Hanukkah & Beer!

In the spirit of Hanukkah and to tide you over until I finish some beer commentary and the Jewbelation review here is an excellent little article and radio spot on the Jewish brewing community and its history.

The Desert Makes You Thirsty

Skye here, I'm posting this for my brother-in-law Rudy. Enjoy!

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Rudy:

I can say without a doubt that beer has always been a fixture in my life. From the earliest memories to the current day beer has always been around. I grew up in a very male dominated social environment. When I was younger, my mother’s family always seemed to be at the park or someone's house for a party or birthday; any excuse for a gathering to eat and drink. Being Hispanic there was a pretty distinct hierarchy when I was growing up. The women cooked and talked in the kitchen with the younger kids close by; while the men sat outside on the porch next to the Coleman coolers that were loaded with beer.

The older kids were allowed to hang around outside to help watch the little ones that escaped the kitchen and ran amuck outside, staying just out of reach of the men and their beer swilling circle. If you got lucky you were allowed to sit and listen to the men talk telling stories about senseless jabber, all the while hoping they would allow you to get them a beer, so you could crack it open and taste the foam. Beer is a rite of manhood in the Hispanic culture.

There were not many events that beer was not a focal point. I grew up in the 70's, hearing and seeing adds for Schlitz Malt Liquor, Colt 45, Coors, Budweiser, Pabst and many more. I had my first beer when I was 10 at my Tia's (aunt) wedding and it didn't go so well. 

When I was 15 I started drinking Budweiser because I could always count on my Teo (uncle) to forget he had an extra six pack in the truck bed. By the time I was in my late teens I had drank most every type of beer I could think of. We weren’t picky and the beer revolution really hadn’t hit just yet. Often beer was stolen from someone's parents’ fridge brought to the bonfire or social gathering in the desert. Eventually single beers became less important and kegs took their place in my education of mass consumption. Domestic consisted of the usual: Bud, Coors, Miller, Schlitz, Mickey's Big Mouth, Lone Star, Blatz, Pabst and so on, Imports at the time where Lowenbrau, Heineken, St. Pauli and Grolsch to name the few available. The Mexican beer around still has never really changed too much even today; Tecate, Superior, Negra Modelo, Dos Equis XX's and of course the ever present Corona.

It was not until I reached my early twenties that beer took on a whole different meaning for me.  The craft brew revolution started and microbrewery's started to pop up everywhere. Chefs (my line of work) found creative and inventive ways to spruce up old dishes with these new found beers. It was suddenly ok to be snobbish in your beer selection, having a beer that no one had heard of was the new cool. My ventures in cooking and cruise ships only solidified my relationship with beer, going to a new pub in the Caribbean and ordering an unknown beer and then bringing that back for your chums to taste was god like.

TodayI love beer, in all its forms, from strong to weak, colorful to pale, unique to boring, nutty to fruity. There is always a beer for any occasion and any taste, beer has been and always will be a staple in my life. I drink not for the drunk anymore, but for the taste and the celebration that beer has brought to my life...and ok, the occasional drunk.....

But You Hate Beer...

"You used to hate beer - remember the time you told me that?"

My mother (bless her heart) likes to remind me of this statement, spoken when I was 16 years old.

What I like to remind her is that I still don't like beer...or at least what they called "beer" at that time. Honestly, what 16-year-old kid seriously enjoys the taste of Budweiser or Busch Light? Unless it's in the middle of a cornfield (I grew up in a rural small town in Southwest Wisconsin), and served from plastic cups for the sole purpose of getting you drunk (with an unbelievably bad hang over - not to mention the runs), why would I enjoy “beer?”

I sure didn't.

The first time I enjoyed beer was when I had a New Glarus Spotted Cow. The brewery opened in 1993, during the upswing of craft brewed microbreweries, and it was around 1998 when I had my first taste of this “real” beer. Its yeasty flavor with a mellow malt aftertaste made me realize beer is far more complex than the macro-brewed items made with corn and rice. I was spoiled by beer from this moment onward, and all the beers made in Wisconsin have only enhanced my curiosity in exploring the complexity and varieties of beer. If you want to know when I became more of a beer enthusiast, it was when I moved to Boston. Drinking the Cambridge Brewing Company’s Great Pumpkin Ale and their Heather Ale changed my beer life forever.

Now I study beer (my senior undergraduate thesis focused on how customer’s interact with beer), write about beer (www.beermeetscheese.com), and enjoy the beverage in all its aspects (especially when it’s a microbrewery beer I share with my mom). I can feel my German ancestors rejoice.

Prost! 

How Could I Not Avoid It and Didn’t Really Mind

Mine is a beer drinking family. Well, more accurately, half of my family is a beer drinking family. The Smith/Findley/O’Brien Clan, rooted in my father and his siblings have been known to put away plenty of fine golden liquid at any number of family functions. Well, lets back track a bit – not always “fine” golden liquid as golden liquid. Hamms was the main brew of the day – Grandpa liked it, so the family drank it. My rebel cousin who looks like Jesus and swears like a sailor was the rebel outcast who drank Coors. My uncle drank whatever was cheap and his son drank himself to an early grave. Generic beer was the worst, but beer always remained. It was a topic of conversation. It was always there. To this day, a reminder accompanies Smith Family functions that “there are cold ones in the fridge outside.”

I thought nothing of it. My schoolmates and teachers were a little different. For a class project in 1^st grade, we needed to collect pull tabs. My mother dutifully informed the family of the project. On our next trip to Grandpa and Grandma Smith’s house I was presented with a what would be a talisman, part of the right of passage – a brown paper sack filled with pull tabs from beer cans. The smell in the bag and the number of pull tabs brought a raised eyebrow from my slightly hippy, yet very cool, teacher, but I was proud to have brought in the most tabs for our chain.

My Dad was a bit of a “do it yourselfer” and that directly contributed to my first personal engagement with beer. Warm Sunday afternoons, ball game on the radio, Dad would be out working in the yard and would ask me to run inside and grab him a cold one from the fridge. Olympia was his beer of choice at that point. Bringing him a cold beer entitled me to a sip, a small sip, but my one swallow nevertheless. As I got older, I could open the can in the house, pour it into a glass and take my own sip before running it out to him. Dad eventually switched to Henry Weinhard’s Private Reserve and the sips came to an end. Halcyon days.

When I got to be a teenager, my relationship to beer changed, but not in the way one might expect. My mother had the first of several cancer related surgeries. One resulted in a nearly continuous bout of pain. It was a miserable time for her and I was frequently the target of long bouts of listening. I had always been a pretty good kid and she was under terrible stress, as was my Dad in the construction recession of the early 1980s, so my response was to minimize my teenage rebellion and deciding that I wanted to see if I could wait until I was 21 before actually drinking. I was allowed a glass of wine at the dinner table and could still have a mouthful of beer, but never one of my own, and so it stayed until I turned the legal age. Two years in a Bud friendly fraternity put it to the test, but I did manage and enjoyed that first beer of my own.

Now some would argue that I didn’t hold to the pledge completely. The beer that I had in the back of the bus at Dave’s house was no more than the sip that I had from Dad’s glass. Being tanked at my cousin’s wedding when I was 9 is completely out of the question because that was champagne raided from my tee-totaling aunt and her daughter. God loves them and so do I, but a hungover 9 year old is not pretty.

I would say my tastes have evolved as I got more exposure courtesy of the micro-brew explosions on the West Coast. Sierra Nevada and Anchor Steam are the “home town” brews thought there are many that I am sure to have missed. Today Yuengling is the house beer in my home with Dogfish Head mixes providing a little variety. Oly holds a special place, maybe it was the tee-shirt entitled “Artesian Search and Rescue Team” or just the special treatment I had I got getting a good mouthful of cold beer on a hot day – being a big guy with my Dad.

I came to beer the easy way - Dad

I actually had to sit and think about it for a minute, and then I remembered!! My first beer I actually remember tasting was from my Dads cup at an "Anaheim Angels (Not California Angels)baseball game. I must have been about 6 or 7 years old. I remembered I loved the taste, the texture, that smooth crisp taste. I don't remember what beer it was, probably Budweiser, I just remember that I liked it; and I wanted more of it.

As I grew older I didn't really didn't have another beer until I was about 12. After school my friend and I would go back to his Dads apartment in Fountain Valley, Ca. We would grab his Mickeys wide mouths that he bought for himself and we proceeded to get shit housed. I don't know what it is about being 12 and drinking Mickeys, but it felt soooo cool. Today, I realize that I don't like Mickeys very much at all. It could be because the few times that I went over to my friends house to drink, I would inevitably get drunk. My Mom would pick me up and like all good Mothers , would know that I was drunk. My mother would take me to get the Market Broiler, a fish restaurant (Bad Idea!!!!) or she would take me to get a chili burger. There were a few occasions that this would cause me to puke.
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In 1996 I joined the Marine Corps; this afforded me plenty of opportunities to experience beers from all of the world. It seems like Skye (the gentleman that I met at the Marine Corps Ball last week) I was fondly addicted to Petes wicked Ale. Man, that stuff was good. However on your low military pay in 1996 I would have to mostly settle for Pabst Blue Ribbon (PBR) and good ol' Budweiser, which I refer to as "Mudweiser". Because after you drink to much of that stuff, it gives you mud-butt.

Drinking beer overseas afforded me the ability to open my pallet to beers from different nations. Tasty beers like Tiger or SingHa - WOW!!! Now that's a beer; Tiger, not so much... Of course these far away locations always had the Heineken, the Bud and whatever else came from the US, but the cheap dropped off my radar overseas.

Now that I'm older, I find that I 'not' to drink the ordinary stuff. I will every once in a while, but I really try to stay away from it. I really like getting different beers from different places around the world, even just getting something from Stone Brewery out of Escondido, Ca. Stone is great because not only are they close, but they are a great local craft brewery. I am not fond of every beer they make, But I will definitely try what they have to offer. I like the fact that California and the west have so much to offer in the craft beer arena, not to mention all of the little local micro brews.

My brother-in-law Gregg will attest to this; you can make so many friends over a Pint. Gregg and I will try several different beers in one sitting and we're even going to start brewing together. He's actually a huge influence on my openness for trying new beers. So "cheers" to you G.

By no means am I a 'Beer Snob', but I know what I like and I enjoy a nice hoppy IPA (India Pale Ale) or a good Hef.

If anyone has anything to add I'm all ears. Tell me your stories, your beers that you like and what you don't like.
Me, Skye and the rest of the gang here at "Beer Fellows" look forward to pouring a tall one and telling some tales.