Why Drinking Beer is More Than A Pint For Men

As mercury levels climb up with ferocity - the usual stuff of Indian Summers- a quick gulp of lemonade, and raw mango pannah is overshadowed by our beloved chilled beers. It’s almost like we have an unspoken language of bonding with beers. With quenching our parched throats, beers are also part of our social collective memory.

You may not remember the first cocktail you had. But Beer? For sure. To many, it accompanied the mark low-key initiation into adulthood. First sip of frothy beer, either had hesitantly in a hostel room, or on 21st birthdays, beers have been a rite of passage into manhood.

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Although whiskey carries patriarchal weight with it, beers often accompany heart-warming stories, a chill sense with friends, or intense cricket match. It is rarely consumed alone and always enjoyable.

Drinking beer feels like you're breaking the restraint and escaping to a side that holds laughter, fun, and letting loose. It brings along with its fizzy, golden colour, a more approachable space that's less performative.

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You don't need to swirl, it, sniff it, or sip it in hushed reverence and definitely doesn't require a vocabulary borrowed from French vineyards. When you hold a pint, it signals a casual, no-frills attitude. Like Gen Z say, 'Keeping it 100'.

So, to see the rise of craft beer in India is no big fuss. It is an extension of the experimental, subtly, and a palette for beer. One that brings into the conversation, wheat-to-barely ratio, infused tastes like mango saisons or coffee. In a way, craft beers take the remains of nostalgia about college memories, reckless nights, birthdays and breakups to level up.

A little bit of character, a little bit of flavour over function, Indian craft beers are enjoying their time right now. From Bira to Gateway Brewing Co, craft beers and microbreweries are now part of the urban lexicon, experimenting with local ingredients like sorghum, kokum, jaggery.

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Perhaps, beers help occupy men that casual masculine space where they can share a sense of release. It is that everyman's go-to drink- maybe some may contest it to be the good Old Monk- that doesn't insist on prestige or pedigree but ease and inclusion. It's a gateway to unwind and to connect. The fact of the matter is very few remember their first beers as love-at-first sight. It holds a special place because it’s yours. It’s the moment that matters most.

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Something’s almost communal about beer, won’t you say? It’s a quiet companion that offer men low-stake enjoyment, without the rituals or the pressure to impress. Two six-apck heavy men don’t sit shoulder to shoulder to discuss business, they switch off, slow-down. Beers don’t ask you to be anything but be present in the moment, with the fizz and the hops.

It doesn’t challenge them or demand performance unlike many who associate it with whiskey and wine. Beer is pure respite as it forgives the fatigue of a long day, the intense summer heat and becomes a subtle exit from the performance of masculinity. One cold bottle, one hiss, one sip.