“This beer tastes weird,” I hear a voice say. I look down the bar, interested to see what the problem is and see a lady with a flight of four beers, setting a fat shot glass with dark beer onto the flight serving board. From where I stand I can see that her choices of beer are a highly acidic sour, a milk stout, a blonde ale and a pumpkin beer. Her selections are in various stages of defeat, and as I watch her pick up her smart phone to give it and the brewery a disapproving rating on her handy beer app I imagine her palate crying out in confusion and begging for mercy as she assails it with timid sips of acid, chocolate, gourd fruit and cracker flavors from one moment to the next. This is one of the most self-destructive experiences in the beer world: the flight.

Craft beer is travelling at high speed on many levels these days. The instant connectivity of the internet allows us to know what our favorite breweries are producing in real time, find the beers we want from the breweries we want wherever we go, and spot trends and new ideas in beer production almost effortlessly. The burgeoning industry has people abandoning their vaguely satisfying careers to take a flier on starting their own brewery, whether satisfying a passion or turning a weekend hobby into a get-rich scheme. Searching out beer bars, breweries and bottle shops in order to try the newest and rarest beers has become the newest outing for the chic beer drinker.

Unfortunately, such a rampant uptick of what was, up until about fifteen years ago, a largely unknown commodity due to the dominance of the macro light lager has caused the Type A personalities in the faceless mob to shout their largely misguided opinions as fact, with the rest of the hesitant consumers happily taking timid but determined steps into the beer world. This, along with the implementation of a smart phone application that began as a great tool for finding and trying beers and quickly devolved into a method for people to stroke their egos and quantify their experiences into imaginary internet points, has turned the beer flight into a counter-productive headache for many involved.

What Is a Flight?

In the food and beverage world, a “flight” may refer to a serving of smaller portions of a particular food or drink that is available in numerous styles, flavors and textures, allowing the consumer to satisfy their curiosity and experience the available spectrum of flavors without the unrealistic expectation of ordering and devouring various full portions. I have had flights of pancakes, ice cream, pizza, bourbon, wine and beer. Speaking from my forte, the beer flight used to be a great offering in practical application. Your typical beer flight consists of four 4-5 oz portions from the tap menu, although I have seen them grow into amounts such as “all of them” and even become as vulgar as 54 samples.

There are a lot of beers out there, more than ever. The sheer volume of available beers from styles that are shifting outside of their traditional characteristics, evolving into almost completely different versions of their original styles or even turning back to their roots make this a daunting task. So if you find yourself somewhere with a lot of beer available but are limited in time, are unsure if you’ll like a certain beer or style, or simply recognize that drinking three or four pints with ABVs above 5% during your one-hour lunch might not be the best idea, beer flights would make your outing a much more positive one.

Those who aren’t well versed in beer outside of their typical light suds in a red Solo cup but are intrigued and want to expand their horizons can also use a beer flight to wake up and explore the palate. The point of this, however, isn’t to achieve badges on your video game-esque beer application so you can pander your unqualified opinion to the masses. It’s to acknowledge “Yes, I like this beer, I’ll have a pint of that.”

You Shouldn’t Drink Flights, But If You Do…

In my opinion, however, you shouldn’t drink flights. They aren’t necessary. Here’s why:

Commitment is important when enjoying a beer. It takes more than four ounces in a small glass to truly appreciate the experience of drinking a beer. Flights are typically served in small, straight-edged glasses that are bad for aromatics, do nothing for head retention and turn whatever aesthetics the beer could have presented into a boring little abbreviation. You want your beer to be served to you in the best possible glassware (yes, I’m aware that most bars and taprooms use pint glasses, which is a travesty, but whatchu gonna do?). Other than the reasons previously mentioned, the small flight glass will warm and reach room temperature, releasing valuable carbon dioxide faster than a ten or sixteen ounce glass. You need to be able to take your time, let the beer warm slowly and open up to you like a glass of wine (which it does, I promise), allowing the tastes, aromatics and mouthfeel to develop of over a period of time that isn’t afforded to you by downing a shot of beer. If all you want to do is drink the beer to say you did, fine, whatever. Call for an Uber to take your Philistine palate somewhere with thirty taps so you can ravenously check them in and get your badges rather than bother to appreciate the beers for what they are.

Secondly, most people aren’t aware of just how taxing various beer styles can be on your palate in one setting. In the case of the opening narrative to this post, the customer had four flavors going at once that were all over the flavor map. She was repeatedly dousing her taste buds with highly acidic sour beer, then chocolate and roasty beer, then a semi-sweet fruit beer and a lighter beer with comparatively delicate flavors, and she was doing so in no particular order. This can confuse and exhaust your palate. You’ll be washing your taste buds with certain flavor-inducing chemicals while they’re still coated with other chemicals that may produce an experience that will be mundane at the very least but may crescendo into something horrible. How can you objectively confer a hedonic rating for these beers on your social media when (no offense, but) you’re doing it all wrong?

Finally, bartenders and tap room employees have been inundated with beer flights for so long that it’s gone from a positive, educational experience for discerning beer drinkers into a time-consuming endeavor for people who can’t or won’t be cautioned against mixing radical flavors in order to positively expand their horizons. As a result, the person across the bar is often simply waiting for you to make your choices because there are a dozen other customers who want to similarly get in on the beer orgy rather than take the time to walk you through the best way to order and drink your flight. The employee has become desensitized to their role as educator and resigned themselves to that of a body on an assembly line.

If you should decide to drink a beer flight for whatever reason, please take a minute to commit these basic guidelines:

• Drink your beers from lowest to highest intensity. Start with the lager, Blonde, Kölsch, etc. and work your way forward through the Amber, Brown, Porter, Pale Ale, IPA, Dbl/Imp IPA, Stout, Strong Ale, Barleywine and so forth.
• Drink the entire flight portion of one beer before moving on to the next. Take a few moments with each beer, letting them develop as much as possible on the palate, making mental notes.
• Ask for a glass of water (preferably room temperature) and, between each beer portion, drink a little water, swishing it around on your tongue in order to cleanse your palate as much as possible.

I’m not completely against the idea of beer flights. I probably have an enthusiasm for them that’s slightly higher than doing my taxes. On the whole I find them to be time consuming, gimmicky and indicative of a person who can’t make informed decisions. But I’m aware of their place in the beer world and the importance of that place. So if I’m at a bar or taproom and your group of eleven people each want to order flights, I’m perfectly fine with that, so long as I get to order my beer first. The adults are drinking.