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I seemed to always seek out 'different' beers---- drinking Moosehead and St. Pauli Girl while my buds drank Bud back in high school. Then, a trip to Germany after college (1989) really opened my eyes. Been drinking the good stuff ever since but then things took a turn for the worse when BA entered my life in 2007. It was at that moment that I went from an enthusiast to an addict! This is my story.

 

I am now 30, more than half way to hitting 31 years of age. For most of my drinking life, my main focus was on getting drunk.

I began drinking beer when I was 12 back in 1994. Throughout my teenage years, I drank mostly Budweiser, Coors Light, Colt 45, St. Ides, Old English, Country Club and other cheap malt liquors. When I was 19, I began taking an interest in other beers, such as Bass Ale, NewCastle, Guinness, Warsteiner, Belhaven Scottish Ale, Boddington Pub Ale, Murphy's Stout, Beck's Dark, Heineken Dark, Sam Adams, Spaten, Octoberfests, Pete's Wicked Ale, Pete's Strawberry Blonde. While those aren't spectacular beers, they are certainly are different than your average macros and I think are a stepping stone. This went on from the age of 19 to 23. However, in this time, I began drinking lots and lots of straight liquor.

When I was 23, my weight became an issue so I tried drinking light beer. Stupidly, a lot of liquor as well. I was a heavy drinker and there was a point when I felt worried that I might have a problem. When I was 25 and began my "career" after graduating college, I stopped drinking weeknights for the most part. However, I developed a taste for light beer.Through the years, all I drank was liquor and light beer. Focus was still mainly on getting drunk. VERY drunk. Wasted Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays.

Fast forward to late 2009. I was sick of drinking Heineken Light for the past couple of years so I started trying different things. One day my friends and I went to a craft beer bar I've been to before but never took advantage of. I tried something Belgian. Couldn't say what it was, but after that, I was hooked on craft beer. Slowly I started getting into craft and I haven't looked back. Even after discovering good beer, I frequently overindulged in high abv/high quality beer.

I've slowed down. Even though I still like getting drunk/buzzed, I also appreciate a good beer and don't feel the need to get completely trashed every time I drink.

 

I never liked US macro shit. Started drinking German beers in late 80's and early 90's. Pretty much stayed w/ them till mid 90's when my parents moved to Washington State and realized there were lots of great beers out there. After going there every year a couple times a year I really got hooked on american craft beer

 

I was arrested for drinking and driving... I had an open bottle of Heineken in my cup holder when I got pulled over. The cop who arrested me later remarked that if I am going to get in trouble for drinking, might as well drink something good and recommended Prima Pils.

Haven't touched macro shit since then.

 

That beats my story. As drunk as I've been I never got pinched for a DWI.

 

I used to drink only smirnoff ice and the occasional Rolling Rock. I was invited to hang out with a friend while he was finishing with his work in the science lab to have a beer or two with him. I thought it was odd, but I said what the hell. I was due to work at Relay for Life at like 12 or 2 or whatever. I was sitting there, and he grabs an Edmund Fitzgerald out of the lab fridge, insists he pour it in a glass. I was nowhere near ready for the coffee and chocolate flavors, but god damn I loved it. Then some Wild Turkey went down, and that was that.

Then I remember going in to this bar at home, because a colleague tells me its for craft beer people. Supposedy the vibe was spot on as well. I walk in and sit down. I look at the menu of almost 200 beers, decide on something called Nugget Nectar. That was my epiphany. The hops were off the chain, and i just didnt realize a beer could taste this good.

Now at that bar, I walk in, and they pour me whatever is new no questions asked. Hell, they even text me new beers they get in. That was before I moved. I do the same thing in Durham, NC, but its more with bottle shop owners in the area.

 

For me it's been fairly recent that beer has become my "hobby." I had never been a BMC person and thought I liked "good" beer even though I couldn't tell you the difference between an ale and a lager and the only style I could probably describe was a hefeweizen. Spending more than $7 or so on a 6-pack was also out of the question.

I went to Belgium in Nov. 2010 and aside from Chimay (and the InBev brands) wasn't familiar with all that the country had to offer. My first night there (in Bruges) I asked a waiter for "something I can't get in America." His response was, "Well, you can get them all in America." When I returned home, I learned that the waiter was correct and started going on a tear buying Belgian beers. No longer buying cheap 6-packs, I was buying $12 bottles of St. Bernardus 12, etc.

In researching the Belgians, I started linking to BA which in turn has turned me on to all of the American craft beers out there, and the rest is history. It's at a point now that I want to quit my job in the entertainment industry and get in the craft beer industry in some capacity.

 

Tried my first bud at 14 and drain poured it when my friends weren't looking. I thought I hated beer so whenever me and my friends would drink I would chug as fast as I could. At 17 or 18 I was telling some one at a party that I hated the taste of beer, they went to their secret stash and got me a #9 and Newcastle Brown Ale, for the next 2+ years that was all I drank. In college I met a friend and discovered his father owned some local brewery, Berkshire Brewing Company, I told him I like #9 and Newcastle and he recommended I try some BBC brews. I had a friend pick me up 2 at random, River Ale and Berkshire Traditional Pale Ale. Those 2 beers blew my mind. After that me and the friend that picked them up for me were on a mission to try every BBC available. I stuck to BBC for over a year, some how found DFH, then turned 21 and was amazed at how many different brews were available.

 

It was a long time ago, off in the plain-living western suburbs of Minneapolis. The grass was green, the air was sweet and the girls were fast. Me and the gang, we had all seen our dads sip on the curious smelling yellow stuff, but we'd never had the guts to take a swig ourselves. In our minds, there was something terrifyingly grown-up about it; the forbidden fruit, as it were. Jay - the leader of our little motley crew - piped up one day as we were chasing around the pigskin, "Let's do it. I think it's about time we man up and drink some beer." Confused, we all looked at each other, trying to gauge everyone's reaction before saying anything. "Well, whaddaya say? You guys aren't chicken are ya?" Kevin couldn't let that fly. "I'm in!" he blurted out, "Fact is I've always wanted to try the stuff." And like a row of dominoes we all agreed, whether we wanted to or not.

We quickly learned that it was one thing to talk the talk, but quite another to walk the walk. Turns out, finding beer in Independence, Minnesota on a Sunday afternoon isn't all that easy for a bunch of twelve year old kids. We had agreed that one beer each would probably do the trick. Kevin originally suggested we each had to drink a case, but quickly changed his stance once he realized that we had to figure out a way to get the stuff.

Then, a stroke of genius came over me. Being that it was football season, my dad had about a dozen friends from work over each weekend to watch one of the games. Since I was the youngest in my family, I was assigned the noble position of beer runner. All these years of hauling cold Budweiser from the basement fridge to the living room – you’d think I would have tried the stuff along the way, but no. I knew every word on the side of that can by heart. I could teach a class on the evolution of Budweiser labels from 1995 to 2000, but I’d never once touched its sweet nectar to my lips.

But how would we divert any of this beer for ourselves? Surely my father kept a running tally somewhere in the basement. To be safe, we decided that it would be best to withhold one beer each weekend until we had a big enough stash to hold our forbidden get-together. That’s one beer each for me, Jay, Kevin, Sam, Kyle, Austin, Robbie and Teddy. It would be seven long weeks of waiting, scheming and distracting drunken Vikings fans. But the payoff would be life-changing. We were about to transform ourselves from boys, to men.

I remember that last weekend of beer hunting like it was yesterday. Dennis Green’s Vikings had beat out the Detroit Lions 24 to 17 and it was the last weekend that I would be just another beer runner. From then on, I would be a real, bona fide beer drinker.

That night, I met up with the gang, carrying the final piece to the puzzle. We sat around our sacred loot, wide-eyed and feeling good about ourselves. It was a momentous occasion that would be talked about for years to come. This marked a pivotal moment in our lives and the lives of future generations of aspiring young beer drinkers. The anticipation was killing each of us.

Turns out, we were wrong about the whole thing. Shit sucks. Tasted like piss and it made Kyle puke. I’ve been a Surly drinker ever since.

 

My dad's dad was an alcoholic, and I swore I would never drink. Later that day I started on sweet booze like Rumpleminze and Mike's Hard Lemonade and eventually tequila. Wasn't much of a beer drinker. To me, beer meant Budweiser, which I didn't really like to begin with, and anything else was confusing foreign poison.

As my twenties rolled on (oh god I'm no longer in my twenties) I eventually discovered that there was a brewery in my hometown. East Hartford Connecticut's Olde Burnside Brewing didn't sell beer in poncy little 12-oz bottles, they sold it in big 64-oz hillbilly jugs, damn it. I didn't know what a growler was at the time, only that what I had was different from what other people around were drinking and that I have a pathological need to do things differently than other people, and holding a big goddamn jug of beer while I barbequed made me a man.

That and I also have some seriously irrational local pride. I mean, not only do I not live in East Hartford any more, I don't even live in the state.

Anyway, my stomach started to hate hard liquor, and getting drunk was expensive and a chore because I have a high tolerance. For a few years I was all about my Ten Penny Ale and various Sam Adams brews. I tried other stuff, but not regularly or enthusiastically. A couple of years later my cousin started collecting bottle caps and turning them into fridge magnets. I loved the idea so I ran with it, meaning I had to try a bunch of stuff I never had before to get new caps. A liquor store with a mix-a-six policy moved in near where I lived and it just accelerated from there since I no longer had to buy a whole 6 or 12 pack of one beer to get a single cap.

Been a beer drinker for about 5-6 years now, and an enthusiastic one for maybe the past 2-3.

 

Having friends on the football team during high school made attaining alcohol pretty damn easy. I never really liked the macros so I sprang for the seasonal mix packs of sam adams when I chose beer. By the time I was a freshman in college I was onto the gateway craft brews like dogfish head, stone, and sierra nevada. Once I turned 21 the floodgates opened and I just started trying every brewer, style, and country of origin that I could get my hands on. I'm 22 now and I'd say I'm approaching around 1000 unique beers.

 

Dinner with a friend and our wives at a nice Italian restaurant overlooking a golf course. My friend ordered an Oberon for both me and himself. I've been hooked ever since.

 

I started working at a liquor store in the redemption center when I was about 16, and I gravitated towards the craft section and started asking the resident beer expert there a lot of questions. I then moved to another liquor store after I turned 18 and again was attracted to the giant selection they had.

I became friends with the craft salesman and bugged the hell outta him with questions and learned a lot, I then started getting my over 21 friends to get me some random bomber from the craft section and got to try a good amount of stuff. I never was a big fan of macro beer but found some innate passion for these kinds of beer, I feel as though it has to do with the creative nature of it all, from the packaging to the names to the beer itself, this is the most incredibly creative consumable product available. Some time later I signed up on BA and am now a beer manager. So it goes.

 

Awesome stuff! Its nice to see someone younger thats into good beer. All of my roommates/friends up at school live for bud light despite the awesome selection of craft brews at our local bar...

 

I was an exchange student to Belgium when I was in high school...lived there for a year.

When I got off the airplane and then back to my new home, my host father handed me a Jupiler and from that point on I wanted to try every beer out there. I smuggled beers back in my luggage after that year (belgians weren't imported much if at all at the time) and shared them with my father.

Now, I'm fortunate enough to work for a craft beer distributor. I wore my necklace from Maredsous Abbey to my interview

 

I always liked different beers but I managed to meet and make some incredible friends when I switched jobs in Orlando. I ended up sharing a big house with several of them in 06-07 and we would head to our local liquor store, which happened to have an amazing bottle selection, and we would make a point to buy different beers and try them. We would then take the bottles and rank them by placing them over top of our cabinets.

Eventually, it lead us to finding new places to drink and new friendships and a lot of money spent. Well worth it.

 

Traveling around Montana during my field coarse in geology. First I had Fat Tire (flat tire ) Red Lodge Brewing was what really peaked my interest after that. Talk about a beer culture, their beers were the only thing available in Red Lodge. I fell in love with the brewery, and never looked back. I have been back to Red Lodge a few times, and I still love their beers.

 

Saw an article in a magazine about 21st Amendment Monk's Blood. Sounded interesting so I Googled it and stumbled onto BA. I signed up, did a lot of research, and just dove in trying new stuff. I am still going strong after 2 years and I am pretty sure this will be a lifelong hobby.

Funny part of the story is that after 1300+ reviews and a shitload of trades, I still have never tried the Monk's Blood. Someday...