By Jenn Sharon
Ok readers. I like beer now. Before this fall I wasn’t really into beer for two reasons:
1) When I was a young lass first learning how and what to drink, I didn’t slam brews with the cool kids. I drank whiskey or bourbon. Usually just on the rocks. I somehow knew even then that whiskey would give me more hollers for my dollar. And at 21, I didn’t have a lot of dollars. Maybe it was the inner geek in me, but a $4 beer at 4.6% ABV and at 16 oz versus $6 of Jack Daniels at 40% ABV and at around five or six ounces would equal out to be about 15% ABV for me. In other words, I would have had to drink 3 lagers to equal the same amount of a buzz, and that wasn’t good for my wallet! Because of this I believe I just didn’t get into beer.
2) Just like with wine I feel there is a good amount of snobbery associated with beer. Looking at it, swirling it around, smelling it and talking about it in the context of regions and countries; going to bars with 10 page beer lists and so on. Very much the opposite of the working class coming home from work and grabbing a cold one perception I’ve carried with me all of these years. I mean, can you imagine the Roseanne character Dan Conner trying to order a beer from say, the Abbaye?
Beer, Something Jenn now likes
But then a funny thing happened at a wedding I attended last fall. The bar was wine and beer only; red and white wine and 3 different kinds of beers. Since it was too hot for wine I chose the beer available with the highest alcohol content. That beer was Lancaster Milk Stout and from the first couple of sips I fell in love. I thought that this beer had been brewed for me and me alone. Not hoppy, dark and creamy with a rich, sweet taste. I loved it so much that after congratulating the bride I started asking where she found the beer and where I could get it (Sorry Calen!)
After that I was on a mission to find and drink anything that called itself a milk stout and that broke off into cream stouts and oatmeal milk stouts and so on and while some have been better than others I think this is the niche of beer for me.
But then I realized something – maybe it’s ok if some people are beer snobs, or dorks, or whatever. And without people like that digging up ancient recipes and caring what region of hop or grain goes into a beer there wouldn’t be the creative craftsmanship that brought Lancaster Milk Stout to me. So you live and you learn, and sometimes as a reward you get a delicious beer!