Beer Syndicate Blog

Just as there are many different styles of beer in the world, so too are there many different kinds of beer drinkers, some of whom pair with certain drinking personalities better than others. 

Using a sophisticated algorithm to collect and analyze data from the internet, Beer Syndicate identified and characterized eighteen different beer drinker profiles to help determine not only what profile best describes you, but also which drinking personalities are most and least compatible with your own.

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With that, we present to you:

The Beer Drinker Zodiac

The Optimizer:

Often familiar with a vast assortment of beer and their respective prices, The Optimizer is constantly searching for the intersection of where maximum quality meets minimum price.  Always a sucker for a good deal, The Optimizer is typically most active during Happy Hour, but can also be seen loading up on boxes of quality marked down beer at the liquor store, and if forced to buy non-discounted beer, will apply a sophisticated quality-to-price per volume formula to guide a beer buying decision.  Not one to overpay, if the price isn’t right, The Optimizer is never afraid to just order water or simply just go drink from their stash at home.

Seek: The Transcender and The Pseudo Connoisseur
Avoid: The Budget Drinker and Captain Ahab

The Adventurer:

The Adventurer is driven by an inner desire to discover and experience new, exciting, exotic, creative or world-class beers, with little mind paid to the cost.  Although at times The Adventurer may receive social recognition and even appear to be bragging when mentioning former beer experiences, attention and status are not the driving motives when it comes time for The Adventurer to make a beer selection.

Seek: Captain Ahab, The Beer Snob and The Box Checker
Avoid: The Old-Timer and The 40 Ouncer

The Carbophobe:

Whether it was the Atkins fad back in the early 2000s or whatever the most updated version of keto happens to be, low-carb diets have been around for a long time and typically cast beer as one of the bad guys.  With every new cycle of low-carb diet comes a new generation of the weight-conscious Carbophobe, who can often be seen asking for the lowest carb beer on the tap list, or simply opting for the patron saint-beer of  low-carb beers, Michelob Ultra.

Seek: The Old-Timer, The Budget Drinker and other Carbophobes
Avoid: The Beer Snob

Captain Ahab:

This beer drinker’s eyes are always fixed on catching the next white whale; that rare beer that was last seen in Shangri-La, Atlantis or somewhere in the Canyon of the Crescent Moon.  Not necessarily driven by bragging rights or attention, the Captain Ahab archetype equates rarity with quality, and is typically motivated by the idea that anything worth having should be a challenge to obtain, price be damned.   

Seek: The Adventurer, The Transcender, and The Beer Snob
Avoid: The Old-Timer and The Budget Drinker

The Transcender:

An advanced nonconformist drink­­er who transcends trends and convention, despite being well aware of them.  A 15% barrel-aged Russian Imperial Stout in the middle of a sweltering summer?  That’s their “lawnmower beer”.  A mouth-puckering Lambic paired with a Snickers ice cream bar?  A match made in heaven.  Following their own path and absent of snobbery, this individualistic and enlightened breed might profoundly enjoy a rare Cantillon Fou’ Foune from their private collection while listening to A Tribe Called Quest on Monday, only to slurp down a few cans of Milwaukee’s Best with lime during a game of cornhole on Tuesday.

Seek: The Adventurer, The Optimizer, and Captain Ahab
Avoid: The Pseudo Connoisseur

The Budget Drinker:

A group predominantly comprised of high school and college students, the deciding factor for The Budget Drinker in all beer drinking decisions is cost.  Unlike to The Optimizer, cost, not quality, is the only factor in the equation.  The usual beer suspects are Natty Light, Keystone, and PBR if there’s nothing cheaper.

Seek: The Old-Timer and The Carbophobe
Avoid: The Beer Snob and The Politically Correct Anti-Beer Snob Crusader

The Box Checker:

The Box Checker is concerned with having every beer, craft or otherwise, at least once.  This breed of drinker could be motivated by bragging rights or FOMO, but more often a latent OCD-like desire to “complete the set”.   Although fueled in large part by social drinking apps like Untappd, The Box Checker mentality has existed ever since Adam named all the animals. 

Seek: The Adventurer, Captain Ahab and The Transcender
Avoid: The Loyalist

The Old-Timer:

This group of drinkers solidified their opinion about what beer was long before the craft beer revolution, and therefore anything that doesn’t taste like a fizzy yellow lager, doesn’t “taste like beer” and is therefore to be largely avoided.

Seek: The Carbophobe
Avoid: The Adventurer, The Box Checker and The Beer Snob

The Seasonal Drinker:

The weather typically dictates which beer The Seasonal Drinker will consume in almost OCD-like fashion.  Big rich beers are winter-only, enjoyed preferably fireside.  These very same winter beers are, however, utterly undrinkable by the first day of spring.  Likewise, The Seasonal Drinker is meteorologically tethered when it comes to drinking lighter beers, which are only enjoyable on a hot day, particularly after mowing the lawn— any lawn.

Seek: Other Seasonal Drinkers
Avoid: The Adventurer

The Beer Snob:

Believing their personal tastes and opinions about anything beer-related to be far superior to most if not all other people, for The Beer Snob, beer is simply a means to an end, with the value of any given beer determined by how much it could further elevate The Beer Snob’s own status, or devalue someone else’s status.  The Beer Snob often attempts to seek out positions of authority in the beer world and surround themselves with acolytes who must share the opinions and affirm the status of The Beer Snob, or suffer ridicule.

The Beer Snob will seek out rare, expensive, hyped or otherwise coveted beers for bragging rights, if not also to then subsequently crap on those very same beers, because even the most excellent beer is not safe from the dreaded label of “drain pour” from the ultimate Beer Snob.

Seek: Captain Ahab and The Perma-Hater
Avoid: The Budget Drinker, The 40 Ouncer, and The Politically Correct Anti-Beer Snob Crusader

The Politically Correct Anti-Beer Snob Crusader:

Often equally if not more annoying than The Beer Snob, The Politically Correct Anti-Beer Snob Crusader is the self-appointed, easily triggered, aggressive defender against all threats of beer snobbery, real or imagined.  Like a robot with PTSD and a broken targeting system, practically anyone with an opinion about beer is a potential target of the hypersensitive PC Anti-Beer Snob Crusader and thus subject to bullying under the guise of protecting the innocent and defenseless beer consumer.  Making a considerate beer recommendation to a friend?  Get ready to be labeled a beer snob and blasted with a barrage of demands and platitudes such as “Don’t tell people what to drink! Everyone has a different palate!!!  PEOPLE SHOULD DRINK WHATEVER THEY WANT!!! IT’S JUST BEER!!!  BEER IS SUPPOSED TO BE FUN!!!”

Seek: Other Politically Correct Anti-Beer Snob Crusaders, though be prepared to be labeled a beer snob yourself.
Avoid: The Beer Snob, The Pseudo Connoisseur and especially The 40 Ouncer who might interpret your aggressive outbursts as a threat and subsequently shoot or stab you.

The Pseudo Connoisseur:

This special breed of drinker has a deep-seated psychological drive to be seen as an expert on the subject of beer, if not everything else, despite not actually being an expert on beer or anything else.  Able to impress the casual beer drinker with often half-true or fully made-up beer facts, The Pseudo Connoisseur is all smoke and mirrors and lives by the motto: fake it till you fake it some more and then keep faking it.

Seek: The Trend Chaser
Avoid: The Politically Correct Anti-Beer Snob Crusader

The Perma-Hater:

Even with over 100 different styles of beer presenting a vast assortment of flavors that far outstrip the diversity within the wine world, The Perma-Hater never seems to be pleased with any beer on the market.  While reluctantly willing to try new beers, The Perma-Hater will invariably either hate or barely tolerate anything new, and will often opt for a beer that they’ve had in the past that they hate just slightly less than everything else.  Not necessarily snobbish, The Perma-Hater may just be extremely picky, or is only able to maintain their lifeforce via the power of complaining.

Seek: The Futile Reminiscer and other Perma-Haters
Avoid: Captain Ahab

The Trend Chaser:

From the IPA explosion years back, to the barrel-aged craze, to sours, and back to IPAs (in the form of NEIPAs and Brut IPAs), The Trend Chaser follows the wind of the trend.  Sometimes stemming from a desire to be seen as hip, and sometimes driven by the excitement of wherever the craft beer market seems to be headed, one thing is certain: The Trend Chaser will be fully committed to whatever the current trend is until the next one comes along.

Seek: The Adventurer and The Transcender
Avoid: The Perma-Hater

The Hop-Oholic:

Hop-Oholics come in a few varieties, but all predominately opt for beers with a hop-forward character. The first kind of Hop-Oholic are those who truly appreciate the character of a wide variety of hops, intense bitterness, or some combination of the two.  Next up are those who don’t fundamentally enjoy IPAs, but believe them to be a necessary rite of passage on the beer drinker’s path to a respectably developed palate and thus drink IPAs out of peer pressure or until they’ve convinced themselves that they like them.  And then there are The Hop-Oholics who simply got stuck in the IPA trend years back and never branched out— Sort of like someone who really got into MC Hammer pants in the early 90s, and just stuck with it.

Seek: The Adventurer, The Beer Snob and The Pseudo Connoisseur
Avoid: The 40 Ouncer, The Budget Drinker, and The Old Timer

The Loyalist:

Despite new and innovative breweries popping up all the time, The Loyalist is dedicated to only one brewery or brand and seldom if ever strays.  Although The Loyalist is not necessarily averse to trying new beers of a different brand, any new beer will always be compared to but ultimately never stack up to The Loyalist’s favorite brand.

Seek: Other Loyalists who enjoy your favorite brands.  If your favorite brand(s) disappears, then seek The Futile Reminiscer.
Avoid: The Box Checker and The Adventurer

The Futile Reminiscer:

This drinker fell in love with a particular brand from the past that is no longer available, and try as they might, The Futile Reminiscer will never be as satisfied with any other beer ever again.

Seek: The Perma-Hater and The Adventurer
Avoid: The Politically Correct Anti-Beer Snob Crusader

The 40 Ouncer: 

Whether slurping down a Mickey’s, Clot 45, St Ides, or the classic OE, this malt liquor loving demographic is primarily comprised of gangsters from the ‘90s and homeless alcoholics.  It is important to note, however, that unlike the ‘90s gangster who may pour a bit of their 40 out for a fallen hommie, the homeless alcoholic will not.

Seek: The Old-Timer and The Budget Drinker
Avoid: The Hop-Oholic and The Adventurer

Hi, I’m D.J. Pander.  I like beer.  I also blog. Follow me on Myspace.

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