Citrus has its place in some drinks, but not in beer, says Wyn Drabble.
Citrus has its place in some drinks, but not in beer, says Wyn Drabble.
Opinion:
Most of you probably know that a certain brand of beer is generally served with a lime wedge stuck into the opening. For the purposes of this column, I will refer to it as Certain Brand Beer, or CBB for short.
When, some decades ago, I first witnessed thispractice, I wondered why. But I will leave my views until the end. This will give me time to examine some of the already published ‘reasons’, none of which, it seems, have been confirmed or denied by CBB itself.
Apparently they just don’t answer such questions. Perhaps mystique is the new black. Or is it pink now?
One explanation is that the metal caps are notorious for leaving nasty brown rust stains on the rim, so the lime is inserted to aid rust removal. This suggests to me that, through oral contact with the neck of the bottle, consumers of CBB would be consuming removed rust. Very tasteful!
There has to be a better reason. The next one centres on the clear glass used by CBB. Most other beer, at least in the US market, is bottled in brown or green glass. Because light is an enemy of the beverage, the clear glass can contribute to an unpleasant smell most often described as “skunky”. The lime helps to mask that unpleasant smell.
Wyn Drabble.
Where this reason possibly falls down is that CBB had quite a long history (1925 – 1981) before the widespread appearance of the lime wedge in the neck of the bottle, so it can’t have been too “skunky” for those first 56 years.
Then there’s the fly repellant argument. Lime helps to deter flies and is a tad more palatable than fly spray.
But if that’s the reason, why didn’t the practice appear in Australia, parts of which are positively plagued by flies? In some parts of outback Australia, I think your beer comes with at least one fly already in it and reinforcements hovering nearby.
There are those who, possibly euphemistically, describe CBB as a “mild-tasting” beer. The lime therefore adds some discernible flavour. This, of course, suggests that it didn’t have much or any flavour in the first place.
But the most interesting reason is that the addition of lime was the brainchild of a single barman in 1981. As a bet with a colleague, he claimed he could start a nationwide trend.
If he stuck a wedge of lime into the neck of a beer bottle, he said, it would catch on. And catch on it did. “Chortle chortle,” he must have chuckled from behind the bar as the gullible gulped their CBB past the trapped lime.
So - to my thoughts, which are very simple. The flavour of citrus has absolutely no place in beer, which is why I was shocked when I first witnessed it. Citrus fruit and lager do not together belong.
If the barman theory is correct, I might start my own trend. I could drop a couple of jelly beans into glasses of dry red wine. I could festoon glasses of white wine with a few twists of grated carrot. Or I could put nuggets of hokey pokey into glasses of gin and tonic. Or float a lamington in a glass of cider.
You think I’m exaggerating? Let’s look at some failed New Zealand flavour combos: Bluebird paua fritter chips, Whittakers’ Lemon and Paeroa white chocolate, Diet Coke with lemon.
The last one comes closest to the addition of citrus to beer. It’s hard to fathom why the market rejected that one but embraced the lime in the beer bottle.
