The Taste Bud: This St. Patrick’s Day, Please Don’t Drink Green Beer

Blech. Photo by Katie Ann Havard (Flickr)

I know it will be tempting, but this St. Patrick’s Day, please do not drink green beer. Please.

While it’s true that green beer has a fairly long legacy, dating to the early 1900s, it is a worn out cliché for many reasons. Before I get into the specifics of why I feel this way, let’s take a brief look at the supposed “history” of green beer in relation to St. Patrick’s Day celebrations.

According to Vox, green beer is generally attributed to a New York professor named Thomas H. Curtin, who made it for friends in his club. But as early as 1910, The Spokane Press wrote about a local pub, First Avenue Bar, that served green beer. The story describes the nasty concoction like this: “It is a regular beer, apparently it has not been colored locally, it tastes like beer and it looks like paint, or rather like the deep green waves in mid-ocean with the sun striking them through.”

Yeah, very poetic.

But I dislike the notion of green beer for several reasons. Number one on the list is that this is clearly an American tradition that is trespassing on an Irish religious holiday. I’m not a religious person at all, but Americans have turned St. Patrick’s Day into little more than yet another excuse to drink. I’ve never needed an excuse to drink, nor should anyone. If you want to drink, just do it, and do so responsibly please. (This has been a public service announcement.)

Another reason, and this is a brief aside unrelated to St. Patrick’s Day, is that the term “green beer” brings to my mind a term for beer that isn’t fully fermented, which means it still contains acetaldehyde. And acetaldehyde makes beer taste like unripe apples. No beer should taste like unripe apples.

Seriously, when people were drinking beer like water in the late 1800s and early 1900s, green beer became a problem when breweries would rush it out the door and sell it to consumers. The belief then was that it could lead to the fermentation process continuing in your stomach and causing “biliousnous,” or indigestion and discomfort. (Schlitz for a time even advertised its product as being “old beer.”) Sure, that type of green beer has nothing to do with food dye, but still. It’s worth considering.

Here’s another reason to steer cleer of green beer: It’s typically made with some type of cheap, American pilsner, some Corporate Lite beer, because most bars know better than to waste decent beer by profaning it with dye. They’ll still charge you a premium for their trouble, then they’ll laugh at you when you not only pay up but also drink the stuff as if it tastes good.

Seriously, it’s St. Patrick’s Day. Just drink a freaking Guinness. THAT is an Irish tradition. (And if you can’t handle a stout, at least order a Harp Lager.)

Another reason? Drinking large quantities of dye could give you diarrhea. Seriously, I looked it up.

Also, dating to a St. Patrick’s Day in maybe 1999 or 2000, I left my beer on the table to go to the bathroom, and a couple of friends thought it would be funny to spike my drink with food coloring to turn it green. And they used a TON of it. They put enough of it into my beer that I could taste it, and it was terrible, just terrible. From that point forward, I refused to drink green beer. Disgusting.

But perhaps more than anything, I have no interest in drinking beer simply because I’m being told I’m somehow supposed to be drinking green beer. Why would I do that? Why would anyone do that? If beer was meant to be green, it would be green. Adding dye to your beer doesn’t make you Irish any more than eating a taco makes you Latin. Besides, Guinness not only tastes far better than a putrid green beer, it’s also good for your health.

Or at least that’s what I’ll be telling myself this St. Patrick’s Day. Please, do the right thing. Sláinte.