Day Zero (or What's a Nice Guy Like Me...)

I have a confession to make. I am a beer drinker. I am a beer drinker of some sophistication, as opposed to the millions of people who find the popular flagship brands produced in massive quantities by the big breweries affectionately referred to in some circles as BMC (BudMillerCoors) as palatable. I say this not from an elitist position, but to provide context to this blog.

For example, I know that beer comes in more types than regular, light, and "that fancy stuff." I know that Cherry Wheat is not a fruity drink women order on a girls night out. And I know that "ice cold" shouldn't be the primary adjective by which one describes their beer.

Of course, I say these things in jest...sort of. Virtually all of my family and friends who drink beer are devout BMC consumers. My wife is a BMC drinker when she's in the mood for a "cold one" (a rare occasion, but not nonexistent), so I have to be careful what I say lest I find myself sleeping on the couch tonight. But I do want to make this point - I consider myself a serious beer drinker.

How serious? Well, I am the kind of beer enthusiast who would and has declined to drink socially when BMC is the only thing available. We all have our standards, after all. To avoid those situations, I bring my own beer to social engagements whenever possible, even when I'm told that "beer is provided." The definition has some leeway, I've found.

I also bring along my own pub glass so that I can drink my beer from a proper pour instead of from a can in a coozy. While I may not be a connoisseur, I am certainly no heathen.

Okay, I'm joking...sort of. I will drink beer straight from the bottle if a glass isn't available, but I avoid canned beer like the plague. It's like wine in a box for me, you know? So...pretentious snob or serious devotee? I think the difference between the two is whether a person acts that way in everyday life even when no one is around. Since I do, I believe the consistency saves me from the dreaded label, but ultimately I concede it is a matter of viewpoint. Right, honey?

By the way, Dad and Don, I apologize for calling Bud Light "swill." That was rude of me and I really didn't mean it...sort of.

In fairness and the interest of full disclosure, however, I must confess that my favorite beer, the one I consume on a regular basis, is Killian's Irish Red, courtesy of my friends in Golden, Colorado (no, it is not an import, in spite of it being listed that way on many a restaurant menu). If that tells you something about me as a beer drinker, either positively or negatively, then so be it. To reinforce that impression, I will tell you that I have also been known to occasionally quaff down a Shock Top Belgium White or Bud Light Golden Wheat, both products of A-B (gasp!). They may not be as good as Bell's Oberon or Sam Adams Light, but they're certainly acceptable as far as I'm concerned. You at least have to give BMC some credit for trying to cater to the more sophisticated palate.

In spite of my apparent capitulation to BMC's "lesser" brands, I do enjoy experimenting with micro brews of all shapes and sizes. I mentioned Bell's and Sam Adams above, two craft breweries that take immense pride in the quality of their product, but there are hundreds more just like them, if not thousands. I particularly love to visit brewpubs to sample their wares. One of my all-time favorite beers is Rock Bottom Brewery's Pelican Brown Ale. I think they call it something else now, but that is an excellent brown ale.

Another favorite of mine is a drink called a Black and Tan, which traditionally is Harp's or Bass Ale with Guinness Stout added by slowing pouring it over the back of a spoon. The ale and stout complement each other perfectly and presents this beautiful lava lamp picture of black and amber in a glass (kind of poetic, don't you think?). Either of them alone is great, but together? Whoa...nectar of the Gods there. Right Mom?

I've also been a member of the Beers of the World Club where you get a case of different beers from various countries every month, but I had to cancel my membership after only one year. Perhaps it was my American palate, but I seemed to get more stinky beer than good. None of the brands were anything you’ve ever heard of, which I guess was the point, but you also have to wonder if you’ve never heard of them precisely because they were brewed in someone's toilet. When a buyer from the Beers of the World Club came sniffing around...yeah, buddy, I got something for you (snicker). Something to ponder, I guess, over a Pelican Brown Ale or a perfectly poured Black and Tan.

The point I’m trying to make here is that I am as adventurous when it comes to beer as I am serious about drinking it. I enjoy sampling a wide variety of craft beers whenever I can and savoring the nuances of each. I do have my favorite styles, of course, but I’m not reticent about trying something new or different when the opportunity arises. My only problem is that, like most people, I tend to order or purchase what I know. I’m not disciplined enough to make a regular habit of broadening my horizons brew-wise.

Until now.

A perfect storm of events has led me to this quest and this blog. The first was that I recently watched the movie “Julie and Julia,” the screen adaptation partly of Julie Powell’s true chronicle of her journey through Julia Child’s “Mastering the Art of French Cooking.” Great movie, by the way. I highly recommend it. Anyway, Julie cooked all 524 recipes contained within the book in 365 days and wrote a blog about it, a feat that later led to her becoming a published author (remember that...there will be a quiz later). The concept was intriguing, but not something I wanted to replicate. Still…

The second was my discovery of a great beverage shop here in Tucson called Total Wine, one of a chain of stores in several states. I prefer to think of it as Nirvana for the Alcohol Inclined. I swore I heard a chorus of angels singing upon crossing the threshold, but that could have been Muzak, I suppose, though I can’t explain the ethereal light. Still…

Total Wine, as you would expect from the name, has wines from all over the world at all price points nicely organized and presented, a complete selection of spirits, and…BEER! LOTS of beer. Over a thousand different kinds, with 443 of them, give or take a few, listed within the category called American Micro Brews.

Is this a great country or what? I almost feel like singing "America The Beautiful." You know the phrase...amber waves of grain? Sort of brings tears to the eyes, doesn't it?

The third and final event was the Tucson Festival of Books, a two-day event of workshops and presentations by noted authors, editors, and agents in the book publishing world (ring any bells for you?). Since I am a budding author (surprise, surprise, surprise!) with one manuscript completed and another in progress, I attended several workshops on getting published. All of the presenters had the same advice – establish yourself. All included blogging as a way of doing that, a means to display one’s writing skills and commitment.

(Pop quiz: What famous author began as a blogger before moving on to a publishing career and whose life was part of an Academy Award-nominated picture? Uh, uh, uh...no fair peeking.)

Great! I’ve never blogged before, never even read one, but how hard can it be? I’m a writer, after all. Well, in spirit anyway. But hey! I should be able to pontificate upon any subject…right? So I’ll start a blog and write about…what? Hmmm, let’s see. Politics? Well, like most Americans, I have an opinion, but it’s largely uninformed, so…oh, yeah, good point. That hasn’t stopped Rush Limbaugh, has it? Still…

As a wise man once said "It is better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubt." Thus, if I do this, I need to stick to something I know well or, at the very least, something I have a lot of experience with. Something like, say…drinking beer?

Okay, so now the light bulb goes off, courtesy of my wife. What if I set out to sample all 443 American Micro Brews that Total Wine sells in the next 365 days and write about my experience in a blog? That would be fun, even if no one followed my adventure. I can see it now…zero followers, 443 different beers. Better than the other way around, to my way of thinking.

I mean, let’s face it, nothing about this idea is original. It’s simply a clone of Julie’s blog, substituting beer drinking for French cooking (some would say an improvement), and who knows if she copied the idea from someone else. Maybe she read a blog by someone who drank a different beer every day and a light bulb went off in her head. It wasn’t in the movie, but hey, stranger things have happened. Circle of Life thing, you know?

Really, though, just like book plots, all the original stuff has already been taken in the blogosphere. After all, a blog exists for every subject known to man, from beer drinking to underwater basket weaving…although…there may not be one about weaving baskets underwater while drinking beer, but I’ll save that for another day. Still…

No, I’m sticking to my wife’s original suggestion. It is the perfect result of the perfect storm, a combination of a specific quest in a prescribed nugget of time, a disciplined approach to sampling a wide variety of craft beers, and the forum to exercise my writing skills for public consumption. Yeah, okay, good point…better to have the beer available for public consumption than my writing, but what can I say? Go find your own Total Wine store. Just ignore the bright light and angelic singing when you first walk in…it goes away after you’ve been there a while.

There were a couple of details, however, that I needed to clear up before I began. The first was the number of beers on Total Wine’s American Micro Brews list. See, Julie had the benefit of a firm goal in the number of recipes. Not that it made her quest any easier, mind you, but the number wasn’t going to change over the course of a year unless she bought new editions of the book.

In my case, though, due to inventory variability (discontinued or new offerings) and availability (seasonal brews, out of stock items), I couldn’t be sure of the exact number of beers I could sample at any point over the course of a year. And if I couldn’t be sure, then how could I track how well I was doing? Would 441 different beers in a year be a failure or close enough? Other variables included brewpub visits and the desire to try some imported craft beers Total Wine offered. Since they weren’t part of the American Micro Brews list, would they count or not? Thus, it seemed more reasonable to simply use a number as a goal instead of a list.

So I have chosen 524 different beers over the course of the next year, the same number of beers to drink as Julie had recipes to cook. It's sort of poetic, don’t you think? That means I have to sample 10 different beers a week for the next 52 weeks with an additional four to squeeze in somewhere along the line. Not impossible by any stretch of the imagination, but not an easy target, either, just like Julie Powell's quest.

The other detail was more fundamental. As I have stated already, I’m no expert when it comes to beer tasting, just an aficionado like so many others, so how was I going to write about my experience with any clarity or consistency? I don’t want to appear pretentious, but at the same time, I feel like I should approach the sampling process with some degree of conformity. Saying something like “tried Stinky Tire today; aptly named” doesn’t sound nearly as erudite as “burnt appearance with strong overtones of petroleum.”

So how does one go about evaluating a beer properly? Fortunately there are several websites that provide guidance as well as a means for recording one’s reviews. The one I chose is called Ratebeer.com. They are arguably the most popular site and encourage ratings that are based on how well you like or dislike a beer regardless of style (the site features a great analogy of this philosophy in relation to a dog show). Thus Ratebeer.com provides the framework for executing this type of tasting approach, which is in line with how I would rate a beer anyway. It also has a side benefit of recognizing individuals by the number of ratings submitted, starting at 100. Wow! All this and an icon by my username, too!

Is this a great country or what?

So now I have a defined structure for my blogging adventure and the first ten beers already in hand. I just have to pick the starting date for the one-year countdown and as luck would have it, St. Patrick’s Day is tomorrow. What better day to kick off a year-long tastefest than that? And I know just the beer to start with – Killian’s Irish Red. Granted, it’s not considered an Irish beer any longer, but my quest is mainly American Micro Brews anyway and, believe it or not, Killian’s is on the list. Contact Total Wine with your objections, not me. I think their number is 1-800-WHOCARES. Still…it does seem poetic to start my quest with an Irish Red on St. Patrick’s Day, don’t you think?

By the way, do you think Total Wine will give me a free liver transplant if I complete my beer quest successfully? Or perhaps a discount? Maybe not, but still...