Being an Alehead is about more than just vociferously explaining to everyone within earshot how impressive the lacing on your Imperial IPA is. It’s about embodying a certain spirit and lifestyle. It’s about representing the craft beer industry as boldly and obnoxiously as possible. It’s about making people say, “If I hear you utter the word ‘phenolic’ one more time, I swear to God I’m going to smash this bottle over your head.” In short, it’s about living by the Code.

Until now, the Aleheads Code has always been an amorphous collection of guidelines and slogans. While all Aleheads attempt to live by these rules, it can be challenging to determine what is considered “acceptable” behavior without a truly codified manifesto. Slouch Sixpack and I decided to resolve this monumental problem by finally putting quill to parchment and recording the 100 Articles that make up the Aleheads Code. We encourage our readers to continue adding amendments to this document in our Comments section. The Code, like yeast,  is a living organism, and it must be refreshed from time to time with the beer of patriots and tyrants.

With that pre-amble out of the way, Slouch Sixpack and Brother Barley bring you:

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THE ALEHEADS CODE

1. If a beer doesn’t taste like you’re sucking directly on a hop-bine, it’s pointless
2. Never drink the same beer twice, otherwise you’ll never get through them all
3. More alcohol = more better
4. Imperialize Everything
5. Google’s targeted text ads should only be trying to sell you beer-related items
6. It’s OK to throw around the term “horse blanket” even though you have no idea what the fuck that means
7. You believe your palate is peerless, but you read every other tasting note about a beer before you review and write yours…you know, just in case you miss something
8. British beers are weak and boring, except for Sam Smith’s
9. Never forget that you’re fascinating and people want, nay, need to know how you feel about that beer
10. Everything is a session beer
11. No beers under 100 IBUs
12. If the name of the beer explains what kind of beer it is, you can’t drink it
13. If beer newbies know about the brewery (Rogue, Dogfish Head, Stone), you should avoid their offerings
14. You magnanimously admit that there are “some great lagers out there”, but you wouldn’t drink one if there was a 100-dollar bill at the bottom of the glass
15. Cask > Tap > Large-Format Bottle > Canned Craft Beer > 12-ounce bottle
16. You are extremely wary of any brewery that spends money on marketing or PR
17. You may only drink beer made by brewmasters with beards
18. You MUST drink out of the appropriate glassware for each style of beer…yes, even Kölsch
19. You must always endeavor to explain to people what is wrong with the beer they are drinking
20. Name-drop brewers constantly, preferably by first name…even if you’ve never met them
21. If someone mentions an obscure brew you’ve never heard of, immediately claim that you have tried it
22. Laugh heartily when people say that Delirum Tremens, Rogue Dead Guy, or Blue Moon are great beers
23. Drinking out of a bottle should be a capital crime. Drinking out of a can is acceptable in some instances.
24. Say it with me… “Stone Fruits”
25. feloniousmonk, northyorksammy, BuckeyeNation, and NeroFiddled make some excellent points
26. It is permissible to interrupt a tasting with a quick visit to an adult entertainment website…as long as you ALWAYS keep one hand on your beer
27. NO FRUIT FLOATING IN YOUR BEER
28. You have been to Belgium
29. You get dressed up for Dark Lord Day
30. Girls that seem disinterested in your conversation about Centennial v. Cascade hops and the appropriate amount of grapefruit pith in an IPA are playing hard to get
31. Light beer causes drinking problems
32. Beer blogging will most likely cause you to become well-known and liked
33. Sam Calagione is a dick
34. You appreciate the craft and quality of German beer, but the styles aren’t your favorite
35. You will always refer to “G’Knight” as “Gordon”
36. You are talented at discerning whether a liquid is well-balanced
37. Drinking a beer you’ve never had before is work-related and requires concentration and silence
38. Fat Tire was one of your favorites when you were first getting into it
39. Magic Hat isn’t as good as it used to be
40. Always Craft, never Micro
41. A freak lab accident left you with the olfactory abilities of a Bluetick Coonhound
42. Your tongue is the most sensitive organ in your body
43. There are actually people in this world that don’t know the difference between Guinness Draught and Foreign Extra Stout. I know, right?!?!?
44. ABV and Gravity aren’t exactly the same thing. Or are they?
45. You’re honestly concerned that we might be running out of new beer names
46. Brewers who use clear bottles should have their heads examined
47. There’s a time and place for drinking beers quickly and in succession
48. There is no correlation between your obsession with beer and your obsessions with MMORPGs, Bill Murray, and Japanese body pillows
49. Prolonged exposure to beer cellars and dingy, windowless taphouses have given your skin a healthy, Gollum-like hue
50. You are perfectly comfortable using the “-bomb” suffix unironically to describe a beverage
51. The only things that have backbones are vertebrates and malt
52. The only things that have profiles are faces, criminals, and hops
53. You enjoy subjecting your taste buds to mindless violence on occasion
54. Wine enthusaists are creepy, obsessive weirdos
55. You pushed to name your son “Brett”
56. Funky doesn’t mean what you think it means
57. Mouthfeel is easy to determine and convey to others
58. The sovereignty of the American-style Black Ale is open for debate
59. Typing and drinking is multi-tasking
60. Sampling every beer in the world is a reasonable, attainable, and worthwhile goal
61. There should be a MINIMUM of 1,000 beer styles
62. There is no occasion at which a Russian Imperial Stout is inappropriate
63. There is only one Michael Jackson…and he was a bespectacled, bearded Englishman
64. The only three things you are allowed to become emotional about are beer, sports, and your dog
65. The only organizations worse than Bud, Miller, and Coors are the Nazis, the KKK, and FoxNews
66. Brewdog and Schorschbrau haven’t pushed this whole thing far enough
67. The proper name for the Grouch is “Oskar”
68. Sam Adams Triple Bock is a condiment
69. Your character in World of Warcraft is a Drow wielding a Hopsickle
70. It’s not drinking alone if you’re Skyping
71. Sierra Nevada Pale Ale is classified as a “Chaser”
72. Re: The Middle East. No craft beer, an endless cycle of violence. Coincidence?
73. A Beer Judge should also be jury and executioner
74. If a farmhouse ale or lambic isn’t brewed with spider eggs and bird droppings, it’s just gross
75. You’re an atheist, but your dream job is “Trappist Monk”
76. You can’t understand why they haven’t invented a “Quint” yet
77. And while we’re at it how about a Quadruple IPA? Double Russian Imperial? Bueller?
78. You totally loved Founders before anyone else had heard of them
79. Instead of a white noise machine, you fall asleep to the gentle sound of your carboy “burping”
80. The phrases “Triple Hops Brewed” and “Cold as the Rockies” make you viscerally angry
81. You think Jim Koch, Fritz Maytag, and Pete Slosberg are “Founding Fathers”
82. Enough with the Hefeweizens, already!
83. When the RateBeer results were released you priced out flights to Orebro, Sweden
84. There is a way to apply sabermetrics to tasting beer
85. You know all three Floyds
86. There is no ale that can’t be improved by aging in some sort of barrel
87. The solution for an overly-hopped beer is for your palate to quit being such a fucking pussy
88. Hey, did you know some brewpubs also serve food?
89. The Imperial pint is the standard unit of measure
90. Puritans and prohibitionists were total assholes
91. You were diagnosed with zythophilia by a board-certified physician
92. You describe taking a dump as “brewing a collaboration”
93. If you’re not drinking a beer at cellar temp, you might as well be drinking liquid nitrogen
94. You can pick out the flavor of band-aids in beer
95. When you say you support the Red, White, and Blue you’re talking about Chimay
96. You love Pumpkin Ales…but you only drink them in your closet with the lights off so no one else will see you
97. You wonder what’s keeping the 180 Minute IPA off the market
98. You somehow simultaneously complain that there isn’t enough of a draught selection at your local alehouse AND that there are too many taps and they can’t possibly all be fresh
99. You begin planning your next beer order before your last beer is even set down in front of you
100. You plan on having your remains cremated and your ashes stirred into the fermenters at the abbey of St. Sixtus

Thus spake the Aleheads. Long live the Code!