ClearTheRail

Beer

Yesterday I was enjoying a fine Sam Adams Summer Ale and got to thinking that it might be interesting to document the history of my love for fine beers. The whole love affair began in high school. Back then the drink of choice was Gennessee Cream Ale, strictly for economical reasons. When you work a part time job for $4 an hour you need a beer that doesn’t strain the budget, and this stuff was cheaper than Pepsi. Once we even caught it on sale for $7 per case of 30. We had a hell of a party for $21 that night.
Of course no beer that costs lest than a quarter per can could possibly have a flavor which would not wake you screaming in the middle of the night if you ever drank it in a dream, and Genny was no exception. So as I graduated and moved into higher paying jobs ($7 per hour) while sporadically attending college I slowly moved up the chain, first to Milwaukee’s Best. Granted most Milwaukee beers taste like ass, but this still was a rather optimistic title. Perhaps Milwaukee’s Most Economical would have been a little better. Regardless “The Beast” as we referred to it came in an Ice variety. Ice beers supposedly undergo some special freezing process or something which sounds like a poorly contrived gimmick to me, but this beer was still much more drinkable (and only slightly more expensive) than Genny. Plus it was funny to put the box on your head and run around yelling “I am the Milwaukee beast”. Or at least we found it amusing after we each drank a case.
After The Beast came Natural Light, in bottles of course. Natty was the only beer which cost less than $0.50 per, and actually came in glass. Of course you couldn’t make a beeramid (some of our beer can structures rivaled I. M. Pei’s greatest accomplishments) but you looked rather sophisticated drinking out of a bottle while all the other college students on the block were sipping out of aluminum cans. So even though the Natty cost a little more than The Beast (Ice of course) and didn’t have any discernible difference in taste it was worth the extra 10 cents per unit just for the extra social status that comes with bottles.
Now before I continue I just would like to say that I know many of you out there may have been in the Natty Light phase (or one of the earlier ones) for many years and have no intention of ever advancing. All I can say to you is don’t worry. As long as you don’t mind the fact that you will never have a job which doesn’t require you to wear your name on your blue denim shirt you may lead a long happy life. Also you will enjoy the great freedom that comes along with being able to simply hitch your mobile home to your 1982 Chevy pickup (as soon as you get it off of blocks that is) and move to wherever in the country needs a good laborer.
So anyway after Natty came the Bud Light phase. This seems to be the last phase that 90% of Americans reach. It is the Bermuda Triangle of beer exploration. There are two reasons for this. The first is that after a few years of Genny, Natty, and The Beast Bug Light tastes like heaven. Of course after progressing through the next few phases of beer exploration I would rather drink my own urine than Bud Light, but back to reason number two. The second reason that Bud Light is so popular is marketing. I don’t think I've ever seen more commercials for anything in my life than I have for Bud Light. And unlike most other beer commercials which pretty much just use models in swimsuits Budweiser actually uses some very clever marketing. Commercials like The Budweiser Frogs (then other various reptiles and amphibians), the wazzup guys, the Bud Bowl, and commercials of that sort raise the bar in advertising far beyond the normal “drink our beer and hot chicks will want you” commercial that every other big brewery uses.
During the Bud Light phase I began to try some other things. J.W. Dundee’s Honey Brown Lager was a tasty diversion from the norm, but you could only drink a few at a time before it was just too sweet for you. I remember once being at a local dinner theater where we knew the waitress, who would serve us (of course we were all 19 then) and they had Honey Brown on tap for $1 per glass. The glass wasn’t very good, but $14 or so later I was near vomiting, not from the alcohol but from the sweetness. I would also drink the occasional Pete’s Wicked Ale, Strawberry Blonde, or Labbatts, all of which tasted better than any of the big brewery stuff I was becoming used to.
Then came perhaps the defining event in the evolution of my love for beer. My roommate turned 20, but since the National Guard had somehow made a mistake on his military ID saying he was born a year earlier than he really was I was now able to get any sort of beer I wanted, whenever I wanted. When you are underage and don’t have any older brothers or girlfriends who are 21 you are at the mercy of fate when it comes to which beer you might end up drinking on any given night, and fate seemed to be very biased towards Bud Light. Now I was free to explore the known beer world.
At some point I became aware of the excellent microbrews which are being made in every city in America. And then of course I found the king of them all, the best of all microbrews, Sam Adams. Sam Adams, for those poor souls still in the Bud Light phase or below, is made by the Boston Beer company, which is the largest microbrewery in America. Largest microbrewery sounds like somewhat of an oxymoron, but supposedly the big breweries spill more beer than they make in a year according to their founder Jim Koch. Regardless of their size they climbed to the top by making the best line of beers to be found in the world.
I started of with their flagship line, Sam Adams Boston Lager. This is the Sam Adams beer you usually see on tap at any respectable bar. It is (though a great beer) also probably my least favorite of their beers, excepting perhaps the Old Fezziweg Ale which is the only beer of theirs that I don’t like. I really liked the Boston Lager at first but it wasn’t enough to really make me an enthusiast. Then by one day I asked a friend to pick me up some and he accidentally got the Sam Adams Boston Ale (not lager) which turned out to be a mistake on par with leaving the window open and discovering the antibiotic properties of penicillin.
This beer was far better than anything I had ever had before. After that I decided to try every microbrew I could find, including the entire Sam Adams line. I discovered such other great breweries as Sierra Nevada (makers of one of the finest Pale Ales around), Great Lakes Brewery (a Cleveland brewery that doesn’t pasteurize their beers, requiring them to remain refrigerated) and the local Thirsty Dog Brewery. Such brewers all make excellent beers, and there are different ones in every city. In Las Vegas, where I am currently heading, there is even one in the Monte Carlo Casino.
Now I wouldn’t drink anything from one of the big breweries if you paid me. When I see someone drinking Bud Light I almost feel sorry for them. But then I think that they could be drinking Natty Light. And when I see someone who is over 20 years old and is drinking Natty or The Beast I ask them what is causing that squealing noise my car is making. They always know too.

Buffet Day

Lately things have been going pretty rough for me at “work”. I have managed to have a protracted streak of bad luck, and that combined with a few other things got me feeling a little down the other day. And then I went to Ryan’s Steakhouse. Now I know that things could be worse.
Ryan’s, for any lucky people who have never been to one, is one of those buffet places. Why they call it a steakhouse is beyond me, as I didn’t see any evidence of either a steak or a house anywhere. All I did see was a bunch of trailer dwellers chowing on poorly cooked standard fare American cuisine. They should call it Ryan’s Place Where Rednecks Come to Gorge Themselves on Burnt Chicken Breasts. I guess that would be too long for the sign. Maybe Ryan’s Trailer Buffet would work.
I can’t believe I allowed myself to be talked into eating there. I was starving and didn’t feel like cooking, and wasn’t in the mood for the little Mexican place I eat at almost every week. I also have had more Subway lately than that jackass Jared on their commercials probably has. I should have gone to Quizno’s, just to patronize them and keep their good commercials on TV. I do often avoid places with unfunny TV ads just to do my part to get them off the air, and while Quizno’s radio commercials are the worst ever their TV ones are great. Must be different ad agencies.
Anyway the point is that left an awful selection of restaurants close enough for me to eat at without first perishing of hunger. In my area there is: Golden Corral (same as Ryan’s but with much more annoying customers), TGI Fridays (rather be shot), Applebee’s (see comments for TGI Fridays), IHOP, (great for breakfast, awful for anything else), Denny’s and Waffle House (awful food, awful service) and some greasy little mom and pop diner. Plus every fast food restaurant, but I like the idea of not having a massive coronary any time soon. So I agreed to Ryan’s simply because I was hungry and there was nowhere better to go. And while the food was among the worst I've ever had, I have to say the atmosphere was very uplifting. It was nice to see how much better I have it than most people. I could have been born one of those people lacking the intelligence to know that the food there is shit. I could be living in a trailer slaving away at some factory eagerly looking forward to that one night a week where we splurged and spent $30 to take the missus and the 4 kids (2 from a previous marriage) to the place where you can eat all the food you want. And then at the end is the ice cream and the scrapings left of the apple pie.
Luckily I have been blessed with the intelligence and motivation to make a great living doing something I enjoy. I also have been given acute enough taste buds to know there are so many great types of food out there beyond chicken, pizza, and nachos. And I do not weigh 300 pounds. So now I feel much better. Next time I am down I think I will go get food somewhere decent, then just go to Ryan’s, pay my $8.99, and sit and look around and remember how great I have it.