Sweet ≠ girly

Do you have a moment to talk about sweet things? I mean, sweet beers.

Whether you are a bartender or a friendly neighbor in a bar don’t just suggest something super hoppy and bitter to a man seemingly lost in the variety of selection. The same goes for a female customer, don’t offer her something “so fresh, arrived today, fruity and sweet”. Do that only if you really know their personal preferences. Because there is this tiny, ugly, painstakingly hidden truth: brain loves sweets. Any brain, in any body, no matter the gender, because it is what we were taught by evolution.

Here’s quite interesting research, but let me cut the story short. Brain craves sweet things because sweet is energy. When our cave dwelling ancestors had to constantly look for nutrients (yes, it’s was not an easy feat to kill a mammoth every day or catch a swift antelope) and there were no supermarkets with all the year-round abundance, the sweet smell of ripe fruit was a signal to the brain “Food. Energy. Want.” Easy as that. Sugar is the quickest and simplest energy source and fruit doesn’t try to kill you. At least not the poisonous one. And no matter how many hundreds and thousands of years have passed, no matter how sophisticated our diet has become, how far technology has advanced, our brain still wants sugar. It’s a survival thing and you can’t easily fight those urges even if your survival is assured by pressing a button on your smartphone and arrival of food in 15 minutes.

So here comes the news, sorry hopheads and sour-beer lovers, we are anomalies, at least from an evolutionary point of view. Natural selection has spent millennia to teach us to avoid certain things based on flavour. Sweet is good. But high chances bitter stuff is poisonous or toxic meaning dangerous. Sour is pretty much under-ripe or spoiled, spit it away. And we never learn. We have at least 25 genes which help us to register and differentiate various bittering agents. We are born with aversion to bitter things (don’t try to persuade me you loved Brussels sprouts as a child), but some rebels grow up and irritate evolution with their affection to seemingly poisonous things. Look at hopheads happily torturing themselves (or just enjoining) with buds wrangling bitterness on the verge of tolerance and hailing gifts of nature and breeders. And there’s a whole country up there on European map with centuries deep love for sour beers (do you remember that “sour” means “spoiled”? Or at least is supposed to mean that).

So the main takeaway here is let’s stop brandishing sweet beers as girly drinks. Because what it really does is getting in the way of people enjoying beer and it’s a no go. True life story: a patron in a bar drinks only the most extreme beers, hoppy as hell, sours or the weirdest taps available. But every visit to his local is finalized by purchase of a bottle of sweet cherry beer “for his wife”, which he takes home with him. Nothing strange besides known to few fact that he is a bachelor. People love sweet beer even if they hide their affection. We are programmed to store up energy by nature and are eager to get high on hormone rush sweet things send to our brain. So what’s wrong with drinking sweet beers these days, when we are constantly stressed, overworked, on the move and struggling with FOMO? We drink and eat sweets to relax. And nobody seems to be ashamed of drinking cola, so why putting gender labels on beer? I’m all hands up for hanging posters in the bars “It’s my brain who wants sweet beer and I’m OK with that” if this will help to overthrow this stigma of “sweet is for girls” and let people feel comfortable with their preferences at last.

Do you love sweet beer? Drink it. Are you enamored with fruity milkshakes? Enjoy them. But don’t call them girly, for God’s sake, do a favour to everyone.

Beer industry pros, please don’t assume any preferences on the basis of gender, age, skin color. Just ask people what would they like or what have they ordered, don’t just put a glass of imperial stout in front of a guy and juicy haze in front of a girl. It can easily be the other way round.

People, don’t fret over flavors, just enjoy this marvelous beverage, whatever anomaly evolution considers us. Because beer is for all.