Beer consumption, embodied distaste and anti-corporate consumer identities

While the relationship between preferences and consumer identity has been well explored by academics, the significance of distaste remains under-examined. Drawing on qualitative research with members of the consumer group the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA), the chapter explores how expressions of distaste for mainstream beer brands allows participants to voice dissatisfaction with corporate ideology and mass consumption practices. Sensory tastes and distastes symbolise a distance from particular developments in consumer culture. Such distastes have both an embodied and an expressive character, where the blandness of mass-produced beers is experienced as an embodied engagement with wider social changes.