The starting point of my Cocktail journey
My first official job was at a Brewery. It wasn’t at The Duff Brewery, although I wish I could have worked there right out of college. I’m a huge fan of The Simpsons, and hanging out with the Duff-Man would have been epic.
It was a classic move when I was in college to buy a case of beer and drink it with my friends every Friday afternoon. The most common place was at Brain’s house. Playing music in our cars while we sat down on the sidewalk in front of the house and told stories and jokes. Great times, great times!
My favorite beer was a Pilsener from my hometown called Polarcita. This beer represents very well Venezuela. It’s a real classic and is part of most peoples history. It has a unique character, with a kind-of-strong body but a fresh taste and a pale yellowish color. It was always the perfect choice for almost every event that involved opening a beer.
In Venezuela, the mass production breweries offer Lager type beers like Polarcita. On the other hand, the new coming craft breweries that are starting to pop up cover a wide range, predominantly the Ale family (Pale, Brown, Red, Amber, Golden, Blond, IPA, Hefeweizen). The Ale types are well-balanced beers with earthy, hoppy, and malty sweet flavors, but with a strong body that makes it a more substantial beer.
Among Venezuelans, beer is a widely liked drink and is drunk with meals or on its own. This cultural characteristic and the fact that craft beers are trendy around the world has made that different emerging breweries come to light.
Even though I enjoyed beer a lot, four years ago I drastically changed my diet. I went from eating everything into just eating what my body could tolerate. I wanted to be healthier, and this started with knowing what was good to me and what wasn’t. I eliminated a pretty good chunk of food that I regularly ate and this included GLUTEN (Wheat, Oats, Barley, Rye).
For the last four years, I’ve stayed away as much as I can from gluten. It has paid very well, I feel more energetic, the swollen feeling of my belly has disappeared, and it has reduced a lot of small allergies I had in various parts of my body, including Asma.
I think that I’ve had five or ten beers since I started my diet and that includes some gluten-free beers. I decided to dedicate my drinking to strong spirits, especially Rum, which is one of my countries signature beverages. But we’ll talk about this in a later post…
It’s important to say that I have nothing against the beer fans out there. I believe there is a lot of new artisans with crafted beers that are taking this drink to the next level. Gluten-free beers are not quite there yet; the flavor doesn’t get to the point of a regular beer. I think there’s still work to be done in this field, and the good thing is that there’s a lot of breweries working on it.
I do miss the moments when a quick beer with some friends was the smart move. Like on a hot day or at the pool or beach. But I think health-wise I feel pretty good without the whole cereal diet. And since my decision, I became more of a “Flaming Homer” type of guy rather than a “Duff Beer” type.
I started @runcoandco to share my enthusiasm for cocktails and to show that drinking is not about getting wasted, but to enjoy the blend of ingredients with good friends and family. Hope you enjoy the starting point of my journey and that you’ll follow me on the upcoming posts.
Cheers! 🍻 Remember to raise the bar, drink consciously and live every moment mindfully.
