Ever buy the "wrong" beer?

I'm in my early 60s. At some point, I won't be buying my own beer but for now, I'm good.

 

Not really our fault, but once my friend and I got a growler filled with Jai Alai at a shop, went home and cracked it open. I was so convinced it was NOT that. It turned out the guy filled it up with Hoptimum instead and we weren't paying attention. Great beer, I was just very disappointed.

 

If you are a registered and active contributor on this website (or any craft beer forum), you are probably miles ahead of the newbie, or the casual craft beer drinker in mixing up beers. Being a beer geek/snob/nerd/connoisseur/lover/drinker etc as a whole we are anal about our beer and make sure we know all about it and have a game plan when we hit a bottle shop. On the flipside of that is people who are just getting into this craziness of craft. I have friends who have taken the plunge from Bud Lightland and ended up a little on my side. My brother now has a few craft favorites and he was a die hard Milwaukee's Best drinker for years.

With that being said we have to remember that these casual craft buyers or newbs (we all were at one point...remember those days?) are not all knowing and will buy Lagunitas Little Sumpin Sumpin instead of Little Sumpin Wild on complete accident and that is a fact. Tell me it's not for the casual buyer. If you recommend Stone Enjoy By IPA to a newbie at work and they show you the bottle they bought and it's Stone's regular IPA.

All the fancy labels, colors, weird ass names, etc all lined up and down the aisles can be intimidating to some. Hell, my wife said she is scared to look in our garage fridge for a beer because she don't know what is what. (I just brought home a haul of 75 beers from our trip. Add that to the 177 I currently have and it confuses me sometimes. LOL.) You have to step off your high horse and come back to reality and see that yeah...some of this crap can be confusing if you don't spend your free time, or in my case, my time I'm supposed to be working researching beer, setting up trades, checking untappd, checking beer forums, see what's newly released, etc. Who does that? I do. I'm weird...I have a hobby/addiction/whatever. It's hard keeping up with what 4,000 breweries are pumping out weekly. So, yes sometimes packaging and names confuse the best and worst of us. We're not perfect even though some people think we should be.

 

I got a Weihenstephaner Original thinking it was their hefeweizen, and that turned out to be a happy accident. That beer is delicious (still need to try the hefe).

 

No, Sir can't say that I have made that mistake. I have been "date shocked" by not identifying the age of cases of beer way too many times. This shall no longer pass.

 

Not me, but funny anyway. I was at a fairly new pub in town and they had Kuhnhenns Oompa Loompa stout on tap. I heard the guy order it and watched the bartender open the cooler, grab a bottle, open it and set it in front of the guy. Thought to myself "is Kuhnhenn bottling it now?" Then noticed it was a Short's Huma Lupa.....lols!