If you want to provoke a significant proportion of the beer community, there’s a simple way, as I recently discovered: ask the question, “So, any thoughts on White Stouts?”
Chaos ensues. Many assert that it’s oxymoronic (I don’t buy that, as you’ll read). Others call it a gimmick. Some are genuinely enthusiastic. One faction claims it’s real, but misnamed. Perhaps my favorite response was, “What’s wrong with these people? No. Just…no.”
It was an interesting exercise, made all the more so by the fact that posting the question to just a few social media pages yielded more than forty comments in the first five minutes alone. It was kind of what I imagine shark feeding frenzies are like.