The Post To Wet Your Whistle: Musings From A Beer Snob

I'm a hop-head. I love IPAs, or India Pale Ales in full form. I've searched far and wide to try as many styles of beer that I could, but I always come back to IPAs. As I keep typing that word - IPA - I see a college humor t-shirt in my head with the words "I", a man peeing in the snow with his back to you, and the word "Ehh" as our neighbors to the north would say it. Can't say why I find that idea so funny right now. It's not because of beer, as this will probably be the one and only time I post about craft beer without drinking one in the process.  

That's the thing about craft beer, though. It's not meant to be consumed in mass quantities, binge drinking to get wasted in college to do the same thing you're too chicken$h!t to do sober. No, craft beer comes with an okay amount of snobbery that I've become comfortable with. It can be consumed at those parties where only red wines were served alongside martinis and cheeses you didn't know existed.

I can't say that us Americans do ourselves any favors by making drinking taboo, though. The 18th Amendment, for starters. American college culture. Drinking and driving statistics never really being curbed (see chart below). Before I go too far down this rabbit hole, please allow for this caviat: drinking like anything else can be abused, and my heart goes out to those who are unable to control the urge. It's a disease that has affected my family like so many others. People smarter than I could probably explain why some people become addicted while their friends who drink more or more often are able to control the urge. Never have cared for the term "has the thirst". Sounds too much like a vampire, and trivializes a real disease.

Source: CDC. Behavioral Risk Factor Surveilance System

I've had the privilege of living in two of the best beer cities in the United States - Grand Rapids, where I went to college, and Kalamazoo, where I live now. Kalamazoo has 10 breweries in Kalamazoo (proper), and 13 breweries that we claim as Kalamazoo breweries because they're so close to the city lines. According to Forbes, Kalamazoo has the 5th highest breweries per capita, and that's not including the bonus 3 which would put us into 4th. Not surprisingly, the somewhat self-proclaimed "Beer City USA" has the 10th most breweries - that's Grand Rapids, and yes you are detecting cynicism because I've always made the argument Kalamazoo would have won if we had the extra 100,000+ citizens that Grand Rapids has. This is a fool's argument really as it's merely a 45-minute drive between the two towns, and yes it's a drive I've made purely to drink beer.

I go out of my way to try all of the possible unique/crazy/boring/delicious beer I can try, and I record it all on my Untappd app. At this moment in time, I have tried 1,223 unique beers. The best compliment I've gotten that at all pertains to this is from Tim Suprise, the owner of Arcadia Ales (one of the 10-13). At a beer tasting where his beer was featured, he noticed I was on my app. When I told him about the amount of beer I had tried, and that I was thinking of becoming a cicerone, he told me I may be overqualified! Makes me laugh now as I type. It currently costs $2,300 to become a master cicerone. The price is drastically lower for the 'level 2 - certified cicerone', but I'm too competitive to stop at level 2 of 4. 

I'll keep this one short, as it's a primer of much more beer snobbery to come. If you'd like to follow my progress on the Untappd app, send me a request. My username is "TMac939". 

Cheers.