I found myself on the road in Northern Ontario earlier this month and, to pass the time, I picked up a hitchhiker. I had rented a Cadillac CT4-V Blackwing, hoping the standard transmission would keep me alert on the long drive. But after a steak dinner and a bottle of red wine at a roadhouse I had passed around midnight, the purr of the twin-turbo V6 had begun to lull me into a reverie, and I worried I might put the car into a ditch. I hoped some conversation would keep me alert.
The hitchhiker was burly fellow who was inexplicably shirtless under his impeccably-tailored blazer. His finger nails were clean and he was well spoken so, what the hell, I thought, he might make for interesting conversation and — should things get violent — I was fairly sure I could overpower him.
Soon enough talk turned to his line of work and he admitted he had been a bartender in a popular craft brewery’s tasting room for many years. I tried to recall the name of the brewery to see if they’d ever been victim to slander on this website or if they’d been the target of a meme on my instagram, but the name didn’t ring any bells and he didn’t seem to recognize me. To be safe, I told him my name was Jordan St. John and it was clear from his uninterested gaze that name meant nothing to him either.
I asked him why he had quit the business and he had a long drag of his Du Maurier Distinct before shaking his head. “Flights, man,” he said.
“What do you mean?” I asked as the car lunged violently into the gravel shoulder along a curve in the road I had failed to see and I fought to straighten us out and get back on the road. The hiker didn’t seem to notice and retained a thousand yard stare out of the windshield.
“Fuckin’ flights, man,” he repeated as he flicked his butt out the window. “Every fuckin’ tourist and beer chaser that came into my brewery ordered a flight of beer. I can’t STAND beer flights, man” he said as he turned his eyes toward me and I began to wonder if I had made a horrible mistake picking him up.
“In the middle a busy shift, some chud wanders in with his Cowbell Brewery sweatshirt on and wants to discuss each beer before ordering 4oz of four different fucking beers to sniff,” he said, his fingernails digging into the leather of his seat. “Then they want to talk about what they’re tasting! And than I have to clean four little fucking glasses and put away this stupid, fuckin’ paddle man!” He lit another cigarette and started jabbing at the radio.
I could see now that he was totally gone. I have a cousin who worked at a Florida Walmart in 1998 and he never fully recovered from the Black Friday event there in 1998. He lived out the rest of his life peacefully enough, but he was dead to the world after that day; his eyes black and and dull like a maco shark’s, muttering to his support worker about Furbies while she changd his diaper. The retail and service indusrty can break a person — but I also knew in my heart that my hitchhiker was right.
Flights are an awful part of the craft beer experience. The idea that you need to try just a little bit of multiple beers each time you enter a brewery is symptomatic of the rampant gamification of beer drinking that’s gotten signifigantly worse since the advent of Untappd. Beer is not Pokemon. You do not in fact have to catch ’em all. Sitting in a tap room, ticking boxes in your beer exploration journey is the province of a dullard. Are you writing a book about beer and thus need to be comprehensive about each brewery’s offering? Likely not. You’re not here to work. You’re here to enjoy a drink. So do that.
Detractors will (and have) told me they usually like to try some beers before they commit to a full pint. To that I say, respectfully, oh fuck off. Just order a beer that sounds good. Do you ask for a bite of each appetizer on the menu when you go to Moxies? Because to me, ordering little sippers of four beers is akin to asking for a spoonful of spinach dip and a single bite of a Spicy Szechaun Lettuce Wrap before you commit to the arduous task of ordering a starter. This is not how the world works. This isn’t Nam, Smokey. There are rules. Just order a full fucking beer. It’s going to be OK.
I would also argue strongly that you’re not even really enjoying beer properly in flight sizes. To me, a proper beer experience has phases. There’s an excitement and sense of optimism when a full, frothy pint is placed in front of you. A full pint suggests, “This Beer will be an Experience.” You are embarking on a signficant endeavour: A Fucking Beer, Man. You don’t feel this when someone plunks a toddler-sized glass into a hole in a sticky chunk of wood in front of you.
There’s also an entire process to properly enjoying a beer. The first, heavily-aromatic sips from the large surface area of foam on a proper pint tell you things about that beer you don’t get with a taster. There’s the hearty, full-cold first half of a beer to quench your thirst, then that slightly-warmer second half where you are arguably smelling and tasting it at the proper temperature required to actually smell and taste it and, of course, a pint offers you significantly more real estate with which to enjoy a beer’s colour, clarity, and lacing. Think about how much more you can enjoy your hazy-boi with so many more inches to gaze at your haze, bro.
Indeed, it is long past the time to say good bye to the beer flight. They are the scourge of the common tap room and a hindrance to proper drinking — to say nothing of the collateral damage it has done to servers and bartenders like my wayward hitchhiking passenger.
The lull in conversation with my co-traveller had long since passed the threshold of awkward and I could no longer ignore the damp, vaguely vegetal aroma he had clearly introduced into the car. I told him I had to take a piss and I plunged the car into the tall grass beside the highway just beside a ditch, scattering a heard of cattle nearby as the braking wheels carved long trenches in the wet earth.
“Yeah,” he said, “I guess I’ll do the same.” As he stepped out into the dewy morning grass, I gave him a hard shove to his lower back. He rolled hard and awkwardly as he tripped on the crest of the ditch and lurched headfirst toward the small, rocky creek below. I was gone before he stopped rolling.
472 horsepower and 445 lb-ft of torque launched the car back to the black top, slamming the passenger door. I couldn’t hear if he cried out as I gunned the vehicle back toward the centre of the lane, but I was optimistic he’d be ok. He seemed the resiliant sort and, in my experience, the truly mad have an exceptional pain tolerance.
I was releived to be free of him, but I was rattled. Before I dropped the car off I figured I might have a beer to settle my nerves.
As luck would have it there was a brewery not far from the Enterpise rent-a-car that was to be my final destination and so, despite the protestation of the car’s GPS, I cranked the car hard to do a hairpin left and overtook a high median to quickly cross four lanes of traffic toward a bustling the taproom and patio. Given the car’s relatively low ground clearance, I could hear the concrete shearing off underbody aerodynamic components and brake ducts but I didn’t care. I had a powerful thirst and I always opted for maximum insurance.
Given the early hour and my experience on the road, I hestitated slightly as I approached the bar and the server, in an effort to be helpful, asked if I might like to try a flight. I slammed my fist on the bar, frightening two mothers with strollers nearby enjoying lunch beers, “Fuck no! I’ll need a full pint of lager immediately,” I said.
“Please.”