I’m a self-confessed booze lover. But now that I have stopped drinking for eight weeks, I though it was time to reflect on that maddeningly wondrous but destructive elixir that is alcohol. This post is about beer. Spirits and wine, which require their own deep introspection , I’ll leave for later posts.
I started with beer as all college students do; cheap beer, usually Budweiser or Miller Genuine Draft. My roommate was from St Louis and his idea of a premium brew then was Busch. This must confuse contemporary society. But we are all confused by Orange madness, so let’s not worry, shall we? Some of the students from the West swore by Coors, claiming it was fed only from pristine Colorado snowmelt. That was beer nirvana as claimed by these ski bums all of whom were muscular with glowing blond hair.
Heineken was an extra luxury brew, so that was beyond our wallets but clearly a beer to be had on an impressionable date. Other stalwart college-based choices were Molson and Moosehead, Canadian specialty items, which always felt like one was buying a fancy cheese at a fromagerie in Montreal. Our university had folks from all over the country including gosh-darned-it Montana and New Mexico, so regional preferences were often a topic of late-night drunken debates while watching Johnny Carson.
Par example, silly, and deluded folk from Pennsylvania believed that Rolling Rock from the boondocks of Latrobe, was holy water. That it should be smuggled into the Basilica, the largest art piece on campus, and replace the wine for every mass was often considered. One of my other roommates thought Matt’s brew from upstate freezingville Utica, New York, was better than fire or warm toast. I can forgive him now. He died of a heroin overdose in a Harlem stairwell the day after being promoted at a leading accounting firm.
If one wanted to really show off, Anchor Steam from way over in SF, was widely considered an American epiphany. And when Miller Brewing came out with Miller Lite, in the early nineties we thought the entire world had gone mad. The commercials were hilarious sporting Rodney Dangerfireld and Bob Uecker among others (less filling, tastes great), but the beer was and is still pure piss-wasser, as are all lite beers.
On the other end of the spectrum, when I was being a big snob in the nineties, I’d buy Duvel beer from Belgium, or for that matter any beer made by Trappist Monks. My teachers in college were often brothers and fathers with priestly collars, and I still owe gratitude to these fine dudes who filled my head with intellectual goodies and the occasional nonsense. ( Partial derivatives, Organic Chemistry anyone?).
Microbrews, IPAs, and imperial stouts rule bars more than forty years after college. There are literally hundred of small batch breweries churning out high alcohol content beers that taste like raspberries or lemonade. And man, did I love getting shitfaced on three IPAs ( Spacedust by Elysian brewery in Washington state ) rather than having to drink an entire six pack of Bud longnecks).
At some point we also got taken in by the Mexicans , who started promoting Corona that must be had with a lime in the neck of the bottle, and eventually by Dos Equis which had a TV commercial where that sexy Latino man claimed to be the most interesting man alive. Boy, did that ad force me to switch to Dos Equis hard. I thought I could be “that man.” But I gave up when I found out after imbibing gallons of the stuff that I’d never be the most interesting man alive. I’m just not cut out for that despite the fact I can order Sushi in Japanese, or tha
tI once peed on the tires of Senator Ted Kennedy’s 1967 Ford Mustang (another college experience).
Now having (temporarily?) sworn of the sauce, I can only tell you that having a beer with a slice of orange in it is really taking it too far. Skip the orange mes amis, try the pineapple instead.
Next up – Spirits.