5-10-15-20

I can go by months lol i know its not the same but im too young to play that way dammit

Starting at 21...

Heineken, PBR, rolling rock. Tried sam adams and threw up after 3 in a night idk why lol

5 months later- trying everything, IPAs at first, still big on guinness, worked at a bar so bought anything after work i saw interesting on tap, 312 urban wheat, river horse, leinenkugels.

10- getting into Oktoberfest styles, leaning towards heavier beers. And novelty stuff. Sweet baby jesus, ginger beers, jps casper stout. Really a stout guy for the most part

15- got burnt out. Moved to lighter stuff. Pilsners, red ales, euro imports. Simpler things, becks, rivertowne pineapple, 312

Now its 18 months after 21 b day, ive had over 200 different beers including what's not on here but have logged, and still into more subtle style euro imports like carlsberg, DAB. Liking DIPAs, dirtwolf, 077Xx, Hefeweizens and coffee beers.

I went months at a time not years. I remember it fine. I went from not even liking DFH 60 or Boat to pale wheats and marzen to stout to pilsner to now ipa and porters. I moved pretty fast

If i had to choose the defining progress of palate change itd go

Pbr
312 wheat
Narragansett fest. Victory fest, guinness
Becks, DAB, carlsberg
Coffee beers, ipas, anything reinheitsgebot also

I learned less is more and appreciate all styles ive had and still would not pass on something new to me.

 

5- Grandad JB Holt from Birmingham visiting handing me a small glass of Budweiser, saying "boy you're gonna learn about beer soon enough". Maybe 10
10- Drinking a Falstaff with Jeff Ensminger on the balcony outside of his bedroom. Maybe 14.
15- Raiding my Dad's Lowenbraus, Heinekens, and industrial Schlitz. 15- 18
20- Having a draft Lowenbrau at Lums in Richmond as a freshman, down near Monroe Park at VCU. There were lots of girls at VCU. 18.
25- Ringnes, National Premium, Anchor.....the list is long....18-64.

 

5 - Crackers. This actually started before I was 5, as my family has shared old pictures of my carseat up on the bar at my parents' old favorite college watering hole from when they were in school. We would continue to go there for lunch as a family as I got older, but I was always more excited about the club crackers the cook would bring out of the crawlspace under the kitchen than I was about any fermented grain.

10 - Keystone Light. My mom's beer of choice. I don't begrudge her choice of AAL, but why *that* one? [shudder]

15 - Hiram's Flavored Brandy. Still not really drinking beer at this point (see entry for 10), but getting more curious about alcohol. Liquor was easier to come by, and if you got the "right" stuff, it tasted more like sugar water than booze.

20 - Boulevard Pale Ale. Finally on board with drinking beer (because college), as a freshman, my beer of choice was Corona. Partly because it was hard to be too selective when you basically had to tell the 21-year old doing your beer run something easy to get, and partly because I didn't want to fall back on the BMC staples that everyone else drank. Maybe the lime-in-the-beer element seemed sophisticated. Hell if I know. I was a 18/19-year old moron. However, around my second year of college, a friend of mine suggested I try a "fancy" beer sometime, so I picked up a sixer of Boulevard Pale Ale. I couldn't believe how unbelievably bitter it tasted to me at the time. Hahahahahahaha. Oh 20-year-old me. So much to learn.

25 - Leinenkugel's Red. Ticking and ticking and ticking. I'm going to put Leinie's Red here because I remember one summer when sixers of it were on sale for like $4. CRAFT BEER FOR $0.67/bottle?!? Most of my friends and I got burned out and went back to buying the somewhat more expensive beers we actually wanted to drink--this was my first sign that I would eventually become virtually price insensitive about beer. I was drinking it because I liked the way it tasted, not because it was cheap. We had one friend who was a holdout--I'm pretty sure he killed the liquor store's stock of Leine's Red.

30 - Cantillon Gueuze. This was the easiest age to choose of all of them. Mrs. LambicPentameter and I scheduled a two-week trip to Europe (France, Belgium, Netherlands, UK) during which my 30th birthday happened to occur. Well, the day before my birthday that year happened to be one of the two days a year that Cantillon opens up their doors for their Public Brewing Session. We were slated to take a train to Amsterdam around lunchtime, so we showed up to the brewery at 7am with our giant rucksacks and took a tour of the brewery and hung out and drank lambics and gueuzes for three hours before making a mad dash to catch our train. Needless to say, I slept the entire way to Amsterdam.

35 - Boulevard Love Child. I turn 35 in a little over six months, so for all intents and purposes, I'm there. I've gotten to enjoy so many amazing beers over the past five years that it's hard to nail a representative one down. However, the last five years have seen the birth of my son and the wild success and growth of the local favorite brewery that brought me into the fold in the first place, so Love Child seems a fitting choice.

 

10: I tasted High Life at this point. I wasn't inspired yet.

15: Corona with a lime was my favorite. I'd also had Bud, High Life, Negra Modelo & Sierra Nevada Pale Ale at this point. I dumped out the Negra Modelo and the SNPA...

20: Dogfish Head Chicory Stout, but I mostly drank malt liquors. I was beginning to read my old man's Michael Jackson books, and I was starting to dig New Belgium and Two Brothers a lot. I was no stranger to German imports at this time as well.

24 (today): All I know is I'm looking forward to getting some Weihenstephaner Oktoberfestbier. I'll probably also pick up the Original and the Kristallweissbier.

 

5 - Beer not even on the radar, probably drinking apple juice or kool aid

10 - Occasionally getting the last sip of whatever my dad was drinking. He wasn't much of a drinker when me and my sister were growing up, I actually remember a 6 pack of Busch gold top cans in our fridge from the age of probably 7 until that refridgerator died and they had to clean it out before moving in the new one, probably around age 17.

15 - Not really drinking beer, but that was right about when the Smirnoff Ice's and Mike's seemed to come onto the scene, so my friends and I would try to scheme ways of getting our hands on that, or getting some rum or vodka and mixing them with soda or something. Actually got drunk for the first time on Bacardi and Mountain Dew Livewire. I still taste a little bit of rum in it every once in a great while when I decide it's been awhile and grab a bottle of Livewire from the gas station and drink it without the booze.

20 - Buying beer for me and my friends 4+ times a week the summer before I turned legal from a hole in the wall liquor store that actaully accepted the WORST fake ID I've ever seen. Some dude at my college made it on a regular inkjet printer, with regular printer paper, with a template he downloaded off some file sharing website and laminated with laminating sheets from some craft store. Usually using it to buy Coors Light, because when you are growing up in the shadow of AB, EVERYONE at every high school or college party is drinking Bud Light, and if you take your eyes off your 12 pack for more than a minute, a couple cans go missing, so drinking Coors was my security system. People would either leave it alone, it would be easy to spot the thief, or more often than anything, people would make fun of me because their 18-20 year old palate was so sophisticated that they just couldnt believe I would drink that.

25 - Just getting into craft beer. Got started with Franziskanr and Paulaner hefes at a happy hour after work, and I had started a ritual of going to a small bottle shop every Friday and just buying three or four bottles of something I had never had before, with no concept of different styles or anything like that. During this time I remember the first time I tried a Jolly Pumpkin beer (La Roja), no clue what it was I had bought, and being really confused with the first few sips, but it kept growing on me as I drank, and its been one of my favorite sour/wild beers ever since.

30 - Age I am right now. I'm a homebrewer of almost three years, have a ~400 bottle cellar, trade regularly with people on this site, go to most of the special release events around town, and have a weekly bottle share group. If I could only drink one beer for the rest of my life, I wouldn't even think about it, I would take Lagunitas IPA and be happy about it. This year in November I'll be opening a five year vertical of both Sofie and Matilda, the beers that got me interested in aging beer and the two that started my cellar. I'm really looking forward to it, since it just feels like a really appropriate way to reflect back on my first five years of being a craft beer drinker, kind of like this thread. Great idea OP!

 

5 - had a sip of Busch and promptly spat it out on the sidewalk to the amusement of my mother and her boyfriend.

10 - no beer related content save for a vague dislike by association with the alcoholic jerk next door.

15 - more of the same from 10.

20 - no beer content.

25 - had a few sips of a "microbrew" from Gorky's in Hollywood. Hated it.

30 - no beer content

35 - woke up to craft beer with a trip to the BJ's Brewery across the street from post-divorce apartment. Favorite beer at that time was a toss-up between Tatonka Stout and Harvest Hefeweizen

40 - my best beer friend was homebrewing at the time and I was helping with all the grunt work. Favorite style of beer at this time was Russian imperial stout.

45 - Palate maturity led me to appreciate most styles. Favorite style at this time was probably still RIS.

50 - Today. Favorite style is now "well made and flavorful".

 

A few sips of parents Miller Lite from 5-10
15-Stolen Miller Lite or Bud Heavy from family members
20-College years mostly Icehouse and Bud Ice for serious drinking, Pete's Wicked Ale, occasional mix sixer of craft
25-Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, Guinness Draft Cans, Miller High Life
30-Harpoon IPA, Founders Porter
35-All Day IPA, bouncing around IPA's from local and wide distribution
40-Search, buy, and trade for highly rated IPA's. Hit breweries whenever travel. Lost Nation Gose, Sours, Wild Ales.

 

@Roguer, really hoping you make an appearance here.

 

5yro'ish-sip of my dad's schmidt, spit it out & thought it was revolting. (Still do, as a matter of fact.)
10yr old-sneeking chugs straight from the keg with my cousin at my uncle's summer parties. (Probably Budweiser, because that's what he loved.)
15yr old-drinking Budweiser quarts that another older cousin would buy us at the drive-in.
20yr old-up until now when I would drink beer, it was the cheapest BMC shit I could get. Lots of natty ice, lots of beasty...anyway, at 19 I had my craft beer ephifiney when a new age hippie buddy of mine gave me some local "microbrew". (What is now Weyerbacher Merry Monks.) I was hooked, this was beer that actually tasted good! Up till then I thought all beer tasted nasty...but a necessary sacrifice to catch a buzz.
25yr old-in the middle of a dry spell(which lasted about 6 yrs or so), at the request of my then wife, now ex-wife.
30yr old-seperated from the wife & getting back into beer again, trying new beers on a regular basis thanks to a few new bottle shops opening up in the area.
35+yr old-today, I have had many wonderful brews & have many more I wish to try! It's been a fun ride.

 

5- pretty sure I smelled my fathers cans of McEwans and Tennents . Probably disgusting
10 - Have been given a sip of said McEwans and Tennents by this point, thought they were disgusting
15 - Full on drinking has begun, certain pubs and off licenses serve us, my beers of choice are McEwans 70/80/90, Tartan Special, Stella, Lowenbrau and the ever so classy San Miguel. I drank most of the lagers because I thought they were cool, unlike the Hooch and Moscow Mules that everyone else was drinking. Secretly I preferred the Hooch, but i was 15, so essentially a bit stupid. Sorry, REALLY stupid.
20 - At university in edinburgh, mainly drank 98p pints of carlsberg as that was the cheap drink at the union. Also drank various ales at some pubs but all my friends drank commodity lager and shots unfortunately.
25 - Got into fine wine. When I say fine wine, I really mean the cheapest tasty plonk I could find. Also drank as many ales as I could, just greatly preferred them to the commodity lagers otherwise available
30 - Much more interest in good beer by this point
35 - as of last month, clearly in the highest tier of craft wankery, able to look down on anyone not drinking the most rare double decocted triple dry cardboarded vanilla smoked stag semen top fermented lagerbier. Will not turn down a pint of Tennents if offered though.

 

Great idea for a thread, OP.

5 - Sips of Hamm's and Coors from dad and uncle

10 - Beer hiatus. Skimmed bottles of hard liquor from friend's parents liquor cabinet

15 - Mickey's Big Mouth and later Miller Genuine Draft (had to class it up to get the ladies!)

20 - Anderson Valley Oatmeal Stout, Pete's Wicked Ale (the good recipe). Craft beer love began at age 17.

25 - Oregon IPA, Bass Ale, Chimay

30 - Stone IPA, North Coast Pranqster

35 - FiftyFifty Eclipse (at the brewery, pre-bottling), Sam Adams Triple Bock, Lost Abbey Cable Car, Bourbon County Brand Stout, Duchesse de Bourgone

40 - Cigar City Hunahpu's, Heady Topper, Goose Island Proprietor's, Rapp Gose

42.5 - I'm very much in a mead phase right now, loving stuff from Ken Schramm particularly Raspberry and The Heart of Darkness. Goose Island Proprietor's is still my favorite beer at the moment and I can't wait to go sit in the freezing cold and run all over town in a few months to get the newest batch.

 

I don't read the P4k reviews any longer but I always love this feature!

5 - My dad would let me have a sip of his Budweiser every once in a while.

10 - Too old for sips, too young for beers

15 - Coors Light Still can't drink that swill without puking.

20 - I couldn't get buyers to pickup my "fancy micro-brew", so it was cases of Busch Light

25 - Everything I could get my hands on, really snobby living in Portland.

30 - Single Malt Whisky. I had burned myself out on beers and needed a break.

35 - (in a month) Drinking all the beer and spending all the money!

 

5 - Dad was giving me sips of his Pfeiffer, uncle was giving me sips of his Falstaff, and Grandpa was giving me sips of his Stag. None knew the others were doing it (at least I think they didn't).

10 - Got busted raiding the beer trailer at our annual street party and showing my friends how to do it without getting caught (the beer taps faced away from the party, so you had to go down the street and circle back through the backyards, then cut through the house so they didn't see you approach the taps. As long as an adult didn't come around the corner to refill his beer you were golden!)

15 - Bought my first beer. A friend's older brother was a pizza delivery guy and we would order a pizza plus a couple 6-packs for delivery. He was supposed to check ID's on any delivery orders (and yes, back then in Ohio pizza shops could deliver beer).

18 - Walked into the house on my birthday with a 6-pack of Bud and stuck it in the fridge. My Mom asked me what the heck I thought I was doing, to which I replied I was 18. My Dad just chuckled in the background.

20 - Drinking lots of really cheap beer.

25 - Still drinking lots of really cheap beer. Tried my hand at brewing with mixed success (OK, mixed but mostly bad). Didn't stick with the brewing.

30 - Got my hands on Anchor Steam and was blown away. Started trying any beer I hadn't already had before, including lots of imports. Lowenbrau and Guinness were my favorites.

35 - Continued drinking new beers, and also made it a point to always find the "old guy" beer in any city I visited. Stag in St. Louis, Grain Belt in Minneapolis, Iron City in Pittsburgh, etc. Still do some of that, but not as often.

40 - Started into craft beers.

45 - Still into craft beers but would do about 50-50 those and AAL's.

50 - Went to craft only. Found myself starting to chase and realized (like some earlier posters have said) that there is no reason to chase because there are so many great beers on the shelf.

55 - Have started mixing more old guy AAL's back into the mix (but no more than about 5% of the beers I drink), and have settled on IPA's and Stouts as my go to styles. Have a taste for sours but only do them once a month or so.

 

I thought it would be interesting to add my dad's progression into the mix because it always cracked me up that for a really long time he was really slowly buying just slightly more expensive/better? versions of the same beer. In a way, his progression is as substantial or more so than mine after drinking the cheapest thing available for so many years (and a lot of it). Also, for at least a decade and probably 15+ years, Moosehead/Corona (but especially Moosehead) were special occasion beers that he brought to every family holiday/get together from when I was a kid to when I was drinking them with him.


5/10 - Juice - (Dad) Nattie Light
15 - Chugging Mt Dew/Pepsi Big Slams - (Dad) Busch Light
20 - Hated beer for a solid year of college, but drank it anyway. Honey Brown went from being indistinguishable from other beers to the favorite. Also loved Killian's (Red and Honey), Sam Adams everything, Pete's Wicked, Sierra Nevada, Copper Dragon brewpub (Salukis represent!) - (Dad) Bud Light
25 - Imports, more SN, SA, Pete's, Celis while it lasted, NXNW, other Austin brewpubs that no longer exist Oregon Brewer's Fest in 02, which was pretty awesome (Dad) Rolling Rock
30 - Spent significant time in Europe drinking German/Belgian/Polish beer I didn't know much about and wish I could go back to with more knowledge. Went to GABF (most memorable beers Midas Touch and New Glarus Belgian Red). Real Ale/Live Oak in heavy rotation. Snapping up all the seasonals that we got in Texas at the time - (Dad) Leinie's mixpacks
35 - Texas getting great distribution, local options exploding, too many beers to keep on top of. Started drinking lots more barrel aged/imperial/whatever strong beers. Obsessing a little too much. - (Dad) Lots of ambers (and Killian's Red), trip to Ireland and drank some stouts (and pretty proud of it)
37.5 - Local options plus Texas distro too much to handle, cellar overflowing, stopped caring already about chasing big releases, yet I still end up going to Jester King for quite a few things and grabbing practically every new sour/saison/farmhouse/etc. that comes to Austin. (which leads to the cellar problem) Planning trips to other cities focused on beer first, a return to GABF this year, hopefully finally getting homebrewing started up after 5 years of child-having related delays. - (Dad) More ambers, but also trying out local breweries in IL/WI/IN/wherever they travel. Loves Real Ale Devil's Backbone and Brewhouse Brown

 

5 - Hi-C Ecto Cooler was my jam, no beer yet.

10 - Budweiser - I distinctly remember having a sip of Bud during a family vacation, we were at the hotel for dinner and it was absolutely disgusting. The searing memory Bud left in my memory bank is probably what was at the heart of me not having any beer throughout HS.

15 - Sam Adams - My mother and father rarely drank beer, but we took a trip to Boston when I was 15 and anywhere we went would have Sam Adams and it ended up being my father's "go-to" at the time. We went to the Cheers restaurant and my mom let me sneak a few sips of her Sam. This got me on my way towards overcoming what Bud has done years ago.

20 - Natty Boh (National Bohemian) - Ahh yes, good ol' Natty Boh. While I was yet to discover real quality beer, my roommate and I found Natty Boh to be a great alternative to the standard "shit beers" drank throughout college. We found a place that sold cases of 24 for $9.12 and since the taste wasn't so bad it was a no brainer.

25 - Sculpin - This was a very tough call; honorable mentions to Hop Devil and Golden Monkey. Being from Pennsylvania and going to college near Philadelphia, Victory Brewing provided me with my first IPA and other-than-an-IPA craft beers. I was on a trip to California with my brother and stumbled on some Sculpin at some bar in SF. Sculpin really changed my mindset on IPAs (almost the only thing I drank at that time) and it's the beer that motivated me to keep seeking out an extensive variety of exceptional beers from all over. I remember looking it up on BA at the bar on my phone, ha.

28 - Right now I'm really starting to explore what the beer universe has to offer. It's a fun to be living during the golden age of craft beers.

 

Nice thread
5 - Some beer, swore I would never drink it again
10 - 15 - Colt 45 Malt Liquor My grandmother would drink the stubby cans over ice. Trust me back then I loved this
20 - College years anything by Miller and Bud. Bud Light came out around the time I was 19 and we actually drove to Florida to bring some back. That was our Whale back then
25 - Went thru a mexican beer thing Tecate and found out salt and lime weren't to bad on a beer, so tried the same with Schlitz when mexican beer wasn't available, remember I had a penchant for Irish car bombs so add Guinness
30 - 35 - Shiner Bock when I drank beer, was pounding Grey Hounds usually
40 - 45 - Wine phase, drank very little beer, usually when I was with friends and whatever they drank
50 - Fell in love with Shiner Black, still drinking wine, then a few years later had St Arnolds Icon Series: Brown Porter and I was hooked, that was my gateway beer and probably the reason I stumbled upon this site.

 

5 - root beer

10 - had a michelob and it was amazing

15 - I had more michelobs, they were available, I had my first Sierra Nevada pale ale and thought is was the nastiest thing that ever entered my mouth.

20 - it was miller lite, guiness, natty bo, rolling rock ponies, Kronnenburg and Sierra Nevada pale ale.

25 - Craft beer was at full tilt and i tried everything, but was very into local brew (still am) Yards, Victory, DFH, Troegs, Iron hill, Mckenzies.

30 - (i'm 32) there are too many breweries to list but a lot of them are the same, it has become more of a style I'm after rather than the brewery. A lot of ambers, brown ales, porters and stouts. second on my list is IPA's, red IPA's, Black IPA's then sours, farmhouses, lambics. I still try to stay local but I love it all. I have come along way in these years and am very excited to see where this journey takes me.

 

10 years ago: I was 16 and in high school. At that time I was drinking a lot of mickey's and adjuncts. Back then I thought Henry weinheard's was da shit.

5 years ago: is when I really started getting into "craft" beer. deschutes and Sierra Nevada were my favorite, which mirror pond being my favorite go to beer.

 

5 no beer
10 whatever I could get my hands on, usually cheap ice beers.
15 mostly whatever was cheap, a lot of ice house, but I had started to get into craft beer mostly boulevard beers.
20 mostly ipas and wheat beers.
21 current age, appreciation for most styles and am starting to enjoy simpler styles that are under appreciated, saisons, brown ales, and getting more into lager lately.