Why Beer Snobs Are Pissed at Anthony Bourdain

Beer snobs are a prickly bunch -- all 19 types. And they've been especially prickly to America's favorite food nerd/world traveler Anthony Bourdain, who doesn't care whether the beer he drinks is craft or not. Bourdain spoke to Thrillist about everything from his Road House-viewing parties to tipping to getting flamed by beer enthusiasts. Apparently, Bourdain is down for "drinking whatever convenient cold beer is available in a particular place," but not the best beer. Gasp!

It might seem strange that someone who is so passionate about food doesn't care about great beer too, but that's just how he rolls. "I think [craft beer snobs] somehow expect me to have better taste in beer than whatever generic green bottle I happen to be grabbing," he said, talking about the mass-produced beers he pairs with food on his Parts Unknown show. "And they see that I'm passionate about food, why am I not passionate about beer? I just ain't. I'm just not." That's led to what he calls "the angriest critiques I get" from beer nerds clearly flummoxed by his choices.

As you might expect, this means he doesn't go out of his way to find good beer when he's in a given city. "You know, I haven't made the effort to walk down the street 10 blocks to the microbrewery where they're making some fucking Mumford and Sons IPA," he said.

Bourdain says a bar is a place to "get a little bit buzzed, and pleasantly derange the senses, and have a good time, and interact with other people, or make bad decisions, or feel bad about your life." When he recently went to a brewpub in San Francisco, he was annoyed with "people sitting there with five small glasses in front of them, filled with different beers, taking notes." It struck him as not a real bar. "This is fucking Invasion of the Body Snatchers," he said. "This is wrong. This is not what a bar is about." Apparently, the man does not want to "sit there fucking analyzing beer."

Lest you think he's just more of a wine person, he's not. "I don't need to know what's out of the fucking hill, or who put the grapevines in, or that they were transplanted. I don't need this. I drank it already, dude. I just -- I don't care." The wine snobs don't seem to care though. Perhaps beer nerds should take a page out of their book -- just drink the stuff and don't worry about it.

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