What beer Converted you?

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Pete's Wicked Ale introduced me to microbrew. Then it was Sam Adams. Shortly after realizing there were lots of small microbreweries all over the country I joined a "microbrewed beer of the month" club where I got to try lots of different beers being brewed all across America. Some of those beers were crappy but I also got my 1st taste of beers from breweries like Goose Island, Sierra Nevada, Harpoon and Rogue.

 

I never liked beer until trying JW Dundee's Honey Brown. From there I expanded and eventually found Stone's Arrogant Bastard. I guess those two get the credit.

 

Goose Island IPA, and I will always have a fondness for it. Think it's a great beer.

 

Delirium Tremens.

 

It wasn't a single beer, it really was just moving to New York and actually having craft beer available.

 

From the early to mid 80s I was happily chugging along, sometimes with whatever domestic lager was available (mostly Bud and Michelob) and sometimes favorite imports, so it's difficult to put my finger on exactly what prompted me to forgo the adjuncted lagers almost altogether. There were definitely three major factors for me: 1) an eye-opening beer appreciation class given in conjunction with a wine appreciation class I was taking, 2) Michael Jackson's Beer Hunter series on public TV and 3) new flavorful American beers showing up on shelves along with a sense that something was brewing. Anchor was featured heavily in all three happenings, so I'm going to have to give Fritz the credit: Liberty Ale and Porter, foundational beers still mightily appreciated.

 

always had intrest in beers, but the first one to blow my mind and make me a collector/ big spender / loco person was tsjeeses ( struise brouwers) wich i still drink and it keeps amazing me up until this day ! if it were in the top 50, i'd still say it'd deserve more !

 

Old Rasputin

 

I wasn't much of a beer drinker when I was growing up because there seemed like something was missing. I went through a period where I had to be different than everybody else drinking Strohs vs Old Style or Miller Genuine vs Budweiser. Then I started drinking Heineken but I still haven't found what I was looking for, but then I found Sam Adams followed by Sierra Nevada Pale Ale and was like "Hmmmmm" this is pretty good. But I think it was just recently that I found out that a family member was brewing his own beers and I tried one of his creations and was blown away by the flavor. I still haven't found "MY" ultimate beer but now I am educating myself on what is out there and having fun doing it.

 

Stones ipa then sculpin and I was hooked forever.

 

I had a buddy who loved to drink Widmer hefeweizen and he made me try them. I liked them well enough, so i tried some others. I started drinking Deschutes Mirror Pond. I moved on to the selection of our local brewery Ice Harbor brewing and their IPA got me in deep. They had a clone kit and I started homebrewing. After 2 years of homebrewing with buddies and selling beers at a gas station I became a beer store manager. I love this job and I love the Craft beer lifestyle.

 

I have been a huge beer drinker since I was 16. Seriously, I have consumed more Bud, Coors, Miller and Natural Light than most men do in a lifetime. But For me it was glassware. I always knew that beer was supposed to be enjoyed out of a glass and so I started buying beer glasses. Next thing I knew, I was buying Duvel, Maisel's Weisse Hefe and Rothaus Pilsener because I just thought they looked interesting at the grocery stores here in Hong Kong. Life has gotten a lot more expensive ever since.

 

Sierra Nevada Pale Ale

 

Pretty much from the beginning, I've always been interested in trying better beer. Like a lot of people, my first beer was a Budweiser in high school (1998). From there I wanted to try as much as possible. Some of my favorites early on were Michelob and Killian's. I can remember JW Dundee's on a visit to Kentucky (I grew up in Tennessee) as well as some Sam Adams and Guinness along the way. It wasn't until I was a junior in college that the grocery store in the small town I was in expanded their beer selection and suddenly I had 20 different legit craft beers I'd never heard of. Pete's Wicked, Bridgeport IPA, Widmer Hefe, Abita, Redhook, and Magic Hat are some I remember. Worked my way through the whole Sam Adams lineup and bought all their seasonal samplers. Sierra Nevada was an instant favorite and I still enjoy it now (had one Saturday). Just kept drinking everything I could and in an attempt to find some of the Terrapin special releases I read about on a sixer of Rye Pale Ale I googled "where can I buy Terrapin beer"? That directed me here to a thread on BA and as Paul Harvey would say, now you know the rest of the story.

 

Started out on Anchor Steam. When the price kept going up, I looked for something cheaper and found Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. It wasn't too much longer that I found Torpedo and realized that IPAs were my calling.

 

Schneider Aventinus showed me the light......

 

Blue moon, but the beer that sparked my real interest was blushing monk, since then ive been slowly collecting more and more.

 

Magic Hat in the year before I left for college. Loved the little saying on the caps, as well as the trippy labels and the beer that didn't taste vile. Still remember opening one that said "If Jerry were here we'd buy him a beer."

Then I went to college in VT and started on all the locals: Rock Art, Trout River, etc. Living here is really what jump-started the whole thing, tbh.

 

This turned me into the realm of "special" stuff:

http://beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/48/156

But this beast right here instantly turned me into a beer geek.

http://beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/15237/38334

No turning back after - literally - my first sip of this. It is single-handedly responsible for my love of craft beer and more specifically imperial stouts.

 

My intro was Oberon, and other smaller crafts available to me during the early 2000's while I lived in Kalamazoo. It never really got me into the craft beer mindset I have today though.

Early November 2011 a friend gave me a Backwoods bastard on our annual Deer Camp trip to the U.P. Hooked ever since