RateBeer.com Incident

Last year, my friend, Steve, and I joined a website called RateBeer.com. The idea is simple, rate and review beers you drink for everyone to check out. Now, I freely admit that I am no beer enthusiast. My tastes run to the light American lager that true beer connoisseurs hate, a legacy left to me by my father (he still stocks his fridge with Keystone Light and Southpaw). The site is very cool and I enjoy reading the reviews that people put out there. It's amazing how different other people's tastes are from my own.

Steve and I thought it would be fun to rate beers we enjoy and completely tear apart the ones we hate, which, coincidentally, would be completely opposite of everyone else on the website. Check out my beer ratings here. The list should be sorted by my rating, with my favorites at the top. There are just under 40 beers there, click on a few and see how I reviewed them. If you want to see my friend Steve's ratings click here. Our reviews for each beer will be the first one listed underneath the "Commercial Description" after you click on the beer title in the list.

While putting in my ratings, I was messaged through the site by some guy with the handle TAR mocking my ratings. His subject was 'hahaha' and the message said:

Saying Budweiser is beer is like calling Sutter Home or Thunderbird, wine.

I thought this was funny. Knowing I was going to hear from beer snobs like this was why I started rating beers on this site. I thought it would be fun to rip TAR a funny answer:

Just because it's a macro-brew doesn't automatically make it bad. I prefer beer that doesn't taste like warm asphalt poured through an old shoe. I also prefer to be able to pronounce my beer in my native tongue. I'd put Pabst Blue Ribbon against your top beer anyday. If it was good enough for my grandfather and my father, it's good enough for me.

In this reply, I was mocking the guy and his beer choices (which he started), but in a good-natured way. I didn't expect his over-the-top and hostile reply:

First of all, when did I say all macros are bad? You need to learn how to read. Secondly, the example you cite (pouring beer through asphalt, for example) sounds as if you've let that beer alone to affect your overall view of decent-to-good beer, if it was indeed a decent beer that tasted like asphalt. Also, what exactly is your native tongue? Chances are, your ancestors were immigrants. Please don't tell me you're one of those people who claim that this land solely belongs to them. If so, you're all wrong. You wouldn't be here if that was the case. But of course you could never understand the points I'm making since you're a stubborn, non-critical thinker like most dumb males. You probably also watch porn and football and voted for Bush (I'm a Republican, by the way, but if you cannot see that Bush is an idiot, something's worng with you). Don't be a bigot. And as for PBR -- Please give me some specifics on how it compares to Rochefort 10. I've had all those beeers you claim are good, but have you tasted any of my faves? I thought not. Open your mind, dude.

To his credit, he did not say all macro-brews are bad. That was an assumption I made and it was my mistake. He did imply it, though. And even if my ancestors are immigrants, as he proclaims, wouldn't I STILL have a native tongue? And I don't remember claiming that this land, or any land for that matter, "belongs" to me. Wow, TAR is pissed and making wild and unfounded accusations about my person. He goes so far as to call me a bigot, too. Well, TAR, last I checked, you were the one to message me mocking my choice of Budweiser as a good beer. Then when I explained my opinion, you lash out at not only me, but all American males who prefer American macro-brewed beers in general. Now you're doing exactly what you claimed I had been doing, being a bigot. My job here is done.

FYI...I sent a "bridge the gap" email that I usually send to people to shut them up, but I stopped talking to the ass. I haven't really even been to the site again. I prefer wine to beer. It's not that I don't like beer, it's that it bothers my ulcer whereas wine does not. Besides, wine is the thinking man's beer (take that, TAR!).