Best Golf Beers: Multiple Choices Abound

Selecting the best of anything is a no win project, regardless of the subject.  Beauty pagents, websites, movies, television shows, golf clubs, heck even selecting the best underwear inevitably lead to disagreements.

Rational conversations (hey someone somewhere must be rational at some time), long winded harangues, harsh words, and even fisticuffs can attend any such effort at selecting a best of anything.  Golfers are often passionately opinionated when it comes to brands associated with the game, both in favor and against a particular brand. 

Loudly professing the superiority of their chosen marque at every opportunity while denouncing all others as worthless pretenders to the throne.  Thus it was surprising to discover that it is not so with beer.  There are a wide-ranging variety of favorites put forth by golfers in a number of informal surveys.

Beer and Golf Long Term

Beer has been with us since at least the sixth millenium B.C., a long time by anybody's standards.  Golf has been around since about the twelfth century, not quite as long but when you've been drinking for seven thousand years it takes awhile to get around to playing games.  Too many other things to get in the way, like eating and not being eaten.  Once the world got around to having time for recreation, it was only natural that playing golf and drinking beer would get together.  Both activities are enjoyable, can occur out of doors, and when combined are less likely to be fatal than, say, beer drinking and anything involving gunfire or sword play.

Tributes to Beer Carts

With the advent of the golf cart came the ubiquitous Beer Cart and the ever popular Beer Cart Girl.  It's not called the Bottled Water Cart or the Sports Drink Cart but the Beer Cart simply because that has been the beverage of choice of golfers everywhere.  The folks in Wisconsin have even held the Miss Beer Cart Wisconsin Pageant and Golf Outing for the last three years.  A glorious celebration of three of a golfers favorite things; beer, beer cart girls and golf.  It's also an opportunity for beer cart girls throughout the state to show they are more than just a pretty, smiling face with a handful of a golfers favorite beverage.  Golf carts made it even easier to drink beer and play golf.  Riding and drinking is easy, more so than walking, drinking and carrying golf clubs.  Some of the places I've hit the ball have no where to set a beer down without spilling it all over the ground.  Cup holders, another reason to ride rather than walk.

Variety Abounds

Golfers favor a lighter beer for on course consumption, especially when the weather is hotter.  Miller Lite, Bud Lite, and Coors Lite are the most popular of the national brands, with the occasional local brew cited as a favorite.  In years past, before the health and fitness craze began frowning upon alcoholic beverage consumption, the Beer Cart would have carried four to six brands of beer choices.   Not so today, in the space once afforded to beer selection we now find $2.50 bottled water or sports drink.  My unscientific examination of tee box trash cans on four local courses indicates Miller Lite and Bud Lite atop golfers beer drinking choice list in my home area.

Click Here or Read More to Continue...

The 19th hole may or may not carry a wider selection of brews, depending upon the clientele.  More players seem willing to visit an off course establishment to provide their after round meal/beverage needs.  At least part of the relocation reasoning is to obtain a wider variety of beverage choices.   The category remains the same, beer, the branded selections expand.  With the international boundaries lowered substantially by the internet, knowledge of import possibilities has increased, as has the list of favorites depending in what part of the wide world the chooser happens to reside.  I've come across the names of Australian, European, and Asian beers I've never heard of much less had the opportunity to taste.  Names like Cascade Premium,  James Boags,  Crown, Asahi, and Tiger have replaced those of Falstaff, Schlitz, and Hamm's as favorites.  Some of the usual suspects, Miller Lite, Bud Lite, Coors Lite received a lot of votes.  Guinness was mentioned quite frequently, a comfortably familiar selection.  A majority of folks listed more than one choice.  Sam Adams,  Yeungling, Leinenkugels, Natty, Becks, Capital City, the selections are representative of the wide array of choices available today.

There is no single best beer for golf.  Most golfers indicated a variety of choices as being favorites, a not so surprising result given the broad palette of available products.  What I did learn is that refreshment choices are valued by golfers everywhere.  Taste differs as much in beer as it does in golf clubs.  Remember to tip well, have fun, and drink responsibly.  There you have my public service announcement for this week.