Poncey Beers

This has go to stop ..

You see, the thing about beer is this: we all know it's uncool, makes you fat, belch and smell. The nearest it gets to cool is that Homer Simpson loves it and drinks it to excess. It's not a designer drink, it's not a style icon (like the iPod, below). It's uncool.

In the 90's, it was bad enough when they invented the Ice range of beers, to somehow make beer seem a bit more "yoof". It meant that spotty lads could drink designer bottles, at 150% the price of a pint, and not feel too disconnected from their ladeez, who were supping Alco-pops, also at ridiculous prices.

Fortunately, these beers declined, and there has been a resurgence in regular beers, with real ale regaining popularity.

It was surely only a matter of time before the large brewers sought another means of earning massive margins, and here it is:

"beermaker Anheuser-Busch Cos. is launching a new "brew" to go head-to-head with classic mixed drinks - traditional suds spiked with caffeine, fruit flavoring, herbal guarana and ginseng. The world's largest brewer's nationwide rollout this week of B-to-the-E - the "B" standing for beer, the "E" for something "extra" and shown as an exponent of B - came as beermakers look to piggyback strides liquor companies have made in luring .... active 21- to 27-year-old experimenters looking for new tastes and options."

We need to reclaim beer as the drink of the great unwashed, in the domain of the masses, who are not interested in being cool. This has got to stop.