Beer!

I’m sitting on my couch on Monday night.  I’m drinking beer, watching Monday Night Football on mute on one TV and I have Peter Mansbridge calling the election coverage on my other TV.  And I’m writing this blog in a Word document because I still have zero idea what I’m going to be writing about.

Right before the Internet ate our blogs (the second time,) I wrote a blog about how much I didn’t care about politics.  That still pretty much is the case, but I still give a damn about who runs our country.  But let’s be serious; Shaun is the guy who knows politics.  If you want to read a blog about politics, read this blog.  I’m not the political writer on this website.  I talk about music and random other stuff.  So that’s what I’m going to get into today.

And since I’m drinking a beer, and since a friend of mine suggested I write about it just before my old blog kicked it, I figured that’s a good place to start!

So beer, hey?

Is it just me, or is beer just one of the best things ever?

I remember when I was growing up and my dad would have a beer on a summer day, I’d ask to try a sip of it.  And he would always oblige me.  That could have been a the start of a slippery slope, but we won’t get into that…  Anyway, I would take a sip on occasion and every time, I wouldn’t think much of it.  It tasted… okay.  It wasn’t something that I felt a desire to drink all the time.

I had my first beer when I was 14.  It was given to me by my dad and it was pretty great.  Now before you call child services on my dad (retroactively for something that happened nearly 20 years ago) you should know that it was probably the best thing he and my mom could have done.  It was at our cabin, I had just helped haul firewood and I had earned it.  In allowing me to have a beer in a safe environment and not really giving a damn about me being under age made me less inclined to want to sneak out of my house and go to parties.  The allure of drinking was suddenly gone. 

Now that’s not to say that I didn’t still go party in high school.  I still did but that was because my friends were there and it was the thing to do.  But I didn’t feel a need to get drunk all the time.  I was pretty content to be at my cabin, having a few brews with my family.

To be perfectly honest, I still prefer that to anything. 

But this isn’t about memories.  This is about beer.

I love beer.  When I first started drinking it, I drank lousy stuff.  Molson Canadian, Coors Light, Molson Dry.  Beer that, let’s be honest, is not good.  Note: I do still drink Coors Light, the odd Canadian and even worse beer.  But beer is also effing expensive so there’s that.

But I don’t just drink crap. 

I love most beer.  I don’t love Belgian wheat beers, like Rickard’s White, Shock Top, etc.  I can do without those.  To be honest, I like an array, depending on what the night is like.

Sidebar: it’s 8:42 Mountain Time.  The Liberals have a majority government.  Whoa.

And now back to our regular scheduled blog.

I don’t know when craft brewing became a run of the mill thing.  When I was growing up and we’d go for supper, my dad would ask what the restaurant had on tap.  If they had Coors Light, he’d have one of those.  If they didn’t, I don’t know what he would drink.

Now when you go to a pub, the beer selection is insane!  There are bars with 100+ different kinds of beer on tap.  HOW DO YOU DEAL WITH THAT KIND OF SELECTION????  It’s actually overwhelming!  But I relish the challenge.

I like that there are different types of beers to try.  I like that they come in from all over the world, all over the country and all over the city.  I still have my favourites (Guinness, Moosehead, Big Rock Traditional to name a few) but I love having the ability to try a literal plethora of various types of beer.

Sometimes I don’t like the new beers I try.  And that’s okay.  They’re not all for me.  But damned if I don’t have a pretty decent streak of more hits than misses.

I love wine.  I love whiskey.  On certain occasions, those two aforementioned beverages are just top notch.  But it’s very rare that I don’t love a nice cold beer.  I would say that a beer is more versatile than any other beverage (with the exception of water.  Nothing beats water.)

Anyway. 

The election is nearing completion, the football game is going into the 4th quarter and my Rickard’s blonde is empty.  Time to crack another one and turn my attention to Peter Mansbridge.

A biento, mes amis!

D (@davidronn)