Your Best Beer Story

Remember Columbus bodhi and how highly rated it was like a decade ago? Someone traded me a growler and I was excited to try it. I wound up at a small but excellent and (now well known) east coast brewery and the owner/brewer invited me and a few others to his house to drink some beers with him and his wife. Might have been a wee bit starstruck….I happened to have this (64oz) growler of Bodhi in a cooler in my car at the time and figured this would be an awesome time to share it. It was pretty rainy and on the short walk across his driveway I juggled the wet growler an excruciating half dozen times or so before losing it entirely and covering the gravel with broken glass and DIPA. His poor wife came out in the rain and helped me clean up so no one would drive over shards of brown glass. IIRC I still hung out for a little while but the embarrassment was too great to enjoy myself and I wound up going home, humbled.

you said best story not happiest, right?

 

Maybe the embarrassment of sharing an oxidized growler of a hyped hoppy beer with a brewing pro would have been worse? Do you know how long ago the growler was filled? Was it an in-person trade or shipped to you?

Just saying. I just admire your patience with not drinking the beer right away. When I get beers of that type I drink them on the spot.

A funny thing is that I have yet to try Bodhi, and it's been in my want list for some time lol. I know it's readily available in nearby OH but I have yet to score it.

 

When Beachwood’s Long Beach location had a Hill Farmstead tap takeover:

 

Winner!!

 

@MutuelsMark. I will see your hand and raise you five!

Below is a story I posted back in 2016, my guess is this occurred in 2005?

“So, I have a story.

I was traveling home from work and on my commute, I pass through Conshohocken. I decided this evening (a Wednesday?) to stop off for a couple of beers at The Boathouse. Now, this was a long time ago (10+ years ago) before I was into the social media aspects of beer. That evening I had both a glass of Pliny the Younger and Pliny the Elder not really knowing what I was drinking at that time. There was no long line there. While I was there drinking my beers a fellow struck up a conversation with me. He was in town on business and was absolutely giddy that he was lucky enough to be there when these beers were on tap. He mentioned to me that he found out about this release from BeerAdvocate (this was the first time I heard about BA). He educated me on the brewery of Russian River and the two Pliny beers. I recall that I enjoyed drinking both of those beers but I also remember thinking to myself that this guy is so weird in that he follows beer on the internet and was so exuberant and happy to be simply drinking some beers.

My, how times have changed!!”

Cheers!

 

Already told the really good stories, but one that gets talked about still is when we were on our annual beercamping expedition to Little River State Park in Waterbury, Vermont, and a big Winnebago came to the site right next to our group, and the three guys came over to our fire to share some of their beers, and of course we shared ours and had a great time. They were from Georgia and they told us they didn't know how they were gonna sleep with all the beer they bought, which I and everyone assumed was some kind of humor.

A few hours in and some world class brews shared by them and us, and I brought up to roll a joint of some excellent bud I'd grown, and one of the guys suggested going into the RV where there'd be no breeze and a flat surface. I was kinda shocked when I went in, as there was barely any space to walk, just enough to get to the front seats, which we did. The entire RV was packed with stacked beer, floor to ceiling, front to back, and there indeed was no place to sleep. It hadn't been a joke. They set up tents and joined our compound and we had a great time together for the next two days.

 

Dave, hopefully your campsite was not on a downslope from their camp site!?!

Cheers!

 

Not a "best" story but a story I just posted in another thread:

"A long time ago I invited my co-workers (and some friends) over to my house for a Friday Happy Hour party and cookout (I grilled some hamburgers). I had coolers full of my homebrewed beers but I figured for some people this may be too intense so I bought a six-pack of Coors Light which I put in a Playmate. I made the 'mistake' to label that Playmate with "Sissy Beer". Not a single person drank a beer from that Playmate (because they didn't want to be labeled a Sissy?) and I had leftover Coors Light beers. I don't remember what I did with those 6 beers (maybe brought them to a party I was invited to?)."

Cheers!

 

I went to a liquor store I hadn't been to before in the town next to my hometown. I'm looking through the cooler and suddenly spot a 750mL bottle of Cantillon Rose de Gambrinus, I bring it to the counter and ask how much it is, expecting some insane price. The guy tries to look it up, but there's no barcode on it, so he pulls out a book from one of his wholesalers to look it up, and it's not in there.

He goes: "It's a lambic, right?"
Me: "Yeah."
Him: "I don't know. $12?"

I couldn't pull out my debit card fast enough.

 

I would have asked after the purchase was rung up: "Do you have any more bottles in the back?"

Cheers!

 

My best beer stories have been embellished and repeated so many times that under oath I swear I couldn’t tell you whether or not they’re even true anymore…

In the early eighties my best friend was managing a bar in Harvard Square, and I had friends playing and working in clubs all over Cambridge and Boston. In those days Jim Koch was trying to launch Sam Adams and he’d wander into bars all over town standing rounds for the house. Over the course of a couple of weeks I ran into him so many times that I thought he was stalking me. (I was way cuter 40 years ago).

Then there was the time I asked Shawn Hill to help me carry my cases out to the car because, I don’t know, I guess I thought he was a hobo and working for tips or something. He never looked at me or said a word. He just walked away. Fortunately I don’t embarrass easily (at all). Whenever I see him now I try to get whoever I’m with to ask him to do things for us.

 

LOL! I had the opportunity to meet and talk beer with Shaun at a past Philly Beer Week event and he did not have a pretentious wardrobe and if you get him to talk about brewing he can be loquacious.

Cheers!

 

In the 1990's I hauled beer around quite a few times in the trunk of a 1978 Oldsmobile Toronado. Like, 15+ cases at a time, because it was on sale or clearance. Always Summit beers. At the time I didn't drink anything else. Loyalty. That car (19.5 ft long) was a beast with a 403 small block V8 and front wheel drive. I got a feckin' citation for peeling out at an intersection one summer...in a ghetto blaster!! Got a lot of horn honks and thumbs up driving that old thang. I bought it in '94 for $400. 36K miles. I drove it for 4 years and sold it for $300 <> But sincerely, I'm alive to tell the tales of me being the designated driver with passengers imbibing in a car with 4 cigar lighters and seat cushions that make you feel like you're sitting in someone's hand...and a working 8-track tape player. Foghat, Bob Seger, The Guess Who, Rush. And the beer! Super affordable. Back then there was the beginning of the craft beer scene.
When I was on tour with a band in 1997 I met a good lady in Ireland. We partied a lot and I went there frequently. Subsequently, people from there paid me visits back home and were generally in contact. At one point, I believe in the summer of '98, six members of one family were shackin' up at my place in NE MPLS plus my lady & I. I believe we were responsible, in a two-week period, for a spike in beer sales wherever we went. We all rode around in that Oldsmobile, which needed a spotter to get into the garage...and the driver had to scooch over the seat and exit out the passenger door. It was like a giant clown car! The fuel economy was horrible and beer would've probly burned alright in it with some bad liquor but I pampered it the best I could. But the best beer story within all this is just simply summertime... makin' out with my girlfriend in the couch-like front seat of that car, with the radio on, drinkin' Sierra Nevada Pale Ale and watchin' the sun go down then her falling asleep on my lap while I'm driving on back roads to take her home. Embers remain.

 

You should send this to Kid Rock. I would be willing to bet he could make a song from this!

Cheers to you!!

 

Crashing through the rugged terrain of modern day Croatia (then Yugoslavia), finding a way to a remote train depot where I try to buy a cool green beret with a red star from a Yugoslav soldier. He said :"they" would kill both of us". I believed him. We found our way down a rail track and eventually found a neat old country road house. We had a great beef stew, rich dark bread, and lovely dark lagers. Those were the best two beers of my life by far. We slept near the rails and found our way to Rijecka where we bought steerage passage to Dubrovnik, a living ancient Roman cobblestoned vision of the past. We had met a great number of fellow travelers on the freighter and continued eating and drinking. Steve and I were 19 in 1970 and the group of Aussie, French, German, Swedish, Danish, Romanian, American, English, and Irish kids decided no clothing was required for a dip in the bay below. Well, we were detained and deported for consorting with locals. We were shipped to Athens where Steve's uncle was president of the Olympic Airlines. This is part one......

 

C'mon, the suspense is killing me.