Light Beer vs. Dark Beer: The Showdown

I want to start off by saying that yes, this is a complete rip off of National Lampoon’s Van Wilder. But this is such an important topic, I thought that it needed to be studied in detail. And seeing as how the movie didn’t go into the intricacies of light and dark beers, I shall attempt to do it here. So prepare yourself! You’re about to take a journey into the depths of your own soul. Or maybe it’s the journey to the bottom of a bottle, I’ll let you decide.

First things first, I’m going to have to define the many different varieties of beer to put them in either of the two categories. I will be leaving out some types of beer if they fail to fit into one of the categories properly. In the category of light beer I will include: Belgian Wheat Ales, Hefeweizen, American Wheat Ales, Pilsners, American Standard Beers (Budweiser, Coors Original, etc.), and American Light Beers (Bud Light, Coors Light, etc.). In the category of dark beer I will include: Brown Ales and Nut Brown Ales, Porters, Stouts, and German Bocks. I have left out most Amber beers, Pale Ales, IPA’s, Oktoberfest beers, and other seasonal brews for this discussion because they are either in between light and dark in terms of color and body or they have other unique characteristics that fall into neither camp.

Ok, now that that’s out of the way, we can begin our discussion. The first thing I want you at home to do is to pour yourself a glass of your favorite beer. Not only will you be able to sample firsthand the characteristics of the beer while I talk about it, but you will also introduce alcohol into your system. And I have found that when talking about beer, it’s a good idea to already have that alcohol flowing through your bloodstream. Go ahead, I’ll wait for you to grab a beer out of the fridge, I don’t have anywhere else to be right now.

The most important characteristics that will divide the beers are color, body, and flavor. The color of the beer describes what you can see. Light beers tend to range from light orange or amber to almost pure white, while dark beers start from a deep amber in color and end up in opaque black. The body of a beer will vary from light to medium to heavy. Light beers tend to be lighter in body while dark beers tend to be heavier. This will affect how easy it is to drink a particular beer and how filling it will ultimately be. Meanwhile, beers can be flavored with hops or malt and can be bitter or sweet. The composition of the beers ingredients and the method it is fermented will usually decide the beer’s flavor.

Let’s talk about color! How important is a beer’s color to you? No seriously, I want you to stop and think for just a minute about that. What does a beer’s color mean to you? Does it make the beer look tasty and refreshing? Does it alert you to what flavors you should expect from the beer? These are all important questions that you should keep in mind when analyzing your beer.

I hate to say this, but when it comes to color, its pretty much all in the eye of the beholder. The color of the beer is a unique distinction that needs to be mentioned, and it hints at what other characteristics you can expect from the beer, but it is not what ultimately makes or breaks a beer. Flavor will make the beer. Color is a matter of preference that is derived from your taste in beer. Suffice it to say that color, although important in alerting your other senses, does little to adequately score points in this battle of the beers.

Now then, we can move on to a discussion about body. And no I’m not talking about Carmen Electra, I’m talking about beer! We will talk about Carmen another time, with lots of pictures, mainly in bikinis... Lighter beers tend to have lighter bodies and are therefore easier to drink and tend to be less filling. Meanwhile dark beers have heavier bodies which make them harder to drink and more filling. I think everyone knows that drinking Guinness, arguably the most popular dark beer, is like eating a whole loaf bread, in a pint glass. Thus, we can make one important distinction:

Light beers are easier to chug and therefore, much easier to drink quickly and get drunk quickly. I think this is quite evident on the collegiate campus where light beers appear in abundance. Score one point for light beers, they win the college crowd. Just take into mind that this point does not come from taste or the flavor of the beer, but from its ease of drinking and affordability to quickly and efficiently get coeds drunk. But hey, I’m ok with that. Drunk: it’s a noble goal.

Now let’s talk about taste. Which beers taste better? This of course, is a matter of opinion, but I want to go through it logically and methodically. First off, I want to throw out all American Standard and Light beers because, well they suck. They are pale and have a low hop flavor with an emphasis on having less actual flavor and taste making them go down more like water. Enough said. Ok, moving on. Belgian and American Wheat Ales and Hefeweizen have a very light and slightly fruity aroma and taste sweeter than other beers. Pilsners, on the other hand, taste highly of hops and they leave a cool and clean feeling on the pallet.

Dark beers have a different range of flavors. Brown Ales tend to have a nutty flavor as exemplified by Newcastle Brown Ale. Porters are very thick beers that are usually somewhat bitter and taste heavily of hops and malt (the two main ingredients of beer). Stouts are similar to Porters in that they are both very thick and heavy beers. Most Stouts tend to be bitter and dry, while some Stouts can be sweeter and creamier. German Bocks are your classic dark rich beer flavor with very little in the way of hops.

I know that most people drink lighter beers and that light beers outsell dark ones in the USA. But I’m still giving this point to dark beers. The problem with the statistics here is that all American Standard beers are light beers, and the Big Three (Budweiser, Coors, and Miller) have a stranglehold on the marketplace with their enormous advertising budgets and distribution networks. As I said before, I’m throwing these beers out. Anheuser-Busch continues the trend to make its beer taste more like water with its Budweiser Select and Michelob Ultra labels. And I don’t applaud bottle water marketed as beer. Furthermore, some light beers have a fruity and sweet taste, and I stand on record right now saying that anything that is fruity is not beer. So, throw out the Big Three from the US and the fruity stuff, and you end up with dark beer winning in the taste category.

My final category, which I failed to allude to earlier, is chicks. What kind of beer do chicks drink? And yes, it is important. If you can’t get the girls to drink beer, then what’s the point of buying the beer in the first place? For isn’t existence just a long overdone attempt to get girls drunk? I imagine cavemen were offering primitive moonshine to the more attractive pre homo-sapiens women in an attempt to get under their leopard skins. How else do you think those hideously hairy cavemen got lucky? So, what kind of beer do chicks drink? Hefeweizen and Belgian Wheat Ales tend to be popular among the ladies, as do other styles of light beer. Women just don’t seem to have a pallet for the dark beers. And that makes this point go to light beer.

So at the end of the day and the end of this story, we have a final score: Light Beer 2 – Dark Beer 1. Light beer wins the showdown. Personally, I’m a fan of dark beers, Stouts most especially, so it pains me to see my chosen beer go down on the field of battle. But that’s ok, people’s tastes change over time, and maybe one day dark beer can win this fight. But until that time, I will be right here, continuously providing you with all of the important facts and semi-truths of beer, liquor, and alcohol in general. It is a never-ending quest, and my promise to you that I will continue to explore the world of beer and bring you only the most important and critical information. So until next time, drink up!