I want to write to you today about how I got started in craft beer and, in turn, about how you did too. Just as this is a blog that is about more than beer, so is my belief that beer is about more than beer.
It’s true that this is a claim that can be made about almost anything, “there’s more than meets the eye” or that there is something under the surface of everything. I believe this is mostly true only when you are truly acquainted with something, just like a sportsman predicting how a play will go with almost supernatural ability. To an outsider, the sportsman’s ability to read the field, to see the game, may seem supernatural but to the sportsman it’s just a result of living and breathing the game, almost involuntary.
How does this apply to beer? I think the reason for truly loving anything is the result of what happens when you love it. This is why people get married, this is why they fall in love. I love you because when I love you, _____ happens. Fill in the blank with something good.
So what is beer about, besides beer? In my case, beer actually changed my life. I distinctly remember the few times I first had good beer. One of the biggest were the craft beer parties that my friends threw in college. They would collect donations and then go to The Beer Trappe in Lexington, KY and buy as many top rated beers as they could and we would pass these around between about a dozen people in a cramped apartment. Another time, a friend of mine drove all the way from Asheville, NC (five hours away) to bring me a trunk full of craft beer.
I distinctly remember my first beer from Country Boy Brewing. I shared it under an old bridge, surrounded by friends, graffiti and eventually an older man convicted of multiple armed felonies, a good guy though. I also remember my first beer from Schlafly, an oatmeal stout, I had never tasted a beer so smooth. However, none of these are as important as “the one beer.” The beer that changed me. For some reason, it wasn’t any of the belgian trappist beers or Pliny the Elder or beers that I would die to have again now.
The most important beer I’ve had is the first one that I ever drank with my girlfriend at Brown’s Brewing Company in Troy, NY. I remember being so surprised and impressed that she ordered a porter, I’d never seen a girl nonchalantly drink such a dark beer- she wasn’t even trying to impress me. Ever since that beer we’ve gone farther and farther into the beer world.
What is beer? Beer is a drink, but it also marks occasions. It’s a celebration of life. It shows our choices. Are you able to drink in moderation? Are you able to let loose? Do you care enough to have preferences about your drink? Do you celebrate life? Do you know how to relax and enjoy conversation? Do you know how to laugh and get silly? Are you an angry person?
How we weigh our choices shows what kind of person we are. Beer offers us the opportunity to show what we care about in life. It’s the question of “Why are you drinking this beer?” Is it because you want to have a conversation? Is it to go with your dinner? Is it to celebrate something in your life or someone elses? In this way, beer is just like food. I remember when my father used to pray for dinner, he used to say “Thank you Lord for this food and bless it to our bodies,” now he says “Thank you Lord for this good food and good drink.”
When I see someone take care to make a meal and pick out the right beer for not only the meal but for me, I know that person cares about me but also that they make good choices. When is beer more than beer? Let me ask you another question, and make it rhetorical. What is beer about? Beer is about people. Beer is more than beer when you make it so. In that situation, beer is a good time. Whether or not you remember that time depends on how much beer you drank. But either way, it was a good time.
