Beer Memories

It’s hard to nail it down because many of my great memories seem to involve a beer or maybe more. Cheers.

 

A Kronenbourg draft in Karlsruhe with a bratwurst in the thick of Alsace-Lorraine in 1970.

 

There are two beers that live in my brain a pedestal above the rest: BCBS '14 and Pelican's Mother of all Storms '14.

I drank the former on the burgundy recliner in the living room at around 5pm CST on a Friday, sun pouring through the double French doors next to me. At that point in time, I had never experienced a stout so decadent, and yet intently focused on being a stout, not some adjunct junkie. To add to the sweetness of the situation, it was sent to me as an 'extra' in my first ever BA trade. It was a beer I did not think I would have access to, having joined the BA forums shortly after the '15 release (back when BCBS sold out everywhere, and you had to trade for it.) The BA member no longer appears to be on the forums, otherwise I'd take them.

Mother of all Storms was consumed on my birthday in the same living room that I drank the BCBS '14. Mother of all Storms was gifted to me by a @jzeilinger for graduating college. It was, again, the first time in my life that I had a BA barleywine that was decadent, yet balanced with barrel presence, with no additional garbage in the mix. Just like BCBS '14, I'm sure this beer was 'elevated' by the kindness of the other BA member. In hindsight, I also happen to think the 3yr mark is about ideal for aging a well-made, high alcohol BA English Barleywine (don't tag @zid on my mention of that 'style' ), so I'm sure that played into the memory.

I've wrote about these situations before, and I'm sure I'll write about them again. I've drank better beers since then, but those two memories really stick to me.

 

1993. A shared pitcher of Becks Dark. A bar in the Viginia-Highlands area of Atlanta. Just arrived for good in the USA..then on to Blind Willies.
That night has stuck in my memory ever since.
Best introduction to Atlanta and The South.
Now everyone is nuts. It's all gone bad.

 

I would personally have a few memories with specific beers.

-My first ever craft beer. 60 minute IPA

-The first time I had Carton Boat

-Drinking Steigl Gold while homeless in Peekskill New York with friends stands out

-Fat Tire (in combination with Titos vodka) on the Atlantic City boardwalk getting kicked out of ballys casino running from security. Got a ride home I barely remember from some hippie girl who's car smelled like cat piss but she got me home cheers to her.

-Yuengling in hand running away from you know who through people's back yards at 2am.

-Steel reserve the night my 6 foot 9...400 pound buddy fell down my steps outside and he was too heavy to pick up so we threw a blanket over him and left him there only for him to have disappeared in the morning.

-Green Flash Sea to Sea Lager kellerbier sitting on my friends roof deck in Cape May after a two day rager. Seagulls. Beer. The smell of the ocean.

Not a great memory but the night before my dad had a widowmaker heart attack I was drinking Hofbrau Fest with him. He survived. But that memory still sticks out

If I can think of any more sentimental ones ill be back

 

I meant in The South.. Most still sane politically in Oregon

 

When I was a kid I would sometimes play golf with my dad in his league. After the round he and all his friends would sit in the clubhouse and drink a beer. My dad and most of his friends ordered a Michelob. It came in a large, round, textured glass with a pretzel stick on top. It was the only beer the bar served in that glass with a pretzel. I couldn't wait to turn 21 to have a Michelob with my dad and his friend. I turned 21 in 1998 and finally got to order my own beer after the round. Of course, I got a Michelob with a pretzel stick. It was amazing.

 

A buddy and I took off on a fishing trip to Ontario and Quebec many years ago, and while there we picked up a few different kinds of beer (a requirement for a fishing trip, right?), one of which was Cinci Lager. Its biscuity taste remains today as the best tasting lager that I've ever had. After the trip I was never able to find it in the States (I lived in Ohio then), so I'm guessing it was never exported from Canada. And I believe it's no longer available in Canada.

 

To this day no hoppy beer hits the drinkability, feel and taste of Boat for me, and I don't think any ever will. I like to call it goat

 

I'll share one quick beer memory that I hold dear...

My love affair with Prima: drove to Atlantic City for Phish Bader Field in 2012. On the way we stopped at a small beer store and grabbed a Victory variety pack. When we got to AC we grabbed fish tacos from a guy selling them in the lot and then I cracked a Prima...I had had it before but there was something about that beer in that moment, that taste is forever seared into my memory.

Since then I don't think there is a beer I have drank more of, sure my purchasing came in waves over the years but I always came back to it. Prima has since been tweaked but I still love it almost as much as I did on that night.

 

For me it is Lowenbrau from Munich. I would come home from basketball practice and games and maybe drink two. This was high school (66-69). And at Richmond in of Fall 69 I found Lowenbrau on draft at Lum's downtown next to VCU. Our freshman team, almost everyone would hit those beers hard. Along with the pastrami and swiss sandwiches at Chiocca's behind The Virginia Museum on Boulevard. Those were great days.

 

The summer of 86 I worked on a organic vegetable farm. It was off the beaten path in western, Pa. in the middle of farm country. You pretty much worked a 10 to 12 hour day 6 days a week. It was hard work but it was a worthwhile endeavor.

On my first day, after working in the fields getting burned up from the sun. I was beat and ready to go home. We were in the barn and my farmer friend asked if I would want to stay and help sort the tomatoes and package them for market the next day. Right then, he opened up a fridge full of Straubs lager 16oz. returnable bottles and said “if you help me package up the vegetables at the end of the day, you can help yourself to a beer or two” The farmer was an interesting guy as well. He was an old hippie who traveled the world with many stories. I remember listening to Commander Cody and the Grateful Dead, listening to his stories, drinking beer, and sorting tomatoes. At that time and place, Straubs lager was one of the best tasting beers I have ever had. It also made the day more bearable knowing at the end of the day if I wanted to earn some extra money there would be a cold beer waiting for me in the fridge inside the barn.

 

Cinci was available in metro Detroit in the early and mid 80s. Stubby bottles if I recall correctly.

 

Yep, stubby bottles. Since it reached Detroit, thus exported from Canada to some degree, it must not have made it to the area of Ohio where I lived.

 

Describe “politically sane” since you just had to bring it up? Cheers.

 

I remember drinking Dortmunder Ritter Brau Light and Dark at the Phoenix Club in Anaheim California in the 70s. They went well with the weiner schnitzel

Graduating from high school in Vienna in 1969, that 500ml glass of Budvar, at a local beer garden close to the school, may be the best drinking experience that I ever had. I reckon that there are others that I could mention...

 

I have two memories I think.

When I went to college in Northern Vermont in the 1970's, my friends and I would do beer runs to Canada to get cases of Molson Brador. In those days that 6% ABV malt liquor was a killer! How times have changed. We had to stop at the Canadian border and the border officer asked us if we were bringing anything back. We were honest - a couple cases of Brador beer. He said "Good choice" and sent us on our way.

My second beer memory is one I shared in another thread. My first craft beer in 1986 or 1987 was Catamount Pale Ale in Vermont. I was a broadcast journalist for a Southern Vermont radio station. When Catamount first opened their brewery they invited the local media for a press availability and a grand tour. At the end of the tour they gave each of us a taster of Catamount Pale Ale. Once I tasted that, I knew my beer interests had changed forever.

 

I am enjoying your special beer stories, people.

Although I have a few minor special beer memories with friends (good times, good times), my significant beer memory is at Jack Flats in Key West, 2002. This started my journey into non AAL beer. I wasn't much of a drinker then and was by myself down there for a wedding. Went in there ready to get a Bud bottle when I saw a Sierra Nevada mirror with a pic of a bottle of SNPA on it. That label pulled me in, I mean what could not be good about drinking a beer that came from the scene on that label? Sure enough, it was an eye-opening epiphany. I remember bitter and piney and have never looked back.

 

Cinci Beer was imported and sold in Ohio in the 1960-1970s, as these ads from the Akron Beacon Journal show (inc. the name of a local distributor).

In fact, based on the concentration of advertising, Ohio along with Michigan were pretty much that beer's primary export market. That "new full-sized" bottle shows it was a Carling-O'Keefe brands, since a similar bottle was used at the time for O'Keefe's Ale and Old Vienna exported to the US. Also, Century Importers was the C-O'K US importer, and was a subsidiary of the Canadian firm.