It will come as a surprise to no one, I'm sure, when I observe that we live in an advertising age. These days, it seems like ads inhabit virtually every square centimetre of daily life, from the televisions now installed in many office tower elevators to the very stairs I climb to exit the Toronto subway. And no small part of this advertising landscape is taken up by beer.

     I've been following beer ads with particular interest this past summer, watching them become more and more vacuous and irrelevant as the months pass. In the process, I've compiled a list of what I call "the empty words of beer," those mostly meaningless words and phrases that big beer companies use in their advertising to avoid talking about how their brands actually taste. Their definitions, as far as I can deduce, speak volumes about the products being sold, even as they paradoxically say nothing. Like the following few prime examples:

     Drinkable - This is one of my personal faves, and apparently it's also pretty big with the major brewers, since they almost all seem to use it. For mass market brands, it's supposed to be something good, as in "It's a very drinkable beer that goes down easy." But what's the alternative? Acid that scalds your throat when you swallow? The last time I checked, pretty much every liquid on sale at my local supermarket was drinkable, and I strongly suspect that those which are not would have very short life spans as commercial products. According to my dictionary, if something can be swallowed, it's drinkable, which puts that "very drinkable beer" on a par with, say, water, Kool-Aid and Dr. Pepper.

     Cold - Will someone please tell me when packaged beer started to have control over its own temperature? Because that's the impression I'm left with after reading the summer's crop of beer billboards, each claiming that this beer was colder than that one. I'm sorry, but until someone comes out with a self-chilling can that automatically reduces the temperature of its contents to one one-hundredth of a degree above freezing, I'm afraid that I will continue to believe that the temperature of a can or bottle of beer is limited to that of the refrigerator or cooler in which it is stored.

     Smooth - Please see 'Drinkable."

     Crisp - Okay, fair dues here. At least 'crisp' is a legitimate beer word, one which I will readily admit to using to describe the difference between ales (fruity, rounded) and lagers (crisp, more linear in taste profile). But the majors have used it in such a way as to render it meaningless, with just about every major brewery lager on the market having been at one time or another described as "crisp." Of course, what they're really saying, I suspect, is that if you chill the beer down to a cold enough temperature, it will taste much like water and thus be very "crisp" and refreshing.

     Clean - As opposed to what? Dirty? Curiously, this word is usually used in concert with 'crisp,' which makes me think only of the old 7UP ads boasting that the soft drink was "crisp and clean and no caffeine." This is what the big breweries want, for us to think of soda pop when the name of their beer is mentioned?

     Refreshing - This is a big one, a word that I believe every large scale brewery on the face of the planet wants associated with their beer. The problem is that as beer becomes more sweet, it also becomes less purely refreshing, and nearly all of the big name brands of lagers brewed world-wide have for years been getting sweeter and sweeter. It is for this reason that all of the big breweries now want us to drink their beer at ice cold temperatures, since that's the only way a sweet beverage has a chance of being considered refreshing. If you don't believe me, try knocking back a room temperature bottle of cola the next time you're really thirsty and see how refreshing you find that layer of sugar that sits on your tongue. Then try the same trick with a mainstream lager.

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• A Country, a Beer, and an Equation Not Necessarily Sound March 2007
• Besting Wine with Beer and Chocolate February 2008
• A Year in Beer & Food January 2008
• Cooking Up My Last Supper December 2007
• The Best of Beer Fests? November 2007
• My First Visit to Oktoberfest October 2007
• So What IS Balance, Anyway? September 2007
• Revisiting the Beer Cocktail August 2007
• Sampling The Ubiquitous Chip July 2007
• Three Stops in Philadelphia June 2007
• Time to Kill the Cold May 2007
• Sahtis and Saunas in Lammi April 2007
• Turning St. Patrick on His Head March 2007
• A Tale of a Tasting February 2007
• Twelve Months of Beer January 2007
• The Year in Beer Blogs December 2006
• The 25th Edition of the Great American Beer Festival November 2006
• Why Can't Somebody Explain this Beer to Me? October 2006
• Ten Years Can Be a Long Time September 2006
• Rethinking the Draught-Bottle-Can Paradigm August 2006
• Light, fizzy beers are losing popularity July 2006
• Beer & Health June 2006
• Tallking Tin May 2006
• Consider the Cocktail April 2006
• The Future of Big Breweries? March 2006
• A Potpourri of Beer News February 2006
• Looking Forward in 2006 Janaury 2006
• Gifts for the Gourmand December 2005
• Beer Tasting 101 November 2005
• The Great Canadian Beer Festival October 2005
• The Passion of Mondovino September 2005
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• Ten Truly Great Summer Beer Experiences July 2005
• Great News for Good Beer June 2005
• Flogging A Dead Horse May 2005
• Hey Molson-Coors, What Do You Have Against Taste? April 2005
• Beer and Food Pairing Gains Popularity! March 2005
• Bud for the Cocktail Set February 2005
• Looking Back and Looking Ahead January 2005
• Holiday Wishes December 2004
• The 2004 Great American Beer Festival November 2004
• The Empty Words of Beer October 2004
• A Visit to the Griffin Brewery September 2004
• Oh Look, It's Another Major Brewery Merger! August 2004
• Interview with John Sleeman July 2004
• Creating a Blend June 2004
• World of Beer turns 40 May 2004
• Eighteen Ways to Improve Your Beer Life April 2004
• Drinking Old Beer March 2004
• Drink Local or Drink Quality? February 2004
• 2003 - The Year That Was January 2004
• 2004 - The Year of Lambic December 2003
• Perspective on the Premium Beer Market November 2003
• So What Makes a Bar Great? October 2003
• Random Reflections at Summer's End, September 2003
• Why I Drink Beer, August 2003
• American Beer Month: Controversial Again, July 2003
• The Case for the Complexity of Beer, June 2003
• Enough of the Lowbrow Chic Already!, May 2003
• A Beer Called Lambic, April 2003
• Of Snow and Barley Wines, March 2003
• Lament for a Brewpub, February 2003
• What We Didn't Get Done, January 2003
• More Belgian Bliss, December 2002
• Joanna Blythman is an Idiot, November 2002
• Brakspear and the Name Game, October 2002
• Taking a Taste of the Midwest, September 2002
• Oregon Brewers Festival 2002, August 2002
• In Praise of Expensive Beer, July 2002
• Le Mondial de la Bière, June 2002
• Beers that Go to the Dogs, May 2002
• In Praise of the Pub, April 2002
• A Great Restaurant Town, True, But a Magnificent Beer Town, March 2002
• Right Beer, Wrong Weather: Imperial Stouts in New York, February 2002
• What I've Learned About Beer, January 2002
• Deceptive Names, Deceptive Drinks, December 2001
• The Truth About Dutch Beer, November 2001
• A Very Personal Message from Stephen Beaumont, October 2001
• Smell Your Beer, September 2001
• Travel Karma, Great Beer and the Oregon Brewers festival, August 2001
• Switzerland after Samichlaus, July 2001
• A Tale of Three Bus(c)hes, June 2001
• Announcing a New Great Canadian Beer Guide, May 2001
• Beer Belongs at the Table, April 2001
• A Bevy of Barley Wines, March 2001
• Why Craft Beer is Here to Stay, February 2001
• Y2Beer -- The Year in Review, January 2001
• No Age Verification Necessary, December 2000
• A Tale of a Tasting, November 2000
• In Praise of la Belle Province, October 2000
• The Premium Beer Drinker's Guide is Here!!, September 2000
• The Downside of Beer and Brewing, August 2000
• So Why Do You Drink Beer?, July 2000
• The Summer Joy of Wheat, June 2000
• In Defense of Beer, May 2000
• Ten Days in Belgium, Part II, April 2000
• Ten Days in Belgium, Part I, April 2000
• Ten Days in Belgium, Introduction, April 2000
• A World of Stout, Mar 2000
• The Glass From Which We Drink, Feb 2000
• The Year As It Was: Brews, Fests and Damn Foolishness , Jan 2000
• New Years Eve, Dec 1999
• Beer in the Land of Stout, Nov 1999
• Visiting the World's Best Beer Fest, Oct 1999
• The Secretive Charm of the Bière de Garde, Sept 1999
• The Mixed Marriage of a Beer and a Cigar, Aug 1999

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