It just tastes better.

Some guys like that bottled beer / Some like it in a can / Some say a keg's the best beer / For a real beer drinking man / Everyone has their favourite / But on one thing they agree / The greatest beer in all the world / Is the one you drink for free

Free beer free beer / That's my favourite brand / If I didn't have to buy it / It's the best beer in the land / Warm flat funky / It don't matter to me / The greatest beer in this whole world / Is the one you buy for me

Disagree. Outside of a brewery itself, most free beer you encounter is the cheapest swill available.

Maybe I got lucky, but with my name on enough VIP lists I paid for maybe 3 drinks at SXSWi last year in total, and I was fairly plastered most evenings. I quickly found that 'limiting' myself to one drink per bar didn't help when bouncing between 12 bars a night. Ouch. I didn't touch alcohol for 45 days after SXSW.

Oh good, here's "beer guy" talking about swill.

All of my free beers where either Open Bar selection or Draft Shiner. I guess my experience falls outside of 'most'.

Nothing tastes better than a beer I earned with my own labour.

We have free beer at the office. I'm not sure which category it falls under.

Quit and see if they still let you come in and drink the beer.

Wait, where do you work? Are they hiring?

Nothing tastes better than a beer I brewed with my own labor.

Currently have a Dopplebock and a Belgian Pale Ale in the fermentors.

Life is too short to drink crappy beer. I know I could buy a six pack for the amount of money I just spent on this "Rochefort 8", but the taste is worth every penny.

Belgian beer is awesome. That's why I decided to be born here.

Eurostar FTW!

Life is too short to drink crappy beer. Therefore, I live in England.

Life is also too short to eat crappy food.

I kid, I kid. I love in Portland, Oregon, and am jealous of your beers that are more than hops + alcohol.

There's plenty of variety in Portland. There's the farmhouse inspired offerings from Upright, a wide range of sour beers from Cascade, all the quirky experiments coming out of Burnside Brewing, and the strong, complex, barrel-aged from Hair of the Dog.

I'd wager that we have a greater diversity of beer being brewed in Portland than just about any other city on the planet.

Diversity? Maybe. Widely available diversity? No, not really. Going out to any random (non-brewery) bar, I see the same local breweries: Widmer, Deschutes, and Rogue. They all make rather hoppy beers (roughly in that order of increasing hoppiness). Plus, a lot of the smaller places follow the trend (e.g. Old Market in Multnomah Village).

I will admit it's probably easier for me to find beer that makes me happy in Portland than in almost anywhere else I've been. Partially this is a indication of how little I've travelled, but it's also a testament to the variety you can find here.

London has awesome food. And when that gets boring, I fly home to India. So there!

Carling?

There's probably as much alcohol in your Rochefort 8 as there is in that entire six-pack too :-)

That's why some of use prefer a bottle of good wine.

Homebrewed beer is surprisingly inexpensive, and easily beats any cheap beer.

Of course, I live in Michigan, and there's no shortage of good beer around here. My office is within spitting distance of the Founders taproom. :) (http://spv.yi.org/~scott/img/drpn!_mug.jpg)

And that's why I'm creating "Ayn Rand IPA"

Is that you Diogenes?

All I know about Diogenes is that he lived in a trash can and told Alexander to move because he was blocking the sun. What's this story you're referring to?

When Diogenes was asked which wine tasted the best, he replied: "That which belongs to another."

I know Alexander killed Diogenes in a drunken rage, but that's about it.

You may be thinking of Cleitus. The Diogenes and Alexander story usually ends with Alexander telling his entourage, "If I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes."