The Best Beers in the World - part 2
Belikin? More like BeliKant
One important thing I left out about the “best beers in the world” is that the best beers in the world are actually good. You have to actually like the organoleptic properties of the liquid. The context of your experience with a beer can only go so far, I’m sorry to say. And yes, de gustibus non est disputandum, but only real whackadoos like diacetyl in beer.
For example, I was very recently in Belize with two good friends. We were there to be together, firstly, and I’ve somehow convinced them that fly fishing is a great excuse to travel to interesting places to get together, so secondly we also did fly fishing. We spent plenty of time talking absolute shit about all manner of things, as you do on these types of trips. Here’s a quick recap of our talking points:
Our lives generally - medical issues, marriages, children, home projects, career and retirement (?) outlooks.
The current state of politics in this country, how instead of fly fishing in Belize maybe the three of us - generally smart, well-adjusted people in our mid-40s - should be more involved in politics, that maybe some sort of gen-x apathy is part of the problem in politics today.
The redolent pleasure of going to a Dune 2 matinee at an Imax in Brooklyn at noon on a Tuesday and then taking yourself out for a nice lunch afterwards. Also relevant to the more-involved-in-politics issue above.
How you should never, ever, don’t even fucking think about it, open a restaurant.
Airline status, TSA precheck, Global Entry, and international travel generally.
Whether our universe has grown in total volume since the big bang or if this seemingly “obvious” fact is actually a mirage caused by the limits of observation and that rather we are living in a locally heterogeneous part of an infinite universe to which it is meaningless to ascribe a change in size. Clearly we have to better understand what space is, what infinity is, and it would help to understand what consciousness is, and that last one always sneaks in (maybe I’m guilty of always sneaking it in?) and it’s a real bastard, because even if we retreat to some extreme form of external world skepticism - even if we bite the bullet and claim that only mind-stuff exists - the mind stuff still has to exist someplace, even if it’s just mindplace.
Chris and I gave what I think was a good defense of traditional philosophy in the face of Ryan’s full-throated elaboration of what amounted to a basically Peircean account of pragmatism.
I pointed out how science and philosophy are like conspiracy theories for smart people - of course you think that wooden table is a solid object, you’re one of the sheeple, that’s exactly what big-matter wants you to think. If you really cared about the truth you’d look behind the curtain and realize that the table, in fact all matter, is 99.999999% empty space! Rocks? Empty space. Bones? Empty space. Tungsten? Empty space. Get your head out of your ass - big-matter just wants your money.
We also bobbed in the sunset in the Caribbean sea every day after fishing and drank Belikins and rum punches and considered buying some cocaine because “they don’t put the fentanyl in it until it gets to Mexico.” We ate jerk chicken and grilled snapper and plenty of conch in various forms and we went snorkeling. It was pretty great.
But it wasn’t great enough to overcome the fact that Belikin is not a good beer.
The biggest problem with Belikin is diacetyl - the primary compound that makes buttery things smell buttery, including butter. It is typically caused by improper fermentation management and can also be caused by bacterial infection.
About half of the Belikin bottles I opened had diacetyl levels well above the typical human sensory threshold. Diacetyl is considered to be a technical defect in most beers. There are some few styles and traditions that may have relatively elevated levels of diacetyl in the standard examples (which doesn’t make it OK, in my opinion), but for greater than 99% of beer styles, diacetyl is considered a flaw.
I have extensive experience with controlled quantitative diacetyl sensory and I can confidently use the following technical term to describe some Belikin - that shit is buttery AF. And diacetyl is particularly noticeable in what is supposed to be a light, clean, crisp, easy-drinking lager. Really spoils the mood.
Luckily we drank from many different lots of Belikin on our trip and some did not have elevated levels of diacetyl. But they still weren’t very good. They are packaged in 9.5oz returnable bottles and we asked a few locals why and they said - “so they don’t get warm - the piss taste really comes out when they get warm.”
I found Belize to be a little bit of a disappointment, particularly compared to Mexico in terms of saltwater fly fishing destinations. I’ve never had an objectively bad beer in Mexico. Also, the food in Mexico is wildly, astronomically, insanely better than the food in Belize. In every possible way.
Photos below - even the Belikin being free at happy hour doesn’t make it good, though the One Barrel Rum was decent; evenings on the dock parts 1-3; Ryan and Eloy at “the boneyard" in the screaming wind; Chris with a decent fish; me releasing a fish that absolutely sharked my fly after a 90’ cast into 4” of water - it was a “pretty sick eat”; me snorkeling - more than once I was asked if this was a picture of a manatee.
The heliocentric heretics Copernicus and Galileo also complained about buttery beer.