Oh, wait. Not five-cent beer. What we need is five percent beer, although I actually drank what may have been the last five-cent beer ever offered. That was in about 1955, when a local Seattle tavern offered beer in a schooner-shaped jigger for a nickel! Great fun at the time, and one such beer was sufficient to make a point.
We have far more need of “table beer” than of strong beer. Young people cannot learn to manage alcohol if it is found only in strong libations.
My last five-cent hamburger? Memphis TN, in 1944. It was very small, about three inches diameter. I was weaned on 3.2 beer in the Marines during the war, which was all the military could serve enlisted people, It was free, but rationed, in combat zones. That designation indicated that the beer had only 3.2 percent alcohol by weight, the measuring standard of the Prohibition era. America’s pre-Prohibition brewers were mostly of German extraction, and they calculated their beer parameters using the mathematically simpler “by weight” system, which was equivalent to 4 percent “by volume.” Today we all use the universally understandable “by volume,” since almost all other alcohol standards, these days, are in that format as well.
Light Beer vs Heavy Beer
Old brewing texts describe the traditional difference between heavy and light in beer: 12.5 Plato. Less than 12.5 Plato (Original gravity, or OG, of 1050) before adding yeast delivers “light,” while more than that gives us “heavy.” Light beer may therefore be (loosely) defined as a beer with less than 5 percent ABV (alcohol by volume). Truly classic Guinness Draught, is a black light beer at OG 10.3-Plato and 4.4 percent ABV. Unfortunately, there’s no nationally available American brew quite like Guinness Draught, found in a surprising number of American pubs across the country.
As I noted above, most craft brews in this country are actually “heavy.” Worse, even the beer we call “session beer” is often brewed to over 5 percent ABV. Not so in Europe, where most of the beer finishes below the 5 percent edge.
We have become obsessed with the idea that light beer must be tasteless, exceedingly pale and calorie deficient. At the same time, we are taught to believe that any beer with less than 5 percent is weak, wussy beer; hence the fading malt liquor phenomenon: insipid wussy beer with plenty of alcohol. We have even become acculturated to disdain our traditional “3.2” beer (4 percent ABV). In Britain, however, such beer will not be wimpy at all. British milds and bitters will, for the most part, be delicious and very enjoyable. Good taste is possible even in non-alcohol beer. Check out NA Kaliber from Guinness!
But that’s not my point. Our craft brewers (bless them) have taken to brewing some truly magnificent beers: strong and delicious at 10 percent and up to over 20 percent alcohol. There are more such brews out there now than there are of what we formerly called “session beer” or what the British call “mild.” Strong beer cannot take the place of what I call table beer, which, if it is done in the traditional way will have less than 5 percent alcohol content. If one wanders the continent these days, most of the beer served in pubs is of 4 to 5 percent. Since the name “session beer” is no longer available, we need a new name. May I suggest “table beer.”
