure.

Now premium lager tends to taste how people generically expect beer to taste (cold, crisp and bitter), and differences between premium lagers are subtle and generally hard to discern without trying them alongside eachother. As such, it was interesting to note that there was a distinct order of preference among the attendees of this recent event. The beer that disappeared most rapidly was Steinlager Pure, followed by Stella and then Heineken. One wonders how much this is based on the effectiveness of advertising, and how much is based on actual flavour testing. Not being a psychologist myself, I can only make rough guesses about the ad’s, but concerning the flavour, the above order is indeed my order of preference. It could just be me stroking my ego with the fact that the chance beer preference of others matched my flavour preference, but I like to think that even your average punter can tell the difference between the most generic of beers and given a choice will take the ones that taste better.

As a final note for this week, if you want to try some not so generic beers I would suggest heading to beervana, in Wellington, on the 27th or 28th of August. Check http://brewersguild.org.nz/beervana2010/ for more details.