An Introduction of Sorts

Beer. It's not just that fizzy yellow stuff shoved in your face every third commercial during a sports event. It's no longer just the ingredient of a Boilermaker, ordered after a long day of work at the mill. And, thankfully, it's also not just the liquid chugged at an alarming rate, sans saveur by an endless stream of testosterone-fueled men - all members of one college organization or another - hoping to impress anyone and everyone in a twenty mile vicinity with feats of gut-expanding proportions.

No, beer has become something for everyone. Microbreweries, craft-brews and never before heard-of imports are rapidly entering the hearts, minds and the very souls of the American populace. Names like Dogfish Head (DE), Victory (PA), and Troegs (PA) invaded both the local and national lexicon seemingly overnight. Terms like "IPA" and "ESB" suddenly began to turn heads as if somewhere, in some mystical land, a Beer Rosetta Stone had been unearthed and decoded. "Beer bars," "brew pubs" and "Belgian-style restaurants" started popping up throughout cities and small towns alike, creating an entirely new generation of beer drinkers throughout the country.

So what happened? Why the sudden change? The answer to this is hardly rooted in the works Marx, Rousseau, or -luckily, for my own sake- Michel Foucault. In my amateur opinion, people wanted beer that tasted good. At whatever the cost. After decades of having three or four options in a given town - of which Heineken or St. Pauli Girl represented the pinnacle of imported beer - people needed a change of pace. Entrepreneurial merchants and prospective pubmasters took matters into their own hands and took a crack at the fine art of brewing. And what happened? Some pretty damn tasty things.

This brings me to this blog. Why am I writing this? I've always loved traveling, and in traveling, I've had the opportunity to try any number of delicious things that I would have otherwise never been able to get my hands onto. Beer is perhaps paramount among these. Having only turned twenty-one a number of months ago, I was unable to publicly sample the brew-tastic talents of Smutty Nose (NH), Rogue (OR), or Stone (CA). I did however, receive the chance to do so in Germany, Russia, and any number of other European countries, and frankly, it blew my mind. Corona used to seem to be the perfect summer beer. Guinness was the very godhead watching over St. Patrick's Day. Yuengling was the everyman's beer. And perhaps there is some justification to these statements. The fact is, there's so much out there. So much.

I want to try it. If it's liquid, made of hops and/or barley and other grains, bring it on, be it a 3.5% ABV or a mind-numbing 22% ABV. I don't care if it's from a state with a rival sports team or a country we're at war with. Do they have beer? Good enough for me. That's why I'm writing this blog. I'm here to open up my mind and the minds of anyone who read this in the hopes of proving that beer is more than what it once was. It can be a great thing, and it can at times be a rotten thing. But that is what adventures are all about.

Note: I should probably note the following. I am by no means affiliated with any brewing company, pub, distributor or otherwise. I'm simply a guy tasting some beer. Unless otherwise cited, all opinions written herein are my own.