The Lager Conundrum

Lager. I can't think of any beer which divides opinion so much in the beer world. Most of the world drinks it yet it has a terrible press, largely to do with the popular mass-market lagers - the likes of Carling, Bud, Heineken, Stella, Fosters, Kronenbourg, Cobra and Skol are loved by the majority yet slated in the beer press. The fact remains that "big beer" manufacture their big sellers to high levels of consistency while keeping costs low which inevitably means lower quality ingredients and, lets face it, a pretty bland tasting product. This consistent blandness doesn't offend most palates yet and, even better for the lager lover, ensures that their favourite tipple never tastes any different (unless the landlord is lazy when it comes to beer line cleaning of course). It also means that most lagers are interchangeable so the average drinker has an alternative in the event of his usual choice being unavailable.
The craft revolution, however, has brought us a new type of lager, made from top drawer ingredients in the true spirit of the craft beer ethos - breweries like Camden, Redwell and 40ft are largely devoted to producing it and in the cities, it's beginning to drag consumers away from "big beer". The beer press are almost evangelical about it. 

As for myself, well I seriously dislike lager. I never really liked it when I was drinking the mass market stuff and only drank it because it was what everyone got when they bought a round (there was no asking what you wanted to drink in those days unless you were female, the person buying a round just got six pints of bloody Fosters). When I discovered cask beer, I rejoiced in being able to drink proper beer that didn't leave me bloated and with definitive bold flavours. I have tried the craft lager efforts and the only one I have liked out of over a hundred is Camden IHL and that's because it tastes like a very fizzy IPA. Who needs lager?

Yet the beer writers want to force it down my throat. I don't like beer if I don't like (craft) lager they say. My monthly random beer box I get (so I can sample things I wouldn't normally see in a bottle shop) was stuffed to the brim with it a couple of months ago. When I mentioned my distaste to a random in passing conversation at the bar of the Craft Beer Company in Islington a few weeks ago he looked at me as if I was mad and told me I was prejudiced against it. What? Why am I not allowed to dislike something? Why is it that every time someone says that they don't like any lagers, people call them beer Nazis? Why must I have lager forced down my throat by the crafterati? Can't people just accept that this is my personal taste? This is as bad as the people that criticise lager drinkers for not drinking other beers, as bad as the reams of intolerant CAMRA members who declare anything that isn't from a cask as evil and as bad as the big beer drinkers that sneer at people who drink real ale.

Beer taste is subjective. Let's all live and let live, eh?