Fermentation Friday: A Brief History of (my) Beer Drinking

Fermentation Friday has arrived again.  The topic for this month comes to us from Jason at Brewing the Perfect Beer and it is “What turned you on to Craft Beer?”

While I will admit to drinking more than one Icehouse when I was under-age – I never was much into the bad beers most people start out with.  I also can’t recall any one beer that got me started on craft beer.  It’s mostly been a journey of experimentation.

The first real “craft beer” that I can remember enjoying was Pete’s Wicked Strawberry Blonde.  A little foo-foo I admit but I wasn’t old enough to purchase my own yet – I had to take what I could get.

After that I went through an “I’d like to be German” phase and drank a lot of Warsteiner.  That lasted awhile.

Fortunately, I came to my senses and decided to branch out a bit.  I guess it’s not that different from most people.  I tried a fair variety of beers.  Yuengling had just come into the state so that was pretty popular for awhile.  Then usual suspects, Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, Blue Moon when it was new.  Not long after that we talked about going to Ireland so I went all-Gunness in preparation.

I distinctly remember not liking Sam Adams’ Boston Lager the first time I tried it  – Anchor Steam too.  I got better though.

The real breakthroughs came when I started homebrewing and visiting breweries and festivals – but even then I couldn’t point to a specific beer or event.  These days there aren’t really any styles that I don’t like.  Which is a good problem to have I think.

Tagged as: Fermentation Friday