No beer and no TV make Homer *mumble, mumble*....

I suppose the relative anonymity of this blog means I can speak about drinking beer without fear of the disapprobation of my relations and friends. My religious convictions are such that I worship with Christians who tend to look on any alcohol consumption with a very jaundiced eye. After being very bold and drinking a beer in front of my parents on their last visit, my mother thought it necessary to speak to me about the dangerous precedent I was setting for my children and her fear that they would take up drinking secretly when I was not about and end up alcoholics and ruining their lives. Thus my hesitancy. Why antagonize unnecessarily? More detail about drinking generally than you are probably interested in follows the jump.

Okay, so I didn't drink for a long time. Oh, sure. I'd had a bit of champagne at a wedding once or twice and I'd tasted a beer, but it hadn't appealed to me, it seemed to cost extra money I wasn't inclined to spend and most of the places I'd lived growing up had forbidden it to me. Parents, a dry university and then once you've grown up and gotten out of college, how does one go about learning to drink on one's own even if one wants to? Which I didn't. For a long time. Years and years.

But time passes and more and more I heard from people about how much they enjoyed the taste of beer or wine. Now, wine I still don't get. Most of that stuff tastes like cough syrup. Maybe I just haven't had a good expensive wine. But I'm not going to spend a ton to find out I just don't have the palate for it. Beer, on the other hand, even when it's expensive is still pretty cheap. (Kinda like pizza; even when it's bad, it's still pretty good. Pizza Time!)

So the proverbial straw was reading about this study. It turns out that when they study mortality rates from various causes, teetotallers die earlier. More than anyone else. Yeah, that's right, even heavy drinkers have lower mortality rates than teetotallers. I wanted to stay healthy; time to see if I can stomach beer. The usual caveats apply. No one was suggesting I ought to get wasted every weekend or even drink heavily if not to the point of being falling-down drunk. Rather, the suggestion was that having a drink a few times a week would benefit me in a way that was not insignificant.

So, about 6 or 7 months ago now I decided to give it a whirl. I had no idea what I was doing and had no idea where to start. I tried a couple beers on the advice of friends, but I didn't find them particularly congenial. So I had my wife (actually, it was probably her brilliant idea) pick me up a range of beers next time she was at the store. I knew that if I did take up beer it wasn't going to be the cheap American lagers. Even I knew that there was a difference and why eat Pizza Time when you could eat Zeeks?

Fortunately for me, two of her choices turned out to be a couple of my favourite beers: Deschutes' Obsidian Stout and Deschutes' Black Butte Porter. Since then I've branched out a bit and tried a variety of things. I enjoy trying new beers even if I'm not sure how well I'll like them and I've tried a few things that seem odd (juniper berries?!). I keep a notebook with some brief impressions, but I haven't been using any sort of formal rating or ranking system, like I've seen elsewhere.

But now that I write about it and come to think about it again, maybe I should use a more formal system. I've tried about 30 different beers, and it would be nice to have a system to recall what some of those earlier choices were like. When you had one beer once 6 months ago, it can be hard to bring its qualities to mind easily. Hmmm...

Finally, beer floats! Since my brother evinces an interest in such things, I'll just say that I took a 20 oz mug (I'd use something larger if I had it) put in a scoop or two of Tillamook French Vanilla and poured an Obsidian Stout over it. (Be warned, it will foam up like nobody's business.) Man o' man.... Fan-riffic! I also tried it with the Black Butte Porter and it did not disappoint.