BEER ME!
My daughter was just in town for a whirlwind five days and, as I think I mentioned in the Morning Briefing, it was the first time she’s visited Tucson since she’s been old enough to drink. She was here about three weeks shy of her 21st birthday a couple of years ago, then the Wuhan Chinese Bat Flu ruined everything last year. We did spend some time together in Michigan earlier in the year but I have been really looking forward to her getting to enjoy the rather amazing craft beer scene we have here in my hometown.
Mmmm…beer.
While I generally thrive on a low-carb diet, I cannot give up beer, especially during the hot Sonoran Desert summers. If I am working out consistently, a cheat day once every week or two is just fine. I’ve long dreamed about doing beer reviews but I don’t have any tasting criteria beyond “I like it,” or “I don’t like it.” For a few weeks in the early days of the pandemic, I was doing beer reviews every Friday in the Morning Briefing. I realized I needed more knowledge to keep it up, so I stopped.
Now, I’m restless and have decided that something fun that takes me outside of the house once in a while is badly needed. I’ve found a couple of Audible books on beer tasting and brewing that I’m going to listen to in order to be able to write about bouquet, hints, notes, and all of that other pretentious crap that’s necessary for a proper tasting.
While hanging at a local brewery with my daughter the other day, I ordered a flight of beer for perhaps the first time in five years. I like to get outside my comfort zone with those, so I ordered brews that I’d never typically try. I was pleasantly surprised to find that I enjoyed three of the four. The one I didn’t like smelled and tasted like a chemical one might encounter in the men’s room at a paint store.
OK, apparently I can describe the stuff I don’t like just fine.
This is feeling more and more like a calling, so I hope I learn something from the audio books. I have several tap rooms and brewers within a mile or two of my house. My daughter and I walked by one the other night that’s about five blocks away that I didn’t even know existed.
If I can take the occasional day trip to a brewery on a Saturday and write it off because it’s “work,” I may soon be in what I believe the rest of you call “a good mood.”
Na zdrowie!