Posted by I actually saw this heading on a menu at M.L. Rose Craft Beer & Burgers in Sylvan Park on one of our local adventures and it piqued my interest. I wasn’t sure how I was going to go about it, so it took me a few weeks to come up with this.
M.L. Rose’s was asking “what’s the first meaningful experience you remember having while drinking beer?” My first thought was “driving a car” – jk, that came later :-). I’m not sure I can remember my first meaningful experience while having a beer, but I can remember a lot of them and some of those I definitely don’t need to write down.
Anyway, I digress. The title got me thinking about “What’s MY Beer Story?” so I decided to write about it in a hope to engage and hear YOUR Beer Story as well.
In The Beginning
Once Upon a Time – MEH, that sucks! Actually, I’ll start with saying Blue Moon Belgian White is the beer that got me started drinking craft beer. Finally!, something other than Budweiser and Miller Genuine Draft on a regular basis. Truth be told, I didn’t really drink a lot of beer before discovering craft beer – at least not in comparison to now – and I had tried beer from microbreweries but never put much stock into them because there weren’t a lot of them, and they weren’t consistent in taste and quality. When I did drink beer, it was those 2 brands, only because you could find them most everywhere, but Budweiser always gave me a headache. When I discovered Blue Moon, the idea of having an orange in my beer was odd, but it quickly became my “go to” beer and mandatory that I get the orange in it every single time.
I remember driving from Nashville to meet my brother in Cincinnati for a Syracuse vs. Cincinnati basketball game, he ordered a Budweiser, and I ordered a Blue Moon, and he made fun of it because “it has fruit in it”. I remember he tried it and liked it and I’m pretty sure that’s about the start of him drinking craft beer as well.
From there I remember trying Dos Perros from Yazoo and thinking I wouldn’t like it because it was a “dark beer” and by “dark beer” I thought it would be heavy and have a high ABV. It turns out it’s an American Brown Ale but drinks like a Mexican Lager, which is light and refreshing. A lot of times places will even serve it with a lime on the glass.
After these initial craft beers, I started to go to more places in Nashville that offered them – like Blackstone Restaurant & Brewery (at the time), The Pharmacy in East Nashville, 12 South Taproom and Mafiaoza’s where I proceeded to try a lot of other styles – some that took a long time for me to like – for instance IPA’s – I can remember saying “I don’t like hoppy beers”, now it’s my favorite style and the hoppier the better. Another one that took forever for me not to be scared of were Stouts. I remember being at The Pharmacy with some friends, and the loser of a bet we had made, had to drink a Stout called “Used Motor Oil” because we thought that would be a punishment (and maybe it actually was since I don’t remember how the beer was). I would drink something like that now, though, without hesitation – but at that time I knew I wouldn’t like it. I don’t recall the first Stout that I had that I actually liked, but I’m sure it was something better than I expected it to be, which led me down a path to trying and enjoying a lot more Stouts.
That leads me to my next topic, which is – I believe that anyone drinking craft beer – who doesn’t like a certain style – just hasn’t found that one beer yet that will open up the style for them. I think if you find that one that you say “I kinda like this” or “this isn’t as bad as I thought” can propel you to try others in that same style that you will eventually learn to like. An acquired taste, so to speak. I say this because it has happened to me in pretty much every beer style that I didn’t start out liking and now I don’t think there is a beer style that I won’t drink.
Beer Apps
This is probably opening up a can of worms, but beer apps were and are extremely important in my craft beer drinking. As a baseball fan, I love stats and beer apps have beer stats. I love to add to those stats by drinking more beer. I started out with a beer app called Brew Gene and it was fine initially, but I found myself adding A LOT of beers to it manually and it got to be a pain in the ass. My brother turned me onto Untappd, and I realized immediately that it was the leader in beer apps, and I wished I had started with it. It had a bar code scanner, a ton more statistics – like serving styles, unique beers checked in as well as overall beers checked in, not to mention the badges you get for various reasons. When I started with Untappd I already had over 1000 beers checked into Brew Gene and literally spent a long New Years weekend manually converting beers – one by one -from Brew Gene to Untappd. It took a while, but I eventually got them done so that I had all of my check-ins in 1 place. It probably sounds silly to some I suppose, but again – stats.
Present Day
Fast forward several years with over 8500 unique beers drank (over 15,000 overall) in dozens of different styles and hundreds of breweries visited, I will drink just about any beer in any beer style. I don’t always like every beer, but I try to be fair in rating them and not give a negative rating because I don’t like that style, if it’s a low rating, the beer truly sucked.
My love for craft beer has taken me to places like Asheville, NC, Cincinnati, OH, Denver, CO among others – all for craft beer (and baseball). I live in Nashville, TN and we have a great brewery and beer scene here that I thoroughly enjoy and participate in. I also love to attend beer festivals and taprooms (I miss Craft Brewed). We plan annual trips around breweries we’re going to visit and any time I’m out of town for other reasons – the first thing I look for is a brewery to visit or to find local beer.
My Beer Story has led me to starting this website and podcast with Steve that we want to continue to grow. These things give me an outlet in talking and writing about craft beer, which is one of my favorite things to do, although I like drinking it even more :-). It has introduced me to new friends, new places to visit, new styles of beers and even brewing beer at home.
I’d love to hear Your Beer Story!
Cheers!
Scott
