The endless internet

I could read about beer online for days it seems. Why didn't I start keeping track of beers back when I had the time in college.... Dammit. Anyways, I have a few blogs listed at the left, and want to finally start to use those to increase the breweries and beers on my beer list. As well as find other good blogs and sites to add to my list. I started to make a quick cut and paste list of what 365 Beers wordpress has drank the past 2-3 years on his site, and ended up clicking the first blog on his list of blogs.

And I found a great one at A Beer in Hand blogspot. This guy has a march madness beer bracket, which I am pissed I didn't think of on my own. But we've been brewing and drinking and watching basketball and I can only fulfill so many good ideas at once. Next year though for sure.

I also had a weird experience to share too. Because I get distracted easily. Obviously.

I have only had a few "bad" beers in the past 16 years or so since I started drinking. Sure, there are beers I didn't like or beers that were just okay. Some beers taste "meh" but later as you get older they taste good. There are tons of shitty beers of course, many of those which have their own redeeming qualities like "tastes great on raft trip" or "cheap enough to buy a whole pallet" (yes I have done this), etc. But I bet I have only had 2 or 3 beers that had gone bad, at least that I can remember.

One was a pitcher of Olympia at Pete's Bar and Grill about 12 years ago and the whole keg was vinegar. We promptly got new beers and continued throwing darts. One guy with us has a family farm that grows hops, so most of us wrinkled our noses and kept drinking the first glass until he called bullshit and made them switch the keg out.

One was a Hefeweizen I think at the Rose Garden. I think I drank half and went back and switched it for a Drifter. At $9 a beer I wasn't just going to drink it and keep it to myself. That doesn't happen anymore because Laurelwood has a pub at the Rose Garden and I drink their beers. Sure Widmer is great, but they have the same stuff every week, no new stuff.

And I am sure a few other times I have had beer that should have been fresh and wasn't. I don't count getting an old miller light out of the fridge, or some skunky beer we have had for ever and tried to just to see what its like. But recently I had two bad beers in the course of a week. And only bring it up because both businesses stepped up quickly to rectify, which was awesome.

I had a beer from Rogue that had crazy sediment stuck to the neck of the beer and was horribly bitter. It was from Eugene but bought in Astoria, and an email to them has them scratching their heads and asking for the bottle and promising free goodies. Which is sweet, because I love Rogue and know this was a one time thing, and a possible side effect of loving craft beer.



I also got a Lagunitas beer from Hop N Grape that I was excited to check off my list. (I am at 683 now. Way past 365.) And it turns out it was on my list because it was on the list from 07-08, when that beer was released as a special edition. After pouring half into one pint glass, I dumped the rest into a second for Nate, and out came chunks of yeast. Awesome. Second beer in a week to be ruined. But Dave from Hop N Grape was great, knew that it was kind of a collectors beer but not that it was bad, pulled the last from the shelf, and gave me another Lagunitas beer to replace it. Sweet.

The picture is a little hard to see because I used frosted glasses, but those chunks are free flowing and about a half inch deep by the time they settled. Good times.