My Gateway Beer…

My gateway beer…

Well, my first experience with beer was an accident at the age of 10. Playing with the family’s dachshund (Name: Bandit. Weight: approximately 40 pounds. He was more like a sausage than a dachshund.) in the back yard of my grandparent’s house on a hot day, I became parched. I ran inside the un-air conditioned house looking for my favorite thirst quencher, generic brand cream soda (only available at my grandparent’s house).

Quick background on my grandparents—prototypical WWII-era couple: a grandmother, ex-hair stylist, petite, red haired and plucky; a grandfather, 6-foot-4-inches tall, retired union man, member of the local Elk’s chapter and bearing a fair resemblance to Ronald Regan. My grandmother rarely drank; my grandfather was a seasoned beer aficionado, specifically Pabst Blue Ribbon. Naturally, all beverages that come out of a can in this household are immediately sheathed in a Styrofoam cozy.

Enter the thirsty child…

Sweaty and radiating heat, I ran through the house. There on the dining room table sat two cans wrapped in identical, faded and slightly chipped Styrofoam sleeves. Thirsty and with hair in my eyes, I picked a can at random. It seemed to sync with the appropriate weight. Three large gulps later, I realized I was chugging a flat, room temperature PBR. This was my first beer… an unhappy occurrence.

It took me nearly 20 years to get to the point that I could stomach this particular beer. The unhappy occurrence of accidentally chugging my grandfather’s forgotten PBR probably did more to steer my beer journey than anything else. It created in me a deep distrust of the light-colored beer. And as I came of age along with the craft-brew market in general, I looked first for color and then to style. So much so that only in the past few years have I begun to explore and enjoy the beers of Belgium and Germany.

In a way, PBR turned out to be more of a moat than a gateway. It drew a line in the sand between the colors black, brown and red and everything else. It’s a surprising conclusion to discover when asked the question, “What is your gateway beer.” Then again, most actual influences in life are stranger than our biases would lead us to guess… Perhaps there’s generally more value in mistakes and disappointments than we realize.

By The Crossbow Project

Architect, crossfitter, shortstop, backpacker, hopeless Royals fan, recipe following cook and intermittent armature beer brewer - Ryan lives to eat and eats to live. Beer he has learned is food, not drink. And in his case, has also learned that he always wants one too many...