{"id":3363,"date":"2011-12-21T12:42:06","date_gmt":"2011-12-21T16:42:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/adam-jackson.net\/blog\/?p=3363"},"modified":"2011-12-21T12:42:06","modified_gmt":"2011-12-21T16:42:06","slug":"an-introduction-to-beerfrom-a-25-year-old-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2011\/12\/21\/an-introduction-to-beerfrom-a-25-year-old-part-1\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2605 An Introduction to Beer\u2026from a 25 year old. (Part 1)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Delirium<\/a><\/p>\n

There are men who spend their entire life enjoying a beer each day after work. The cold and crisp taste from the comfort of a bottle shape that has remain unchanged for decades is something to look forward to after a hard day of work. Most men have a beer in their fridge\u2026somewhere and there’s the commonplace setting of 3 men having a beer at a local bar where you may have 2 choices of draft and a couple of bottles but, in most bars, “beer” is all you order and “beer” is all you get. Those of us in big cities have to specify what beer but most men just say, “gimme a beer” and one appears. It’s a shame that women are so underrepresented as beer drinkers. They love beer as well but, advertising would make you believe that women only serve the beer in scandalous bikinis as men chug down “frost brewed” beer by the glass.<\/p>\n

That’s not the sort of story I want to tell. I know men who had their first Budweiser at 21 and still drink it by the 6-pack in their 40s before deciding to switch to whiskey as they get older. I want to share a story of an underworld of beer drinkers who still are mostly men but these drinkers have a passion that extends beyond the mass produced alcoholic water that tastes like grass if served above 40 degrees. There’s a world of beer drinkers who grade beer like a fine wine, travel the world in search for specific bottles and spend hours engaging with others online about their conquests and what kind of beers are aging in their basements. It’s a world I’ve enjoyed immensely but, like many of my passions, I will spend a year becoming enthralled with it only to move on to something else when I’ve learned all I can. These hobbies don’t define me but they’re so much fun to learn about.<\/p>\n

I’ve broken this into three parts. First, the back story:<\/em><\/p>\n

This fascination was bound to happen and it’s funny to think about the life events that added up for this hobby to show its head. No one introduced me to craft beers and I never saw the point. However, when I moved to San Francisco, there were bars that had choice and selection like beers that were not from America and were imported from Ireland, Germany and Belgium. I started trying things like Dos Equis, Smithwicks and Sapporo. These were standard beers though and nothing to write home about. Then, I started going to bars that were snobby to all hell about their beer selection. Toronado in San Francisco’s Haight neighborhood had hundreds of beers and, at the time, I didn’t know any of them. These names were all unfamiliar to me but I’d try something and then write down the name to check out online later. I discovered Beer Advocate at that time and was interested in people who took the time to review beers that were rare and limited. Something happened though that offset my beer fascination and that’s Wine & Liquor. At the time, beer was still something I enjoyed while at bars and, when I was working so much, going straight home after work to cook, workout and read became a priority so I stopped drinking beer entirely. My wine and liquor at home started growing to 20 bottles of wine and about 15 bottles of liquor. This was July of 2010 and it was just 1.5 years ago but seems like much longer. Now, I have 100 bottles of liquor and 100 bottles of wine (which most of that is being aged). I drink wine and liquor still but not as much. It’s mostly a feature of entertaining guests who stay at my cabin as guests or friends who fly in to see me and spend time unwinding from the hectic city life. When did beer start to become\u2026cool?<\/p>\n

I was a fan of Sierra Nevada beer from my time in San Francisco. It was a pretty local beer and I enjoyed it and was amazed while in Florida in August of last year during my pre-move-to-New-Hampshire visit with family to find a bottle of Sierra Nevada beer at a bar called JP Henley’s<\/a> and here’s a photo of that 30th Anniversary Sierra Nevada<\/a> that I paid $22 for (retails for about $12). That was the first time I discovered or even knew that there were big breweries that I loved that were experimenting with very radical tasting beers. I was in love! I moved to New Hampshire and bought a few unique beers that were local to the area and for the first month tried beers that I never had before from local brewers like Long Trail, Harpoon, Dogfish Head and Otter Creek. The regular beers kept me pretty busy and then\u2026Europe happened.<\/p>\n

In October of 2010, I went to Amsterdam and then to Belgium and France in May of 2011. Both times, I had a fantastic time and discovered so many great beers that were brand new to me. Many of those I can’t get in America but there are a few I can but it requires some driving and small road trips that my GF deals with. We’ve driven as much as 12 hours for cool beers and I tried to convince her to go to Dogdish head’s brew pub while she’s in Deleware for Christmas to get a beer for me. I hope she can cause that would be awesome!!! Each time I return from a trip, I bring home with me more inspiration to buy a new beer that I’ve never had before (and one that’s highly reviewed on Beer Advocate)<\/p>\n

From there, my love of beer tasting and collecting has grown. Next, I’ll share with you the underworld of beer drinking where people hop on planes and spend their savings collecting beers just to stick them in the basement for a decade before finally opening them up. It’s a fascinating world and one that is not written about often.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There are men who spend their entire life enjoying a beer each day after work. The cold and…\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","apple_news_api_created_at":"","apple_news_api_id":"","apple_news_api_modified_at":"","apple_news_api_revision":"","apple_news_api_share_url":"","apple_news_cover_media_provider":"image","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_cover_video_id":0,"apple_news_cover_video_url":"","apple_news_cover_embedwebvideo_url":"","apple_news_is_hidden":"","apple_news_is_paid":"","apple_news_is_preview":"","apple_news_is_sponsored":"","apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":[],"apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"csco_singular_sidebar":"","csco_page_header_type":"","csco_custom_appearance":"","csco_disable_excerpt_posts_layout":false,"csco_page_load_nextpost":"","csco_post_video_location":[],"csco_post_video_location_hash":"","csco_post_video_url":"","csco_post_video_bg_start_time":0,"csco_post_video_bg_end_time":0,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3363","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-culinary","cs-entry","cs-video-wrap"],"apple_news_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pb3IC4-Sf","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":7655,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2012\/04\/25\/ebay\/","url_meta":{"origin":3363,"position":0},"title":"\u2605 How to piss people off by selling 1.5% of your beer.","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"April 25, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm going to write this as a stream of consciousness. There will be no editing or censoring. It's a better way to share my thoughts. Since everyone loves a good scandal, I will address that first but try to remain short on the subject only to clarify things and provide\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "My Thoughts"","block_context":{"text":"My Thoughts","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/category\/my-thoughts\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"This week's beer trades","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/farm9.staticflickr.com\/8156\/6959968096_3a83523d6a_z.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1560,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2013\/07\/02\/beer-haul-june-13\/","url_meta":{"origin":3363,"position":1},"title":"\u2605 Beer Haul: June ’13","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"July 2, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00a0","rel":"","context":"In "Beer Haul"","block_context":{"text":"Beer Haul","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/category\/beer\/beer-haul\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Beer Haul 6-7-13","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/farm3.staticflickr.com\/2851\/8978429489_5d0e6af1e8_z.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/farm3.staticflickr.com\/2851\/8978429489_5d0e6af1e8_z.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/farm3.staticflickr.com\/2851\/8978429489_5d0e6af1e8_z.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":3569,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2017\/02\/06\/beer-tastings-winter-camp-group-tasting-w-my-ratebeer-friends\/","url_meta":{"origin":3363,"position":2},"title":"\u2605 Beer Tastings: Winter Camp-Group Tasting w\/ my RateBeer friends","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"February 6, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"We had some delicious beers last weekend!","rel":"","context":"In "Beer Tastings"","block_context":{"text":"Beer Tastings","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/category\/beer\/beer-tastings\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Beer Tasting 1-21-2017","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/farm1.staticflickr.com\/388\/32102081280_195815fb54_z.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/farm1.staticflickr.com\/388\/32102081280_195815fb54_z.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/farm1.staticflickr.com\/388\/32102081280_195815fb54_z.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":453,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2012\/07\/03\/events-recap-1st-annual-hail-to-the-yeast-bbq\/","url_meta":{"origin":3363,"position":3},"title":"\u2605 Events: Recap-1st Annual “Hail to The Yeast” BBQ","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"July 3, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"I had a great time cooking with Elizabeth this week some delicious foods. 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