Your first real craft beer experience?

Rest?

 

It was November 2009 in Providence, R.I. I wasn't driving but I sure was drinking, it was my bosses Batchelor party. It might have been Trinity Brewhouse or Union Station and I don't remember the name of the beer. I asked the server for a full-bodied Ale, not too dark, with a high alcohol content. An IPA was suggested, and it was great. I remember that it was a West Coast, it was dark like Bass Ale and piney.

Six or so years later I was in a liquor store looking for something like it. Stone IPA was my pick and I have not gone back to Bud or Hiney (Heineken) since. Cheers.

 

I think I’ve shared this here in the past, but here goes:

I grew up in Québec where the drinking age is 18, but in practice, at least when I was coming of age, about 16/17 when you finish high school and head off to CEGEP (college), and when everyone had a fake ID. (The one tavern in the town where I grew up even had a bicycle stand outside of it because of all the patrons who hadn’t yet been able to get their driver’s license!)

It was ‘89/‘90 in Grade 11 when I had my first craft beer. I was using the ID of a friend’s older brother. It was a ridiculous ID, because nothing matched up; ethnicity, hair colour, eye colour, etc., and yet never failed me. The wonderful era before picture ID! A couple friends and I drove in to Montréal to see a concert at a small club called Club Soda. I was an O’Keefe Extra Old Stock drinker at the time. It was 6.2% ABV. More bang for the buck was my reasoning and a six pack did the trick for me at all the parties. It was kind of like the more well-known Brador, but tasted much better. They didn’t sell Old Stock at most of the bars though, so I would slum it with Labatt 50, Blue or Molson Export or Laurentide. My first beer or two that night was one of those. There was however, a special on a new craft beer called McAuslan St. Ambroise Pale Ale. Two bottles for the price of one. Being sixteen year olds with limited funds, my friend and I decided to split the great deal for our next beer.

It was eye opening. I remember remarking how the beer had so much flavour. Maybe too much flavour for my 16 year old self. My friend certainly thought so and only had a couple sips. I really wasn’t sure if this big flavour was a good thing or not at the time, but I do remember the significant difference I noticed from the macro beers I had enjoyed to that point. It certainly piqued a curiosity to try other ‘weird beers’ for me. Over the next year or three I tried most of the few craft beers on offer locally, (Brasal Hopps Brau, Massawippi Pale Ale which was the first beer from the brewery that would become Unibroue, free Magic Hat on a trip down to Vermont, during the first couple weeks they were open, interesting imports like Schlenkerla Marzen and Samichlaus at an incredible beer bar in Sherbrooke Québec called King Hall).

I didn’t give up on macro beers at the time, but tended to be adventurous with them as well from that point forward, whenever I came across something new or different (Molson Champlain Porter, Labatt Velvet Cream Porter, Dow Ale - the stuff no one else seemed to drink). But, I did tend to drink more craft beer. From then until today, I’ve had an itch to try new and different beers all thanks to that ‘too flavourful,’ very pedestrian by today’s standards pale ale, as a 16 year old.

Cheers!

 

Small joke. But who exactly was being cudgeled by a "five iron"? I think I know.

 

Early on (early 1980's), I was sitting in an Irish pub in my home town (they had Miller, Bud, Coors and Guinness on tap) and I saw a swing top bottle on the shelf behind the counter. When I asked what it was the bartender told me it was a specialty Mexican beer they had gotten in called Cerveza Conmemorativa Navidad. Beer pretty much blew my mind and here almost 40+ years later, still stands out. But back then I was pretty much drinking for the alcohol, so I ended up going there several times thru the Christmas season and drinking this beer while there. Years later (approx 34) I went to another Irish Pub in Houston and ended up getting one of Saint Arnolds Icon series beers, Brown Porter. From this point on I saw no need to drink Bud anymore when shit like this was floating round and could be consumed for not that much more $$.

 

Probably Saranac Pale Ale, or Magic Hat around 2006-07 in High School. I bought a can of Heady Topper in 2010 or 11 at a Phish show for 15$, at the time it was worth it.

 

My first experience was around 1996 or 1997. I was in college at a small school in South Carolina. Somehow, and for some reason, the local beer store had all varieties of Pete's Wicked Ale on sale. Being broke college kids looking for a good time, we bought around 6 or 7 cases, almost the entire supply, between the five of us. Additionally, each case came with a collectible glass set which included 6 pint glasses and a full glass pitcher! I still have all of the glasses and pitcher, the beer lasted about two weeks. Good times.

 

Started in 2021, age 25. (Late to the party due to iron fisted local religion I'm thankfully no longer part of)

First brew was BJ's Tatonka Stout. Haven't had one in close to two years but I fondly remember it.

And here we are! Self proclaimed and learning beer nerd that just can't get enough craft.

Cheers!

 

After backpacking through Europe in the summer of 1986, I came back to the US and couldn't drink American piss beer anymore. I lived on imports for a year or two and in the 1987-1988 range I started drinking Pete's Wicked Ale and SN Pale Ale and going to these new micro breweries (Gordon Biersch and Tied House). I don't remember which was first, but I do remember trying these new styles like porters, stouts, and red ales. I was such a rebel.

 

Hmm... Around 1993 or 94 I was dragged to country line dancing night at Stoudt's brewery. Up 'til then I only had a few el-cheapo beers which I hated ("you guys get excited over this shit?") so I was intrigued that Stoudt's brewed their own beer right there. Had their Pils and thought it was great.

 

In the early 80s, I had heard about Anchor Steam Beer for a couple of years, but could never find it anywhere back east in Kentucky where I was living. In 1984, I was on a work assignment in Fresno, CA and bought a six pack of Anchor Steam at a local market. I tasted it, I hated it. It was my first experience in drinking a craft beer. I blame it on an unrefined palate that wouldn't mature for a few more years. With that said, I never did like Anchor Steam all that much.

 

In 1978 I was 21, had been drinking pissy European imports for a couple of years. I was working in the oilfield in Hobbs NM and our local grocery store had Lowenbrau on sale. But by the time we got off work they were out of it so the manager let us have the same deal on this beer we'd never heard of before, Henry Weinhardt's Pale Ale. Around midnight that Saturday we opened our first Henry and it was freaking delicious, like no beer we'd ever tasted. By noon Sunday we had finished all we had bought and since it was Sunday, we couldn't buy any more until Monday, when we'd be back at work and gone for a few days. When we did get back to town we went to the store and bought every case of Henry's we could find so we'd never run out again.

 

This came up in my memories as well, though the closer to me Sweetwater Tavern sits more firmly in my mind as a place where I can say I definitely knew I liked what smaller places could produce (and which I've noted in various threads like this)

My girlfriend's story of her first IPA, which she tells with such enthusiasm, is better than mine for a definitive moment. However, in a recent conversation I recalled something I literally had forgotten about a beer exploration in general. I think I might've posted about it here, but it fits with this thread, even if I'm too lazy to search my recent content.

Bennigan's at one point had a "loyalty program" of sorts, I guess, where they tracked the beers you drank. They rewarded you for trying X, Y, Z number of unique beers with like a free appetizer or something.

I decided exploration was a good thing, and having a goal of drinking "all of the beers" showed initiative. As a plan, I figured the easiest thing was to start at A and work towards Z. Some of the beers were, at the time for me, crazy expensive, so I might've skipped them temporarily depending on financial conditions, but I generally stuck to my plan.

I specifically recall having one of the "expensive beers" I can't come near specifically naming but which was some form of fruited Lambic. I'd say Lindeman's, though L is too far into the alphabet, since...

Virginia ABC had an unsurprising issue with "rewarding alcohol consumption" and the program stopped. I want to say I got through between 20-30 beers over a few months, and I don't recall regretting the effort at all.

 

Henry Weinhard's Private Reserve was first released in 1977, Pabst bought the brewery in 1979 - but the founding Wessinger family remained with the brewery. In 1982, Heileman bought Pabst, kept some hot brands and breweries (inc. HW and the Blitz-Weinhard brewery in Portland) and spun off a new "Pabst" (to keep ahead of the DoJ and their anti-trust lawyers).

Some forget that HW was perhaps the best-selling beer in those early years that used Cascade hops - "more than any other brewery we know of" went their promotional material.

I always thought it was Heileman that first did the line-extension Weinhard beers - Dark, Light Ale, etc., some time in the 1980s.

 

My first experience with what I would call craft, was Dixie Blackened Voodoo Munich Dunkel (now brewed by Faubourg) in a Cajun Restaurant in Rolla Missouri in the late 80's. It's most appealing trait was that it wasn't AAL. I struggled to find it very often after that, usually at Cajun restaurants or when in New Orleans. I found it in Denver once, and packed the sixer in my soft-sided checked bag. Predictably, that didn't go well, half the bottles broke. The last time I had it was after I started exploring other styles, and I wondered why I liked it in the first place.

 

Sorry to hear about your loss. Your dry-cleaner probably loved it. Did the airline ban you from future flying?

 

The airline didn't say a thing, probably didn't notice. I bet some other people's suitcases were gifted with beer though. I had bought it on the way to the airport, and had quickly wrapped it in dirty clothes. Bad plan I guess.

 

I was living in Kalamazoo, MI, and I subbed on a friend's softball team. After the game we went to a bar, and they ordered pitchers of a weird colored beer called Solson. I gave it a go, thought it was vile, and ordered a Bud Dry (why ask why). I've become a much more adventurous beer drinker since then. Although I'm still not crazy about Oberon Which Used To Be Solson.