The Best Beer You Ever Had

Discussion in 'Beer Talk' started by Oakenshield53, Nov 15, 2014.

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  1. Oakenshield53

    Oakenshield53 Initiate (0) Aug 28, 2014 Minnesota

    I'm not talking about the best quality whale you ever hunted down, the best tasting this or the best tasting that, I'm interested in stories about the best beer you ever had and why.

    One of my favorite things about beer is the social aspect, right on - we gather, we have some, and good times are had by all. Beer is at the center of a lot of great experiences, and a great experience can turn a Natural Light into one of the best beers you ever had.

    I have two stories, to prime the pump, and neither of the featured beers are very exceptional:

    Summer of 2013, we'd spent a couple of weeks hiking and climbing in the Front Range and Sawatch ranges in Colorado, and this trip included a visit to Odell in Fort Collins, which was truly exceptional. But my favorite beer of the trip was a New Belgium Ranger, not a beer that's usually very high on my to-buy list.

    On a particular day, we hiked up Mt. Massive, the second-highest mountain in Colorado, and the third-highest in the lower 48. We're not in particularly good shape, so it was taxing, but a day for the record books. We had an absolute blast - I think everybody's comedy meter was turned to 11 for the day, we saw mountain goats on the way up, we saw clouds and vistas fit for paintings, there were pretty girls on the summit who were only too happy to hang out and take stupid pictures, it was a mountain day all the way around. Blue bird weather, stunning.

    An hour after coming down from one of the most tiring days we'd all ever had, knees and backs singing opera, smelling like forty miles of bad road, we were in the Silver Dollar Saloon in Leadville. A very old bar, from 1879 if you believe the sign, in a town at 10,200 feet that has seen better days. We smelled bad, we were exhausted but happy, and I ordered a Ranger.

    O my brothers, that Ranger, in the company of seriously good friends after a shared experience that pushed us each to our respective limits in one way or another, on that particularly sunshiny day, was truly sublime.

    The second was at the tail end of a trip on the Superior Hiking Trail. We were out for four days in July, covering 40 miles, and made a bad read of the map for the last day. We wound up hiking 13 miles in what had to be 98-degree / 98-percent humidity to get to the truck we'd parked at the end of the trail.

    Drinking warm water filtered from beaver ponds all day, drinking tepid liquids of any sort for the previous three days, swatting bugs, lugging a 35-pound pack in July swamp-heat, we finally staggered up to the truck. The guy who's truck it was grinned, and popped the back hatch to reveal an Igloo full of ice and Grain Belt Premium.

    The ice was still there and still cold after days in the truck under a tarp, and the beer was right there with it. Nobody knew this guy had stashed the Premium, he'd not said a word all that hot long day - the most we were hoping for was a cold one at the other end of a long drive to the nearest town, but there it was, frosty and ready.

    I dropped my pack as fast as I could and that can-crack is one of the best sounds I have ever heard. The cold-smoke wafting from the can was an even better sight. I lit into that Premium like a dog on a fresh bone, and I have tasted very few things better in my life. I have a picture of my sweat-stained, bug-bit, mud-splattered self tipping back that frosty can of Grain Belt on my wall in my office to remind me of the very good things in life.

    Never mind the quality of the beer itself - what's the best beer you ever drank?
     
    #1 Oakenshield53, Nov 15, 2014
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  2. JLaw55

    JLaw55 Pooh-Bah (2,417) Jul 10, 2014 Missouri
    Society Pooh-Bah

    Man, what a great question, but such a difficult one as well. There are just too many to name one specific beer that is your favorite. I have quite a few. I did take my first flight tonight though and I will go ahead and pick my favorite from there, probably Carson's Brewing Jackie O' Lantern was my favorite of the night. Easily the best pumpkin style beer I have ever had. A couple other notable favorites are Widmer Brothers Hefe and Weihenstephaner Hefeweissbier. These are just a couple of my favorites in my favorite style. Another really exciting one was 21st Amendment Brewing Hell or High Watermelon. All were had with a great group of friends as well.
     
    #2 JLaw55, Nov 15, 2014
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  3. turbotype

    turbotype Savant (1,035) Nov 5, 2013 California

    I think I understand. The best beer I ever had. Not my favorite, just the best beer I had at that moment in time. Short and easy for me.

    I worked a double shift on a Friday. My co-workers and I made the best of it, and rocked it hard core while having some fun. I was very worn out from the 16 hour day, so I went to the local craft beer store for a strong night cap. I found Lagunitas Undercover Shutdown and bought a sixer, then proceeded to kill the whole thing, not realizing how strong the alcohol was... I was feeling great to say the least! It was so refreshing and well earned. Then I proceeded to sleep for 12 hours. The next day, I changed my avatar to the "Lucky Dog" you see to the left. One of my favorite breweries ever since. :slight_smile:
     
    #3 turbotype, Nov 15, 2014
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  4. Oakenshield53

    Oakenshield53 Initiate (0) Aug 28, 2014 Minnesota

    Fantastic. You're right on the money.

    Not a great beer, maybe, but a great beer ON THAT DAY.

    Another story - when I was a kid, I was a roofer to pay for school. That is a rough job, man, and we did it INSIDE. Right on? We built what's called manufactured homes, really they're just glorified trailer homes without wheels, built in two halves in a factory and trucked out to a site and assembled into a single home.

    The factory has a flat metal roof, and as roofers ourselves, the units we worked on were right under the roof of the factory itself. We all know heat rises, and in the summer, without exaggerating, I bet the heat was at 110 degrees under that baking tin. They kept a cooler of Gatorade for the two of us down on the factory floor, but one day, we wondered just how good a beer would taste at the end of a shift.

    Now, when I was a kid, craft beer was not even an idea, let alone a product, and they sold a particularly vile piss-brew in mid-Michigan at the time called Altes. This stuff was barely beer, it was so bad, but after talking about a frosty beer at the end of a shift for a day or two, my roofing partner one day told me the game was on.

    Deal was, he had two forties of Altes out in his Opel Blitz on ice. But, to qualify for it, we had to go all day without Gatorade, and then go sit in his Opel for ten minutes with the windows rolled up once the shift ended. The car had already been roasting in the summer sun for nine hours, the point had already been made, but we had to go another ten minutes once we got in it.

    Needless to say, I was in, Jack.

    So we lugged squares of shingles up ladders, nailed and sweated and lugged and sweated and got covered in sawdust and sweated all day, and finally after an interminable day under the magnifying glass of that job and that roof, the horn blew, and we rolled out to the Opel in the hot gravel parking lot.

    It was all we could do to avoid opening the swing-top Coleman with the two cold forties in it, but true to our word, we sat there for ten minutes in the microwave-oven car with the windows up, then reached back, snapped the screw-tops on the big-ass bottles of the worst beer ever made, and went to town.

    Ohhhhhhh, my brothers. Words truly fail. Beer that was not fit for livestock turned into nectar that hot day in the 1980s.
     
    #4 Oakenshield53, Nov 15, 2014
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  5. Oakenshield53

    Oakenshield53 Initiate (0) Aug 28, 2014 Minnesota

    This is not strictly a story about the best beer I ever had, but it is one of my favorite stories about beer, so I'll tell it here.

    My family is German and Danish, going back several generations. There's one French-Canadian thrown in for good measure (my grandmother) but everybody else hails from the areas of northwestern Germany and Denmark.

    Needless to say but I'll say it, beer is an important idea in my family.

    Now, my grandfather was the proudest German-American you'd ever want to meet. A Marine Corps veteran of World War Two, he came home and used the GI Bill to get a dairy herd in Wisconsin. To supplement that, he worked on cars. So we got a great big barrel-chested Marine veteran with a handlebar mustache who can herd cattle and throw a new engine in a '57 Chevy for you with equal ease for a grandpa. And he could yodel. He'd get up at Oktoberfest and yodel, for crying out loud.

    I have always thought the old-timers were a factor of ten cooler than we could ever hope to be, and he was the living example.

    Came to pass many decades later my cousin got engaged, and one day in the 1990s, we're sitting in a June back yard for her shower waiting for someone to start opening presents, having a beer or maybe six. My grandpa, old and more than a little frail now, but the vision of the World War Two Marine / Wisconsin farmer / Small-town mechanic still evident in his bearing, was sitting right across from me.

    I was holding a beer, something totally unremarkable I'm sure, because for all their legendary qualities the old-timers liked to knock back some really awful brew, and someone handed me something to pass.

    I set my beer down in the grass, and in the process of passing along whatever it was, I accidentally knocked the bottle over, and it sadly glugged out into the yard.

    I looked down at the beer, then up at my grandfather sitting there with his waxed mustache and barrel chest, and he looked at the beer leaking out onto the ground and quietly said to me:


    "I'd rather see a church burn."



    Germans, man. Beer is not taken lightly by that culture, and I still think the old timers reach a level of cool that we can never hope to approach.
     
    #5 Oakenshield53, Nov 15, 2014
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  6. mactrail

    mactrail Grand High Pooh-Bah (8,999) Mar 24, 2009 Washington
    Mod Team BA4LYFE Society Pooh-Bah Trader

    This makes me think of a great time from long ago, after a summer school class at San Francisco State. The English teacher, a young red-haired scholar of Vladimir Nabokov, was a great lover of Rainier Ale. Back in the day, this was a strong, slightly hoppy brew with an utterly distinctive flavor. He hosted a party for those of us in the class, and I remember being impressed with the stacks of the green cans in his pantry. Some of us had a few tokes on the back porch, and with utter reverence listened to all of Scheherazade by Rimsky-Korsakov, with that golden nectar trickling down my throat. I have fond memories of Rainier Ale to this day.
     
    #6 mactrail, Nov 15, 2014
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  7. Oakenshield53

    Oakenshield53 Initiate (0) Aug 28, 2014 Minnesota

    Right?

    I mean, a beer, good or bad or in-between, is right there in the middle of so many warm summer/hot summer/cold winter memories.

    And dude, your story made me want to get out a tome of something weighty and start highlighting things with a knowing nod while I sipped upon something exotic from eastern Europe, so, well done.
     
    #7 Oakenshield53, Nov 15, 2014
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  8. marquis

    marquis Pooh-Bah (2,313) Nov 20, 2005 England
    Pooh-Bah

    My best drinking memory was way, way back with a friend when we visited a pub called the Wheatsheaf , renowned for its cellaring excellence.No choice in those days except between mild and bitter but we never gave that much thought because it was all we ever wanted anyway.The pints arrived and we could smell the hops as the glasses sat on the table and the beer was exquisite. More pints followed and suddenly my friend said "Bloody hell, I've forgotten to pick up my wife from work" so we dashed off to pick her up and I went home.Half an hour later there was a tap on my door and my friend said "I'm going back for some more" so off we went.It was that good and those were the days before DUI.
    The brewery got taken over and eventually closed but thankfully the last head brewer set up a micro brewery in 1995 and he has recreated this beer as faithfully as is humanly possible.
    [​IMG]
    In the decades which followed I've tried everything that comes my way but if I ever see this on the bar my tunnel vision returns and I think I've died and woken up in Heaven :slight_smile:
     
    #8 marquis, Nov 15, 2014
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  9. Blueribbon666

    Blueribbon666 Pooh-Bah (1,669) Jul 4, 2008 Ohio
    Pooh-Bah

    I'm a broken record, fanboy, groupie for Aventinus. Since the first time I tried it some 20 yrs ago on tap, the style at this point is my favorite style beer wise. But Aventinus, stands head & shoulders above the competition, Vitus is 2nd & Ayinger is 3rd. Aventinus to me, is liquid candy when it hits my lips...I'm thrilled popping the cap, fascinated pouring it slow into it's signature glass & savoring every last drop. Though I always have it on hand, I probably have one a quarter to keep the experience as special as the beer itself which is an animal unto itself & like no beer I've had in 20 years; and in the last 20 years there have been some amazing additions to the world of beer.

    Honorable mentions;
    St Ambroise Oatmeal Stout
    La Chouffe
    Great Lakes Blackout Stout
     
    #9 Blueribbon666, Nov 15, 2014
  10. imhoudinibitch

    imhoudinibitch Initiate (0) Feb 6, 2014 New Jersey

    I'm not exactly sure what to say after that performance. Trying to think of my "Best Beer Ever" story, after reading your experiences is like Led Zeppelin opening for Weezer at a concert. I'm still flabbergasted at the way you use vivid imagery and the flow of your writing, I could read your stories for hours, and I'm reading this level of writing on a Beer Forum of all places.
     
    #10 imhoudinibitch, Nov 15, 2014
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  11. 5thOhio

    5thOhio Pooh-Bah (1,571) May 13, 2007 South Carolina
    Pooh-Bah

    The last one I had.
     
    #11 5thOhio, Nov 15, 2014
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  12. Flashy

    Flashy Pooh-Bah (1,767) Oct 22, 2003 Vermont
    Pooh-Bah

    Munich- beer garden- every beer I had.
     
    #12 Flashy, Nov 15, 2014
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  13. KMitch

    KMitch Initiate (0) Aug 29, 2012 Alabama

    I took my wife to Denver, CO for the weekend for her birthday a few years ago and this doesn't involve a whale of a beer but like @Oakenshield53 said it's more about the social aspect surrounding it.

    It was the first time we had been to Denver and it was only going to be a short trip mainly to celebrate her birthday by going to see the mountains/scenery. She and I really enjoy trips to the Smoky Mountains but neither of us had been out to see the Rockies. It snowed that weekend and we had a great time riding around in the mountains and enjoying the scenery. I had never had any beer by Odell and since that is my wife's maiden name we tried their 5-Barrel ale and really enjoyed it and it was our go to beer for the whole trip. I haven't even had it since but it was indeed the best beer I have ever had in that respect.

    I've had some amazing tasting beers since but none that remind me of an occasion like that one.
     
    #13 KMitch, Nov 15, 2014
  14. kingofhop

    kingofhop Initiate (0) May 9, 2010 Oklahoma
    In Memoriam

    A forty of Olde English. Drank with my first born son on his 18th. I'd never had a beer with him before. He also turned me on to my first blunt and Tupac Shakur. Bonded with my own son like I always wanted to, but never could with my own Dad.
     
    #14 kingofhop, Nov 15, 2014
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  15. ThreeLloyds

    ThreeLloyds Initiate (0) May 8, 2014 Iowa

    12-12-12 my birthday, 1 minute old NBB Ranger plucked directly from the bottling line, with 4 of my best buddies, on a private brewery tour.

    [​IMG]
     
    #15 ThreeLloyds, Nov 15, 2014
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  16. PapaGoose03

    PapaGoose03 Grand High Pooh-Bah (6,057) May 30, 2005 Michigan
    BA4LYFE Society Pooh-Bah

    I'm going to go out on a limb and list a beer that hardly anyone outside of Michigan has ever heard of. That beer is Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster from Short's Brewing. It's a Belgian-inspired Double IPA, and I think it's the best beer in the world. There, I said it! :wink:
     
    #16 PapaGoose03, Nov 15, 2014
  17. stingley

    stingley Crusader (467) Sep 21, 2013 Pennsylvania

    I'm from the North, but I was in North Carolina one summer as a teen spending the summer with my country cousins and there are actually two really cool stories here.

    North Carolina gets very hot in the summer and I was helping my cousin and uncle put a new roof on their cottage (I'm about 16 at the time). About once an hour we'd climb down from the roof and jump in the lake to cool off. At the end of the day we were sitting on the deck relaxing and winding down and my (much older and of legal age) cousin brings out a six pack of Coors - not light, the regular stuff. Since I was underage he handed one to everyone else first then shot me pensive look for a few seconds then tossed me a Coors.

    Same summer, same group of country cousins - except these cousins were only a few years older than me ("barely legal"... ahem... drinking age) and we went cruising around the little town in their dad's van and they got a few six packs and we just drove around and hung out and got a little drunk. Don't even remember what we were drinking... Bud or Miller Lite probably.

    Dang, this was fun... fond memories!!! Thanks...!!!!

    BTW, I could be wrong on this but I'm pretty sure that the Silver Dollar Saloon mentioned in the OP is immortalized in the Jimmy Buffett song Incommunicado... "Drove into Leadville and had a few beers..." The saloon name is not mentioned in the song but I've read a story behind the song and Silver Dollar sounds familiar.
     
    #17 stingley, Nov 15, 2014
  18. jpfromb

    jpfromb Aspirant (246) Apr 9, 2010 Oregon

    Struise Double Black on a rainy day in the Bruges Beer Shop, hardly any tourists, chatted with Urbain and the rest of the Struise team and a St. Bernardus 12 in the town square of Watou, both instances with my son.
     
    #18 jpfromb, Nov 15, 2014
  19. PittBeerGirl

    PittBeerGirl Pooh-Bah (2,423) Feb 27, 2007 Ohio
    Pooh-Bah

    May 19, 2012.

    My boyfriend and I had just purchased a house since the market was down and it was actually cheaper to buy a house than to pay rent. Besides it is the perfect house for us. We just moved all my stuff from my apartment into the house and we were exhausted. My boyfriend said "we had a long day why don't you put something special in the fridge for us."

    I looked at some of my cellar beers and found Jackie Os Bourbon Barrel Middle of Nowhere Stout. I thought it was appropriate considering we just moved to the middle of nowhere.

    As the beer was cooling from being at a warmer room temperature my boyfriend got down on one knee and asked me to marry him-in our new living room.

    Best beer I ever had.
     
    #19 PittBeerGirl, Nov 15, 2014
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  20. smanrob

    smanrob Initiate (0) Feb 9, 2014 California

    Great question!
    Middle of February last year, a buddy and I snow-shooed in the back country of Tahoe for about four hours up to the top of a mountain. We had our snowboards on our backs and a few bottles of Racer 5 in our bags. We broke out the PB&J's, trail mix and Racer 5's at the top of a mountain with a ridiculous view and not a sole in sight. Two bombers each after that hike with my best friend at my side, and knowing we had a killer ride down the hill as soon as we were done... best beers ever.
     
    #20 smanrob, Nov 15, 2014
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