Perfectly paired meals, movies and music for your favorite beers
There are so many categories and subcategories of beer out there, sometimes it can be hard to keep track. For those of you trying to open your palate to new things, here are some of the most popular styles, along with the beer you probably know best in each category, and a lesser-known brand you might want to try. Just for fun, we’ve also included a food pairing suggestion for each, because neither man nor woman lives on beer alone.
Drinking songs
Drinking beer is the greatest ever and, as such, demands an equally awesome playlist. Here it is, dudes:
Atrophy, “Beer Bong”: These late-’80s Arizona thrashers offer helpful advice on consuming mass quantities of brew quickly, Beldar Conehead style. Everybody, all together now: “Beer bong! / It’s very clear / Beer bong! / You must be daring / Beer bong! / Or else the beer you’ll be wearing.” Bonus: The tune ends with maybe the longest beer belch ever captured on wax.
Three Loco, “Beer”: This all-star trash-hop crew of Andy Milonakis, Riff-Raff and Dirt Nasty provides you with your battle cry next time you raid the local Buffalo Wild Wings on a Friday night: “No champagne or girly drinks / We drink beer / And beer / And beer, beer, beer!”
Fidlar, “Cheap Beer”: These San Diego surf-punk wasetoids testify to the merits of the kind of beer you get when you slide the 7-Eleven clerk a dollar bill and get change back. Remember: “Beer is always better with a bag around it.”
George Jones, “Beer Run”: If you’re compiling a beer-drinking playlist without George Jones on it, you must be drunk already.
Diamond Rugs, “Gimme a Beer”: This sauced supergroup, which boasts members of Deer Tick, Black Lips and Los Lobos, helpfully illustrates how to compensate for your total inability to live up to your hopes and dreams. “I want the kinda life that I can’t leave behind / I’ll be a little ray of sunshine / But, oh … who cares? / Gimme a beer!”
Bessie Smith, “Gimme a Pigfoot and a Bottle of Beer”: The blues titan does the Rugs one better.
Nordheim, “Beer, Metal, Trolls, Vomit!”: Here, these Canadian folk metallers share the key ingredients to every successful social gathering.
People Under the Stairs, “Beer — Colt 45 Mix”: This underrated L.A. hip-hop crew testifies to the pleasure of getting one’s Billy Dee Williams on with the titular malt liquor/paint thinner.
Fear, “More Beer”: These supremely pilsnered punks pose life’s leading existential quandary here: “If there was no more beer, then what would we do?” That’s deep, man. Let’s pop another brew and discuss.
Mean Jeans, “Are There Beers in Heaven?”: Trick question! As these Portland pop punks know, beer is heaven.
Beck, “Beercan”: “I got something better than love,” Beck boasts on this old school ode to getting ripped. Hint: it rhymes with beer.
B(eer)-movies
Whether you’re looking for movies about beer or movies that just make you want to drink beer, there’s something in this list for every taste.
“Strange Brew” (1983): Perhaps the quintessential beer movie, unless you’re a hoser. Those tuque-wearing brothers Bob and Doug McKenzie (Dave Thomas, Rick Moranis) place a live mouse in a beer bottle in an attempt to score free beer. Instead, they’re given jobs at the Elsinore brewery, where they unwittingly discover a plot to use beer to control the world — as if beer didn’t already control the world.
“Smokey and the Bandit” (1977): They have a long way to go and a short time to get there, but Bo “Bandit” Darville (Burt Reynolds) still finds the time to stop his Trans Am and pick up a runaway bride (Sally Field) while he and his buddy Snowman (Jerry Reed) race to haul 400 cases of Coors from Texas to Atlanta in less than 28 hours. If this doesn’t make you want to grab a Coors, nothing will.
“Take This Job and Shove It” (1981): Frank Macklin (Robert Hays, “Airplane!”) is hired to turn around his struggling hometown brewery in this comedy based on the titular Johnny Paycheck anthem. That song alone will make you want to pop the top on a cold one — the cheaper the better.
“Drinking Buddies” (2013): Directed by mumblecore auteur Joe Swanberg, this largely improvised film follows Chicago craft brewery co-workers Kate (Olivia Wilde) and Luke (Jake Johnson) and their significant others (Ron Livingston, Anna Kendrick). Wilde repeatedly has said that the cast drank real beer the whole time on the set, so odds are you won’t be able to get as hammered watching it as they were filming it.
“The Bad News Bears” (1976): Not only is Little League coach Morris Buttermaker (Walter Matthau) rarely seen without a beer in the dugout, the children on the team celebrate at the end by dousing each other with beer. Oh, 1970s, why did you ever leave us?
“Beer League” (2006): Starring co-writer Artie Lange as well as Ralph Macchio, the comedy revolves around a seedy bar’s softball team. I’ve never actually seen it, but as an avid listener of “The Howard Stern Show” going back to Lange’s years in the studio, it feels as though I have.
“Say Anything …” (1989): After he finally convinces valedictorian Diane Court (Ione Skye) to come to a party, Lloyd Dobler (John Cusack) is separated from her when he’s chosen to be the keymaster. No, not Vinz Clortho, the Keymaster of Gozer, who was forever searching for Zuul the Gatekeeper in the original “Ghostbusters.” That would just be weird. It just meant Lloyd had to hold onto everyone’s keys and judge whether they were sober enough to drive home.
“Old School” (2003): Will Ferrell, a couple of beer bongs and some uncomfortable nudity. What more do you need?
“What! No Beer?” (1933): Buster Keaton and Jimmy Durante star as a couple of pratfalling buddies who struggle to launch a beer empire near the end of Prohibition. The movie isn’t very good — neither is their beer — and it marked Keaton’s final turn as a leading man.
Pretty much any Adam Sandler movie since “Happy Gilmore”: It’s not that any of them necessarily have anything to do with beer, but they’ll make you want to drink it — so very much of it — just to escape the discomfort of watching them.
