What was your gateway craft beer?

Two hearted 12ish years ago. And the great news is I still return to it and I still love it (unlike bands or movies or other shit from my early 20’s).

 

SN Pale Ale
Pete's Wicked
NB Fat Tire
and SA Stock Ale...who remembers that one?

 

It wasn't "one beer" that did it. It was a few different ones....

Long Trail Hit the Trail


Samuel Adams Double Bock....RIP smiling Samuel Adams....the new labels absolutely suck


Oh yeah, also Magic Hat Roxy Rolles



Honorable mentions:
Rogue Brutal Bitter ESB
Rogue Dead Guy Ale
Rogue Chocolate Stout
Magic Hat Hocus Pocus
Long Trail Pollenator
Long Trail Blackberry Wheat

SA Boston Ale (aka Stock Ale) is still alive, just in limited markets, IIRC

 

Throughout college my drinking staple progressed from

AAL --> Blue Moon --> Delirium (the bottle looked so cool!) --> Goose Island Matilda --> Revolution Eugene

...and from there I was officially hooked

 

A friend gave me a Rogue Hazelnut Brown Ale at a bonfire, that was my first experience with better beer.

After expressing my interest, the same friend recommended Bell's Two Hearted. I didnt like it! But I persisted, trying various things and falling in love with craft beer.

 

Sierra Nevada pale ale. Started drinking it about 4 years ago when my aunt was hired at the Mills River brewery.

 

Can't believe i didn't post in here the first time around. It is interesting as this certainly seems to correlate with age. I just turned 60, and there are certainly "phases" I've gone through..

When I was young I drank any beer I could get my hands on in ridiculous volumes. There was no shortage of cheap beer available, but most stores had a small shelf with the "funny looking" bottles that "ain't from 'round here". So when I had an extra buck or two, I'd grab things like Samuel Smith's Tadcaster Porter, Harp, John Bull, Bass, and the like. I remember really liking Foster's, but I can't stand the taste of it now. I remember learning about Burton-on-Trent and water thinking that was pretty cool, but not enough to turn me away from MUCH cheaper in bulk volume beers. Then early to mid 20's it dawned on me that I didn't want to be an alcoholic any more and and I quit drinking completely, cold turkey.

By the time I got back to drinking beer again, I guess the second craft beer movement was in full swing with Sierra showing up and BBC products becoming readily available with a slow influx of others. My folks lived in Vermont for a few years and Long Trail, Catamount, and Geary's became staples. Full Sail and Red Hook ESB at an Eagle's club out in Washington state - building probably should have been condemned and featured about six inches of peanut shells on the floor. The first two beers I reviewed here shortly after joining this perpetual virtual bar were Brooklyn's Black Chocolate Stout and Troeg's Java Head and it was off to the races. There have been quite a few epiphanies since then - Backwood's Bastard, discovering Allagash, Ruination (the game-changer IPA for me), lagers from Jack's Abby, and many more.

 

Of course I drank my fair share of craft beer in the '90's and 2000's (Sierra, Magic Hat, Sam Adams among others) but it wasn't until a friend brought over a couple of sixers of Sweet Action during for Game 1 of the NLDS against the Dodgers that I went full nutbag over craft....

 

My first beer was Guinness Extra Stout. You don't really go backwards from that.

 

SNPA - I remember when I had it for the first time. Funny how tastes change. I thought it was so hoppy and bitter!

I had good friends who drank lite swill and thought SNPA tasted like soap!

 

That's easy : Newmans' Albany Amber, Albany NY - early 1980's. Supposedly the first modern microbrewery east of the Rocky Mtns.

(Slightly earlier, when I was still in college, it was Tuborg Dark Beer that first awoke me to the existence & possibility & taste of other beer styles beyond adjunct pale lager. It was a Danish brand, but I think the stuff I was buying was brewed in Canada for the North American market.)

After that, it was Ballantine India Pale Ale, that turned me on to IPA. It was available in bottles at a few bars in Albany (the Lark Tavern was one). I must admit that for several years I was under the assumption that "India Pale Ale" was a trademark of the Ballantine company ! I had no idea, until all the others started coming out.

 

Mine was Long Trail Ale. I was in Vermont in 2006 and I was a 23 year old "bud light" guy until that trip. I had one and said "this is much better than bud". The rest of the trip I drank mostly those and a variety of Sam Adams.

 

Tuborg Dark!

If Tuborg Gold was the beer of Danish Kings, what was Tuborg Dark? The beer of regular Joe Schmoes like us, then, I guess

 

Everytime I visit Canada, I can't find Unibroue anywhere! Why is it that it seems much easier to find all the way down here in GA than Toronto, Calgary or Edmonton?

 

Tuborg - both "Light" (in color) and "Dark" - was brewed under license in the US by Carling Brewing Co. (later Carling-National) into the late 1970s when C-N was purchased by Heileman, which continued to brew the brand for the US market. (Supposedly, there was delay in the deal for Heileman to buy Carling-National until they secured the licensing from Carlsberg, so it was a brand Heileman wanted).

Originally Tuborg was meant to be Carling's "premium-priced" beer to compete in the price segment with Bud, Miller, Schlitz, etc. Their flagship, Carling Black Label, was "popular-priced".

An interesting tidbit on Tuborg was Joe Owades - of "Gablinger/Light Beer" and "Samuel Adams Boston Lager" fame was responsible for the US recipe (not the same as the all-malt European ).

As I recall it, in that era, the US we got imported Carlsberg and domestically-brewed Tuborg while, in the Canada, the situation was reversed. Later, some of the Carlsberg brands were also imported from Canada as well a period (mid-80s) when Anheuser-Busch had the US importation rights to the Carlsberg brands.

 

The last time I had tuborg was in the early 90's in Greece.... it was awful!

 

Probably Anchor Steam or SNPA. Or maybe it was something from New Amsterdam. Whatever it was, it was had at around a time when I was consuming John Courage and Hofbrau Original as my go-to beers.

 

For me it was Fat Heads Bumbleberry. I'm not a huge fan of sweet beers now, but that beer made me realize that beer could taste really good. Then it was Lagunitas IPA that made me realize that IPAs can taste good.