Beer Tasting 2022

[canyonwalker]

"What's your favorite beer?"

For people who were adults when I was a child that was an easy question. Few restaurants or bars offered choices beyond the usual suspects like Bud, Miller Lite, and Coors. If it was a "classy" place they'd have Heineken, too. 😅 Grocery stores weren't much better. That was the US beer landscape in the 1980s.

When I went to college that landscape was already starting to widen. By the time I was old enough to buy beer myself there were considerably more choices available, even at the corner store. Back in my senior year of college I made a point of trying a lot of different beers. To me they were all new. I kept one bottle from each brand I tried.... By the end of the year I had at least 30 different bottles. And they were sorted, left to right, in order of ascending preference. 😂

Over the years since then I've continued to sample new beers, digging in to whatever's available locally or from breweries that come and go. Despite fun trips like when I tried 13 beers from North Coast Brewing on a road trip through the Mendocino coast several years ago I don't think I've ever repeated the pace of 30 label in a year. Certainly I haven't rated them as critically as I did senior year in college.

I struck me as I was buying beer a few times last year, "What do I really like?" My 2 faves from college years are actually gone now, and another fave I had for years after that went way downhill when a conglomerate bought the microbrewery. Though there are scads of new beers are available now that weren't years ago, I haven't found more than one in the past umpteen years I'm happy to call a go-to pick.

So, what do I like? It's time for a new taste test!

That's what I decided several weeks ago: it's time to taste-test a variety of beers starting all over again. Oh, I'm not starting over-over. There's definitely no need to include Bud, Miller, Busch, etc. in this test. I'll step through a variety of beers I've bought here and there over the past several years, this time thinking a bit more critically about where they fall in the spectrum from "yeah, no" to "hmm, okay" to "definitely yes!"

Stay tuned for round 1!

UPDATE: Round 1 commences with Anchor Steam and Smithwicks

Comments

[some_other_dave]

Heh. I graduated before I was of legal drinking age. When I was a senior, I would get my buddy who lived across the hall--a sophomore--to buy booze for me.

I could still get pot pretty easily, though, so I spent a lot of time stoned.

[canyonwalker]

When I described being old enough to buy beer on my own, I didn't mean I was 21. 😏 It's been known for decades that stores and bars near college campuses are often lax on carding. In particular the corner store up the block from my apartment senior year rarely asked for ID.