As we head into this year’s football/casserole/gimme a pumpkin beer season, I’m excited to have been given the opportunity to literally waste every second of your time over the next four months talking about beer, thanks ‘Mr. Wurth’. As the intern for this historic website it will be my duty to uncover anything that sounds half way interesting in the craft beer industry or just bore you to death with a story or two; either way it should be fun. So without further adieu, let’s start from the beginning…
My beer education began as the vast majority of beer drinkers in this country tend to… pure beech wood aged adolescent joy in a can (or bottle). Believe it or not I actually remember the day I realized the word beer was no longer synonymous with just American lagers.
It was a clear black night, a clear whiiii… (record stops). On a beautiful September evening circa 2006 in San Diego, I ventured to a craft beer festival in the downtown area with some friends. I would be greeted with a multitude of tents, the wonderful smell of state fair style food and people all wondering why they had just been given this small plastic replica of a German style beer mug. This was the 12th annual San Diego Festival of Beer and it would soon be the setting in which I would cut my teeth on for craft beer. This was also the first time I would indulge in other styles of beer without the word ‘light’ added to the name, but I digress. Several vendors were there including my first run in with Stone Brewing Co. who was easily the most impressive offering I could find (we all know how they’ve ended up doing). The night concluded with me looking down at a ticket that had all sorts of weirdly arranged sharpie cave drawings over numbers that may have reflected how intoxicated I was at the time. Needless to say, that evening allowed me to see beer as something that could produce a bouquet of flavors I had not yet thought possible. With my cap and gown on I slowly stumbled out of the event pondering what had just happened.
Here we are in 2015 and I still can’t help but feel the way I did then, buzzed, bewildered and maybe a little more knowledgeable about the state of craft beer. We are truly in exciting times in this wonderful river town of ours. Let’s relish in this moment, as we are seeing the craft beer industry take hold in what couldn’t be a more deserving city.
See you next week…
