Today is the birthday of Ponce Kiah Marchelle Heloise Cruse Evans, better known by her pen name Heloise. She is “an American writer, author, and speaker specializing in lifestyle hints, including consumer issues, pets, travel, food, home improvement, and health.” Heloise has written over a dozen books of “household hints,” although it appears many of them have been recycled and repackaged. This is her book, “Kitchen Hints From Heloise: More Than 1,527 Time-Saving, Money-Saving, and Work-Saving Hints for Cooking, Cleaning, Shopping, and Storing,” published in 2005.

I suspect she’s written a number of hints that had something to do with beer, but there were a few in this specific book, which are below.

At least she’s acknowledging that there are different types of beer, and even mentions local ones. Since it’s meant for a very general reader, it’s very general advice, and I certainly can’t agree with having a light beer available (those beers are pure evil, in my opinion), but at least she’s suggesting some variety, and that’s a positive step, even fourteen years ago.

Her advice on clean glasses is mostly okay, but I absolutely hate that she’s saying “some beer drinkers prefer icy mugs.” I tend to think if you like your beer out of a frosted glass, then you’re not really beer drinker, you’re just drinking some ice cold liquid you don’t want to taste so you can get drunk. And what German beers does she think have a lemon slice “floating in the brew?” I know she means a Hefeweizen, but it’s not just tossed in the glass, Her advice her is pretty bad, actually, to my way of thinking. She ends with “it’s a matter of taste,” but that seems like a terrible thing to say in a book offering hints. She should be telling people what is the optimal way to enjoy their beer, instead she seems to throw up her hands and say just do whatever you want, which doesn’t strike me as great advice.

I guess she’s right that most beer is pasteurized if she’s referring to mainstream beers and imports, which she most likely is, but it still seems like the wrong thing to say, and should be explained better. But the funniest thing is her assertion that “most people … have no problem with beer that has gone flat.” Who did she ask for that advice?

Sure, but I’ve never once thought of even putting wine in my stew.

So overall, I find it odd that a woman who’s spent a lifetime supposedly giving people great advice and household hints, would so obviously do so little research in doling out advice on beer. It sounds more like she just regurgitated what she’s heard rather than asked any beer experts, or people who might actually know what they’re talking about. That’s my advice to her.