On a recent trip, I met a bartender named Nick who hailed from Belgium. Having never been there, I grilled him about certain Belgian beers and how they were viewed in his homeland.

We covered a wide span of topics, but what found most interesting about our chat was Nick’s combination of semi-surprise and minor confusion – let’s call it puzzlement – over the seemingly endless plethora of beer choices outside his country.

Belgium is known for some of the best beers going, but Nick said he was amazed about how many variations of the same styles can be found even in one bar. He said that in Belgium, most bars might have between five and eight taps, but also more bottled beer than in many other countries he’s been to.

It certainly didn’t seem like a complaint. Likewise, I sometimes ruminate on the cornucopia of beer choices with at least a small bit of bemusement. And like Nick, my thoughts don’t represent any sort of criticism. But I do wonder if the seemingly endless parade of variety is necessary. There doesn’t seem to be any downside: “the more, the merrier” and all that sort of thing, right?

And people love having choices and options. I know I do.

But Nick mentioned one problem with having so many options in one bar.

“It would be hard to control myself and not try them all,” he said, tongue in cheek.

This led me to wonder if there is such a thing as too many choices.

I’m sure we’ve all faced decisions where the options seemed overwhelming and we wished for a narrower field of choices. Sometimes certain details of a decision aren’t that important to us, and we’d just rather not have to deal with them.

With beer, I have seen customers walk into a bar with dozens of beers on tap and look a bit bewildered. Maybe they’re new to craft beer or maybe they’re just casual fans. Now, let’s assume that they know they like IPAs in general, but aren’t overly familiar with all the nuances the style has to offer.

They stare at the beer menu or lineup of tap handles and see four or five different IPAs (which isn’t unusual these days). While a lot of beer bars gladly give out samples, Nick winced a little about dealing with this type of situation.

“I can see giving two or three tastes, but not five,” he said.

And even for me, having a surfeit of choices can give me pause. Sometimes it’s just difficult to make up your mind. What if you choose wrong?

Well, the good thing about beer is that you can always choose again. And that’s better than having restricted options, right?

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