A Brief Beer Story In My Life or Going From Big Box Beers to Craft Beer

 
My First experience with Beer that I can remember was High School. A Few friends and I paid another dude to buy some beer for us. The beer in question was Busch beer. Cheap “name brand” beer we could afford to buy in bulk, if you could call a 24 pack bulk.

We would hide it down on the salt marsh on the street we lived on and suck down the very warm beer before school dances. It was horrible. Not because it was Busch beer but because it was warm Busch beer.  I would guzzle it because let’s face it I just wanted the liquid courage from the can so I could talk to girls I would normally probably not have talked to or even asked to dance.
If I were famous, this would normally be the point in the story when I go to the reasons why I attend AA meetings, hit my low and made a glorious return like they do in most rock star books, but I ain’t no rock star. Although I had a low point in my life, I drank way too much I stopped (for a few years) and realized I could drink and not have to black out to enjoy life. Enough said. Way too depressing, life is too short not to enjoy.

Fast forward to my adult years and having my fill of Bud and Miller products as the “go to” beer, I stepped out of the big box comfort zone one day and had a Samuel Adams. It was something completely different. The beer had taste, real taste not at all like the watered down crap I had been drinking (sorry Bud, Miller, Coors) As life flung me forward even more I slowly tried smaller craft beers, IPAs, lagers, ales, porters, and stouts of all types. I discovered the good the bad and the ugly. (the ugliest coming on a trip to Spain where the beer was so unbearable I started drinking wine. It would actually make the big box beers seem to have taste.)

As seasons passed marked by the season beers of Sam Adams, and the occasional Guinness on St Patty’s day or trying a six pack of some new beer, a friend of mine from my Air Force days and still a good friend now started brewing his own. Some was good, others even better (to be honest I believe he had one type I did not like and that was because he was trying to match a Miller lite style beer for his dad)

I believe he liked that I was honest with it, in laymans terms I would tell him less after taste, or something that was nice about it or even I did not like about it. . I remember one night watching a UFC pay per view he brought a Sam Adams specialty brew and some of his own. At the start of the night if he said you will only like one of these I would have bet on the Sam Adams but on this occasion I liked his brew better.

I wanted to try and create my own Lager's Ales and stouts. I asked Rob if he would teach me the basics of brewing, although I have started to research it myself, I am better at doing than I am reading and following instructions myself to get started in anything. Once I have the basics down it becomes a lot easier for me to follow instructions (or recipies) myself.

So my journey into brewing was officially on.....To be continued

 

A Little Background in Biking or Where It All Started For Me.

When I started riding a bike I still remember the first ride, with no one holding me, no training wheels and pedaling away for the very first time. The ride lasted as long as the straight driveway did and then BAMM! Right into the side of the building. I figured that was as bad as it was ever going to get, just riding the bike, I mean how much worse could I hurt myself than slamming into a permanent structure? Well I would hurt myself more than that, only because I wanted to make my bike fly once I was up and riding.

After learning to stay on my bike and not run right into objects, I soon learned I wanted to go fast and I wanted to do stuff a lot of other kids couldn’t. I also found the more expensive higher end bikes, my first being the Schwinn Predator.

Not mine but the same model

I was a BMX rider and freestyler or at least considered myself one, I was never really awesome at either but like the kids you sometimes see today trying skateboard tricks over and over till they get them right, I was the kid on the bike doing the same thing.  I loved speeding around the city of Fall River, Massachusetts on my bike. Twisting, jumping everything and anything and racing around from sun up to sundown around the city. The wind in my face the rush of weaving in and out of traffic (I am not suggesting this to the kids out there, this is what I did, not necessarily what anyone else should do and not really the smartest thing either, I was not a bright kid, but I was adventurous)

It is a strange thing I notice or don’t notice now. Kids are not out there all over on their bikes, or on the baseball fields or really doing anything outside. Hey I get it at the height of a summer day (especially here in St Louis where it feels like 130 degrees) it is sticky and uncomfortable. But even in Massachusetts where I know it got hot out, I don’t remember, being too hot to go for long rides on my bike, with friends, or in the winter as long as the snow was not bad, too cold for that matter.

Some days we just rode, from one end of the city to the other. Other days we had a place to go, fishing at Cook Pond, the bike shop, the BMX track hell just the store for a soda and a bag of chips to hold us over till we had to get home for dinner.

My Predator was stolen, so when I got a new bike a Haro FST Freestyler. It was back off to the races.

Both similar but again not mine just an example

My friends and myself would set up ramps and jump over anything we could find for a challenge, and try not to kill ourselves along the bruised and bloody kneed time I called my childhood. That was our good time, passing the days away creating new challenges for ourselves. Sometimes it was riding as fast as our legs could take us, going down the hills in the city (to which there are many) to take that speed a step further. Other times setting up any kind of ramp or jump out of  old plywood laying around (which splinters were many and thank God for tetanus shots) We would find areas where we could speed down a loading ramp or anything else that would make our bikes go even faster to jump off of or over anything in our way.

I lived on my bike. And not that other kids wouldn’t be heartbroken if their bikes got stolen, but twice I had mine stolen (once it was locked up and the chain was cut another I was a moron and left it in the front yard) I was devastated both times.

The first was the Predator, the second was one of two Haro bikes I owned (same model both times) I was also taught a valuable lesson (especially from the unlocked situation) to protect things you value. I got what would be my last bike that I rode well into high school, then once I was a licensed driver the bike sat unused.

I remember the day I saw it in the front trash, my dad figured it had at that point had two flats and was just collecting dust. I argued that I would ride again. But now involved with girls, cars and other stuff you find more important as a teen, it just was not true, and soon after the bike was thrown away.  I have been through a lot since that day, joined the military, got married (multiple times) had kids went to college, made documentaries that traveled the world (I did not go with them as I could not afford to)  and started a career in Television that I am still in today along with my wife of almost ten years.

I am now forty years old and since turning forty, I have rediscovered things from my childhood with an adult perspective, older music and movies, I had not listened to or watched in years, comics, wanting to go camping  and one day I realized I wanted to ride a bike again. This time not a BMX but a mountain bike. So I am starting this journey at perhaps the end of another. Years of doing a lot of things inside (similar to the kids of today) And not spending enough time with family in simple things like exercising.  Like most things in my life it was a slow process of gathering info, through magazines, websites, talking to friends and reading books. But Once I decided to take the plunge it was full steam ahead. And although this post is mostly about Mountain biking, there is a similar path to the beer making I will discuss in another post. (no I did not ride around the city of Fall River drunk off my ass as a kid, this story takes place more so at the end of my BMX riding) Anyway, I never do things I want to do halfway, so this blog is for me an outlet.

If I get two of you to read it or thousands, it is just a creative outlet to let me document my journey. (and after years of making movies, my wife likes a creative outlet that she does not have to lug lights and equipment around as well as dropping a small fortune into something that did not bring much cash back, I made a little under 2 grand making movies and trust me spent a lot more) So Enjoy…..There is more to come!