Beer Tasting 2022
"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! 🍻
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! 🍻