You have bad taste if you like ales

Every day I wake up I thank the gods I’m not English. I thank them because I was not born in a country where a family of layabouts is put on the throne and worshipped for no goddamned reason. I thank them because I have much more international football to remember fondly. I thank the gods because my Prime Minister isn’t someone who put a private part of their anatomy inside a dead pig (although I curse them because a former Prime Minister of mine put a private part of their anatomy inside an underage girl).

I thank the gods because I wasn’t born somewhere where the phrase, “it’s a lovely sunny day today,” is said far less often than, “this pasta is awfully overcooked,” but most importantly of all, I thank the gods for not making me from that nation that inflicted ales upon the world. Maybe my wallet and my liver thank them less, because if I’d thought that all beer tastes like ale, I would’ve enjoyed a lot less drinking, or pubs, or life in general.

Ales are awful. They’re less pleasant than strained sock juice and far more expensive to acquire. They are the gustatory equivalent of a butchered pig’s dying wail. They taste like the tears of a bitter, impotent man, and if you ask me how I know what that tastes like I can tell you I know because I’ve tasted ales, and there’s no doubt in my mind it’s the same flavour.

And they ruin nights out! Specifically, mine. Every once in a while, a friend will offer to get a round and bring me a pint of ale, even though pouring that swill on my trousers and pretending I’ve pissed myself is a source of more enjoyment for me and everyone around me.

I’m not even safe if I order other beers, as there’s been this perfidious trend of “craft lagers”, which are just ales trying to escape the curse of their name. And on those occasions that I’m tricked into drinking an ale, my taste buds will be tainted for the rest of the evening, distorting every flavour afterwards and ruining beers that had no crime other than being drunk after spider-infested mildew.

In most bars, there will be several – too many – ales on tap, despite the fact that the selection is like choosing between different puddles of rainwater on a muddy road leading to a horse crematorium. To someone who hasn’t acquired the taste for slightly acrid windshield condensation, the only options available are the usual suspects of Heineken, Stella and Fosters, but even their bland, uninspiring flavour is a godsend if I get to avoid having an ale.

At this point you may say, it’s just a matter of taste. And yes, that is completely true: I don’t like ales. And it’s not for lack of trying. On more than one occasion I’ve thought to myself, “Millions of people like ales: they can’t all be wrong. Now you’re gonna get yourself an ale, and you’re gonna enjoy it.” Then I got myself an ale, and I didn’t enjoy it. I could leave it be, but for every round that has been ruined for me by a damp loincloth rinsing, for every night I’ve been forced to stay on Carlsberg for four pints, I ask of you, I beg of you, English people, cease this love affair with tepid backwash spat out by a coffee addict.

I’m real happy for you, people who love ales and can somehow find joy in them. I just hope that you never have something that actually tastes better, like Erdinger, or Hoegarden, or Blue Moon, or, gods forbid, Chimay, or literally any lager ever made; I fear that the superior flavour might just destroy your poor inexperienced tongue and make your head explode for all the years you could’ve been having good alcohol instead of watered down mosquito distillate.

For the rest of us who aren’t living in a perpetual Stockholm syndrome from pulped corrugated carton fluid, please stop being so much in love with ales. It’s making me legitimately concerned for you, and, more importantly, limiting my choices at the pub. Please.

You can have an ale every once in a while if you want to remind yourself that we live in an uncaring world of strife and misery, but, on most days, stick to drinkable liquids. Life’s too short to spend it on ales.