It’s Friday evening, the end of a long week and in some ambiences it’s happy hour time: half price beer, half-price something stronger.
Since I am writing this, I’ll forsake my beer for now.
Quite a sacrifice, since—as you may have noticed if you read my posts—I love beer.
As I love Dutch beer, especially Heineken and Amstel Light, one might deduce that I acquired the taste while living in the Netherlands. Alas, I was a young teenager then and my strict Dutch father would not let me near a bottle of beer, or any alcohol.
Since I like German beer, especially Kölsch, perhaps I acquired the taste during my military assignment in Germany.
Perhaps I got it while living in Belgium (the little country with more than 1,000 beers), since Stella Artois is one of my favorite beers. I also like their Trappist beer, Chimay.
But this little tour of rationalizations as to where and how I got to love good beer comes to a screeching halt when I reflect back on my five years spent in Saudi Arabia where—I must abashedly admit—I got to like “near beer.” No, not light beer, not low-alcohol beer, not “small beer.” I am talking about non-alcoholic beer—beer with zero, zilch, nada alcohol content. I hate to admit it, but in a sweltering 110 °F day in Jeddah or Riyadh, nothing would taste better than an ice cold Schlitz, Anheuser-Busch, Pabst or even a Barbican or Moussy near beer.
And you know what, after drinking two or three of these exciting, gourmet beers during a BBQ (some expats call it a “goat grab”) in the magnificent, star-lit Arabian desert, some of us thought we had a little “buzz.”
I guess what I am trying to say is that I hardly ever met a beer I didn’t like, albeit in three or four years I only got to tolerate that tepid English brew.
And that’s why, according to my doctor tennis partner, I carry those few extra pounds around my waist, and that’s why a short piece in Ode Magazine titled “The United States of GOOD Beer” caught my attention. The piece in turn links to the food section of GOOD, where the editors have (re-)created a map of “the United States of Beer.”
When at the site, you can click on the interactive map to see which beers were nominated by the “GOOD community” as the “most awesome, best-tasting, sustainably brewed, independently owned, community-oriented craft beer brewed in your state…”
Enjoy, but drink responsibly.
Image: Courtesy www.good.is
The author is a retired U.S. Air Force officer and a writer.