i am not drinking a ruby red kölsch this summer and you can't make me
If you’re reading this and we do not have the city of [REDACTED] in common, just know that there is a local seasonal delicacy called the Ruby Red Kölsch — a grapefruit-flavored beer — and unlike the weak-willed Ashtons of yesteryear, I am not fucking drinking it.
I don’t care how on sale they are at [redacted grocery store]. I don’t give a shit if everything else in your parents’ garage fridge is IPAs even grosser. On the incredibly slim chance that I end up having dinner at [redacted brewhouse from which Ruby Red Kölsch originates] so I can sit on the roof and enjoy the view of [redacted waterfall], I still won’t order the Adult Grapefruit Juice, even if it’s on tap. If it’s on tap somewhere else, I will straight-up leave. I will go home.
The core issue here is that I don’t like any beer, and Ruby Red Kölsch is the one always advertised to me as relatively unbeerlike. Do I prefer it to most ales, stouts, lagers, et al.? Yes. Do I enjoy it? No. Here’s what happens when I crack one of these stupid things open: I take one sip and go, “Oh fuck.” I say this out loud. I get weird looks. Because I have selective Ruby Red Kölsch amnesia. It’s grapefruit, I think. It’s beer for beer haters. They put a fruit in it. They did that for people like me. Doesn’t matter, it turns out!
I’m scapegoating Ruby Red Kölsch because it’s so locally prevalent, and because Kölsch is fun to say, but it’s really just any purported tolerable beer for cowards. “It doesn’t even taste like beer!” claim the masses. Nobody ever says this about like, flavored vodka. Because everyone knows you can infuse vodka with multiple trees’ worth of citrus, and it will still just taste like vodka (read: it will hurt). But you aren’t supposed to enjoy vodka! You aren’t supposed to lazily sip straight vodka from a can while you sit around a campfire inhaling (entirely superfluous in 2023!) woodsmoke and listening to someone’s cousin’s boyfriend play “Wonderwall” in E minor because he left his capo at home. You’re supposed to disguise it in cocktails or do shots (estimated suffering time: two seconds maximum). And then you’re wasted! You know, the real purpose of alcohol! Beer neither tastes good nor gets you drunk, unless consumed in excess, but like, why would you when it tastes bad?
This post is embarrassing to write because I've reached my twilight years, and most of my peers have discovered at least one beer they can tolerate. Not I. I don’t think it’s gonna happen, guys. I am cursed to lead a BYOUHB (bring your own unspecified hard beverage) existence. I will show up with a personal supply of Michael’s Difficult Lemonade and try not to puke into a hydrangea bush like a teenager. It’s still better than sitting stone-cold sober in an Adirondack chair with a lukewarm can of Ruby Red Kölsch because I’m a child’s-palated loser who can’t physically drink eight ounces of beer in under an hour. Even if it’s grapefruit.