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If you're drinking an American-style large-scale brew, then the light is certainly as tasty as the full-flavor version. With the exception of Bud Light, which is the worst liquid ever produced, most are innocuous and will not make your nose crinkle up at all. If you think it's beer, then I would argue you may as well drink the light as the other.

Miller Light, for example, is just fine. You can drink it and not realize you're drinking beer at all. It's almost refreshing. Coors Light too, can get you pretty hydrated for that big race, without slowing you down. And you don't want anything slowing you down when you're certain to be racing for the rest room! But the gastrointestinal effects might be an issue. Expect to fart like crazy.

Samuel Adams has released a light beer, and I have had it. It doesn't taste like the heady brew they're famous for, but it's a respectable wheat soda.

In Germany, my favorite beer was Kolsch. I've had it here in the states, but it never quite lives up to its namesake. Kolsch is light, with tiny, weensy little bubbles. It forms a thick head, and you can drink ten of them without falling off the stool. If it weren't for that item in my perspective, I don't know if I'd feel this way. But Kolsch gave me a glimpse of what the American high-density beers were made to do: Pass large volumes of liquids through kidneys.

In that sense, it matters not whether you're drinking Miller, Bud, Yuengling or something else. Ale is different, but try a Pabst. Pabst is just as good as any of the other pale competitors, and until you reach for something like Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, or Red Hook's ESB, you're only drinking wheat soda anyway.

So "Regular" beer, if it doesn't disappoint you, should give a fair comparison to the light stuff. Americans are not elitist, we're not by and large the kind of people who would go be French about stuff. Who cares how fresh the ingredients are? It will all taste like someone left pool water in a thermos long enough to leach the binding agents from the plastic, and if it's good enough for you, then you aren't really interested in the same things that would make one 'better'.

But if you want "Authentic" beer, or Ale, or Lager, Pils, Kolsch or a Malt, then please don't try the light. Leave that to the majority, who would also like to listen to some old Phil Collins hits. You know who you are, and what you want in life. If you want to keep your liver busy while you trudge through the banal conversations you're likely to have at the bar without adding to your waist, just keep your priorities in mind.

Learn more about this author, Joe Matthews.
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