A Journey of a Thousand Pints Begins with a Single Sip

This was a very good day

Everyone has an origin story. Mine is a little fuzzy, but I first discovered good beer in England, in 1990. Before then I knew only the homogenous, flavorless macrobrews that dominated the United States market in those dark days.

Details have been lost to the passage of time and more than a few pints, but the gist of it is that a good friend and I were traveling around England by rail. We visited a fair number of pubs in London as well as in several smaller towns, whose names and locations are no longer known to me, that dotted the countryside.

Being curious by nature I made it a habit to order whatever the locals were drinking. Bartenders, being the kind lot that they are, noticed my American accent and assumed I would be happier with something more familiar, gently nudging me toward the very macrobrews I had flown across the Atlantic to escape.

I politely insisted and was rewarded with a warmer, richer, fuller experience no doubt enhanced by my presence in a most convivial space, what Ray Oldenburg calls "The Great Good Place." Decades later my fondness for the browns, milds, and stouts I enjoyed back then is augmented by memories of a past that seems impossibly distant to me now but which I still revisit briefly when tasting those styles again.

It took a while for good beer to reach American shores, and a while after that for great beer, but now here we are. Where once there were limited choices (which had to do more with branding than with taste), today the possibilities are virtually limitless. And while I still lean on a few favorites, I also keep my palate open for something new that might one day join my pantheon of go-to brews. Wherever the journey leads, I will enjoy it every sip of the way.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Great Beer in Hawai'i

Homebrewing Is Kind of Awesome

Joy (and Beer!) in Grantville