"I want a beer that tastes like beer," the man says. I'm sitting at the bar of one of my favorite watering holes drinking something dark, viscous and loaded with flavor.

We've been talking about what beer should taste like, essentially about what the classic beer flavor is. I'm having an imperial stout that he has deemed a "new-fangled" yuppie beer; he's having a well-known American brewed beer you have seen advertised at least 10,000 times.

I don't really care what the man drinks. He's the one drinking it, so it's important that he likes it, not that I like it. I'm a beer lover not a beer snob. But the plain fact is the beer that most people are familiar with is a Johnny-come-lately style of beer.

Beer has a long history. Some historians speculate that the cultivation of grains developed not from the desire to make bread, but for a steady supply of ingredients for making beer. The oldest known beer recipe, dating from 4300 BC, was found on a Babylonian clay tablet.

It wasn't until the 1840s that the forerunners of today's modern American lagers were developed, and not until 1850 or so were lagers being brewed in America. It is unlikely that our founding fathers ever tasted anything similar to the beers being advertised today. That includes Samuel Adams, who would have been an ale brewer.

Not until the 1870s and beyond were lagers well known in America, and it is unlikely that they tasted much like the heavily filtered beers of today, which are often brewed under tight budget constraints. Meanwhile, the brew I am enjoying was developed in the 1860s but based on the far older stout and porter recipes that had existed in England since the 1700s.

A timeline for many beers is hard to pin down, but it is clear that the history of ale is thousands of years older than that of lager, and the commercial history of ales at least a few hundred years older.

So considering all of this I ask, "Why is the newest style of beer to come down the pipe the benchmark of what beer should taste like?"

There is no such thing as a beer that tastes like beer. There is no single beer taste. Beer can taste like any number of things and all of those flavors are correct.

There is one thing we both agree on: "Beer is great though, huh?" I ask.

"Yeah," he says before taking a sip.