Gateway to Craft

Parents drank Bud lite and Corona, so I thought I just hated beer. Went camping with some friends and ran out of water before we ran out of beer, so I had a Yuengling and learned beer didn't have to be god-awful.

I was still mostly a bourbon drinker, but sampling different bourbons was something of an ordeal, having to buy ~15 drinks at a time. My local bottle shop let you mix-six of anything in stock, so I started drinking more and more beer for the variety. SNPA, 60-minute, Indian Brown, were early favorites, then I came here and all hell broke loose.

 

Used to drink old Labatt Blues from the back fridge when I was 18 or so because I was curious and it was beer. Then one day one of my parent's friends left a Stoudt's Gold Lager in there and I decided to try that because it looked interesting. The difference in quality blew my mind. From then on, I started getting constant mix-a-six packs from Wegman's and trying as much as possible, and the rest is history.

 

I have a natural curiosity for food/drink, and couple that with some friends who had interest in beers beyond BMC, and some awesome outlets for craft beer (the Cellar--a bar, and Vintage Cellar--one of the best shops I still have ever been to, both in Blacksburg, Va), I've been smitten ever since.

 

My gateway was entirely through Youtube. I was looking up a recipe and noticed a related result of cooking with Guinness, I clicked it and Greg's Beer Review of Founder's Breakfast Stout was a result, I had never seen a black beer before so I clicked and was amazed at how he described it to have chocolate and coffee and be thick, as you can imagine, I'd never heard of beer being this way before, so I immediately went out and purchased a build your own six pack of Guinness extra stout, Guinness Foreign extra stout, George Killian's Stout, Dogfish Head 60 minute, Spaten Optimator Doppelbock and Guinness Black lager, (it was Sunday, so only gas stations were open, hence the not so great selection). I drank it all and was hooked. The next day I rushed to the major liquor store here and was amazed at what had been available to me the entire time. I purchased Rogue Chocolate stout and never looked back.

 

I was into PBR, Genny Cream, High Life, Labatt's

Eventually I started buying Great Lakes because it was the popular local beer

Now I like craft beer

 

I went the traditional Oregon route: PBR then onto Widmer Hefe/Henry Weinhards Blue Boar + Private Reserve and then everything else.

 

my avatar is the beer

Samuel Smith's Old Brewery Pale Ale

It was 1994-5, and two of my favorite college professors kept talking about "bitter" ... made it sound like it was what beer was all about, and being a huge anglophile, I had to try it (or the closest thing I could find). That led to Samuel Smith's Old Brewery Pale Ale then Young's Ram Rod and Special London Ale and Theakston's Old Peculier and Fuller's ESB and London Pride ... then back to all of the Samuel Smith's family. Stouts, porters, old ales ... everything I could find from England, I tried.

As much as I loved those beers back then, I never fooled around with the Belgian or German beers and never *really* became a beer drinker. Probably averaged less than a 6-pack a week until about 2000, then didn't even down a sixer a month.

In 2012, I got back into beer hardcore. Tried all the Belgian ales I could find, all of the German lagers and wheat beers ... on and on and on it goes with more American styles and brews than anybody could begin to keep track of. But the English pale ale and specifically SS's Old Brewery Pale is still the beer/beer style that got me interested in good beer.

 

My gateway beer to craft was Guinness Extra Stout, I then tasted Redhook ESB and was never really a craft beer drinker only but would buy craft on special occasions but I drank mostly Bud until about 4-5 years ago. I had friends back in college in the mid to late 90's who drank Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. There was also a small brewery in the city I lived in at the time that brewed a stout I really loved and stout became my favorite style until this day.

 

You forgot Blitz !!!

 

To date, I have not tasted a Coors Light, Miller anything, Bud Light, or any AAL except regular Budweiser, and I hope that never changes! I started out with Blue Moon but really had no idea what craft beer was all about. The beer that hooked me on beer was Orval - a revelation to my taste buds at the first sip, and Belgians are still my favorite overall category of beer.

 

My gateway was my father. In the 80's he traveled a ton to the UK for business. It was there he learned what good beer was. At home he sought out domestic equals to a good English bitter and came up with few options. The early pioneers of craft beer were in my house before I was old enough to drink. Ones like Anchor Steam, SNPA, Dockstreet, Grants, Pete's Wicked. Luckily I knew what good beer was way back when before I was legal.

 

Mostly drank BMC during college then I came home and realized my mom was drinking Sierra Nevada Pale Ale so I gave it a try and that changed everything. After that I entered my senior year of college and started trying things at the local bars like Yuengling, Blue Moon, Shock Top, and the occasional Sweetwater/Thomas Creek offering. After college I moved to MA and the "scene" here is much more saturated with good beer so my interest took off.

 

First taste of craft (at that time , late 90's) was sam adams winter lager. SN pale then really opened my eyes!

 

If Sam Smith's and Fullers were recent US breweries they would be regarded as "craft" , they aren't any less craft through being long established companies.

 

Leinenkugel in high school as a "treat" (hey, it was late '80's and it wasn't too common), various "Red" indulgence in early 90's (Red Wolf, Red Dog, Killian's Red......) but what finally hooked me for the long haul was Pete's Wicked Ale and Strawberry Blonde. I remember FONDLY sitting up after work (2nd shift at the time) in Anchorage, scarfing a pizza and downing a sixer of Strawberry Blonde while watching some of those epic Avs v. Red Wing brawl games after Claude Lemieux went all face crusher on Kris Draper. Damn those were some good times!

 

Evan Reed is still with the team?

 

Hmm well actually mine gateway beer was incidentally was also my first Italian craft, Verdi Imperial Stout at PJ's Pourhouse in Westmont...

 

Back at grad school in Iowa City (about 15 years ago), my friends and I would hang out at an old hole-in-the-wall called the Mill. There they had Sierra Nevada Pale Ale on tap. Never looked back since.