The Updated Rules

A good while has passed since the last time that I came down from the beery pulpit, carrying several tablets of aspirin which enabled me to hold forth in my own inimitable fashion. In the interim, we have experienced a pandemic which has caused a shift in people’s patronage of bars, brewpubs, and other such gathering places. This deca-revisitation will allow the reader to consider ten (10) contemporary ideas to put in motion when visiting their favorite watering hole. 

1. Thou shalt continue to give thy custom to thy local establishments! 

This one is tough for me to write since I have become a bit of a recluse since the COVID-19 outbreak. I used to frequent numerous local places for “Trivia Night,” but since I discovered a challenging online trivia site, that impetus has been nullified. I go to the places that I really cannot live without and when I travel, I am happy to go out and explore. It is at home that I am less inspired to go out. Don’t let my ennui happen to you! 

2. Thou shalt not participate in “Dry January”! 

Going along with #1, if your local is on the ropes, how do you think that your participation in a non-alcoholic endeavor is going to help? If you need a month to dry out, then maybe you should take a good, long, hard look in the mirror.  

3. Thou shalt not turn up thy nose at Mliko pours! 

The mliko, or milk, pour originated in the Czech Republic and is served as simply a glass of foam. This has led to derision and ridicule from and by the uninitiated, but it is a case of “Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.” Once you’ve tried it, you may knock it all that you want, but chances are that you won’t be so inclined. It is not a widespread phenomenon here in the U.S., so give it a chance if and when you can. 

4. Thou shalt not practice snobbery when it comes to smoked beers! 

This dovetails with #3 in the “Don’t Knock It Until You’ve Tried It Department.” I am also openly copping to pandering to my editor and his “This Week In Rauchbier.” I will readily admit that smoked beer can be an acquired taste, but to dismiss one or all of them without having tried an example of the style first is a disservice, both to yourself and the style. The best way to drink them is with a combination smoked meat and cheese plate! 

Yes, Virginia, they all exist.  

5. Thou shalt grab a sixer, four-pack or a Crowler of thy local’s beer to take home!

I have already copped to not wanting to go out like I used to, but that is not a valid reason for totally gaffing off my local(s). Visit your local brewery or package store, buy some cans or a crowler, and enjoy a quality pint in the confines of your own home. Not only is the flavor great, but you’re still helping out small business. 

6. Thou shalt leave a space when at the bar! 

Lots of people, including/especially me, are skittish about sitting right next to someone not of their household in these post-COVID times. If there is space available to leave a seat between you and someone else, leave it open. For guys, here is a relatable example – we hit the head at the same time and there are an odd number of urinals, all available at the time of arrival. Are you going to take the middle one? If so, I guess that you will also be striking up a conversation mid-stream. If not, then you get the idea.

For those who may counter that this could create a sticky wicket for late-arriving couples who may want to sit together, I would retort that you should have planned better and asking a singleton to move just to accommodate you is out of bounds and smacks of privilege. Let’s put the shoe on the other foot. I arrive late, by myself, but I want to be right in front of the TV to watch the game and that is where you, as a couple, are already sitting. 

Are you going to be willing to accommodate me if I ask you to move, even if just one seat over? Hmm.  

7. Thou shalt stay at home if thou art sick! 

Going back to the previous commandment, no amount of space is going to be sufficient if you are truly unwell. I have no idea if: a) you are vaccinated; b) my vaccinations will be enough against whatever you are carrying and possibly spreading; and c) whether a mask will be enough. If you insist on staying, then I will insist on abruptly leaving.  

8. Thou shalt keep a civil tongue!

In a previous iteration, I made the same statement, but in this case, I want to be a bit more specific. You should not be openly disparaging breweries or their beers, especially in their establishment, and definitely not while at the bar. The industry is in decline right now with closings occurring all the time. I am not telling you to be a cheerleader or to not vent online, but negativity has no place at the bar.  

9. Thou shalt maintain control over thine children and/or pets! 

I understand that people want to have “Family Nights” and/or bring their non-service animal pets, but there is too much potential for chaos. I have never felt that any establishment that focuses on alcohol production and/or sales is an appropriate venue for a child. I speak from personal experience since my maternal uncle took me to a bar when I was 5 or 6-years-old and I felt really out of place! 

Most places require that you be of drinking age to sit at the bar, but there are no such restrictions on the rest of the establishment’s space. If you choose to bring children and/or animals, you need to keep them in check!  

10. Thou shalt provide feedback and/or pushback!

I received a lot of responses from the initial iteration of this list and I expect nothing less from this one. I am not one to shy away from controversy nor do I wither under scrutiny. One must have a thick skin to be an opinionated writer and while I am not an armadillo, I can take the slings and arrows. I would really like for these to be less commandments as food for thought and to possibly generate reasoned conversations around them. 

See you at the bar!  

The post Ten Commandments for Drinking at the Bar (2024 Update) first appeared on All About Beer.

Lakefront was one of the first American craft breweries to export to Ukraine. Back in 2015, Ukraine’s largest grocery store chain, Fozzy Group, contacted the Brewers Association with interest in importing American craft beer.  We got a generic email asking if we’d be interested and I was way into the opportunity.

The only American breweries I saw on the shelves the first time I visited were some macros, like you’d see a little bit of Budweiser on the street or whatnot.  This advantageous grocery chain had a premium import department that full-on embraced quality, flavorful beer. 

They were kind of testing the waters, and it seemed that they were not getting that much interest from any American craft breweries, maybe because there was already a war that Russia provoked in Crimea in 2014 and there was a bit of a stigma?  Perhaps breweries didn’t want to assume

the risk or liability of entering a region that could be unstable?  Admittedly, it was not a huge established market like the UK or France, but it was very intriguing to me!  

So that year at the Great American Beer Festival I had a drink with their import manager, Sam, and our owner Russ Klisch and we gave him a presentation of our brands.  We heard back a few months later that they were very much interested.  

The next step was navigating all of the red tape of logistics, customs compliance and documentation, all the legal stuff, and we confidently shipped the beer off to Ukraine.  It was received very well and I was invited to represent Lakefront at “Beermaster Day”, Fozzy’s annual beer festival.

Arriving in Ukraine

When I arrived at the first festival I saw many Belgian imports, all the Trappists, German lagers, British ales, etc. There were only other U.S. breweries: Sierra Nevada Brewing Company, and Stone Brewing, but they hadn’t sent

any reps, so I believe I was the first American independent brewery rep to visit Ukraine.  Beermaster Day was such an amazing beer festival. Consumers know their shit, all the nuances of classic styles, and they’re eager to pick up on all the new style trends.  It was clearly fertile ground for building a vibrant craft beer community, the number of quality startups had continued to increase every year I visited.  And our midwest friends at Saugatuck Brewery from Michigan started to export there in 2017, I believe. I love partying with their reps at Beermaster Day.

Fozzy has been ordering one or two containers a years since 2015, a nice mix of core brands and everything new and exciting.  They love our Hazy Rabbit and New Grist as well as specialties like our Brandy Barrel-Aged Imperial Pumpkin.  Fozzy continually invited me back to their yearly festival, I feel like a star, I’ve even received an award for perfect attendance.  It’s really an exciting market. Ukrainians full-on embrace elements of Western culture, music, art, night life, etc. and there are so many beer geeks.  They are consuming all of the American brewing podcasts and passionately embrace beer education. 

I’ve been to Ukraine six times now, the last time being in 2020. I’ve gone for festivals and

collaborations, including with Pravda Brewery and Underwood Brewery, and I’ve built long-standing business relationships and friendships with so many Ukrainian people

Response to the Invasion

Once Russia escalated the war, we were just shocked. I came into the office the next day and immediately began a discussion with Russ about what we could do. Ideally I wanted to re-brew the collaboration Lviv-Milwaukee India Pale Lager that I brewed collaboratively with Pravda Brewing in 2018 but it was immediately shot down due to our production situation.  

See, we primarily have big fermenters devoted to core beer production, 30 x 100 and 200 barrel tanks.  We only have one 15 barrel and one 30 barrel fermenter for scheduled test batches, so we can’t just pivot and turn a last minute one-off over.  There are a lot of moving parts and the fermenters are spoken for.

Russ suggested that we do a crowler label fundraiser instead.  We have a crowler machine that we used a lot in the early days of the pandemic, and we’d already done a successful Black Lives Matter label benefitting Milwaukee’s Urban Underground. Customers could just choose any of our 16 different draft beers instead of one style, and they get the labeled crowler as a souvenir or to shout their support on social media, etc.  Russ was right, it was the best idea. 

Our marketing team took inspiration from a bottle of beer I brought back from Ukraine in 2017, Pravda Brewery’s “Putin Huilo” Golden Ale, which translates to “Putin is a Dickhead”.  Their provocative brands and award winning beers are what attracted me to brew a collaboration beer with them in 2018.  We moved forward with a crowler campaign with our own “Putin Is A Dick” label featuring a buffoonish caricature of Russia’s dictator.  We were able to expedite the initiative rather quickly. We had the label stickers ready in a week.  I put it up on social media the following Friday, it went viral, and we had a line out the brewery door within minutes!  Our amazing employees stepped up to do overtime, proudly wrapping stickers and filling cans above and beyond their busy shifts. And it didn’t let up for weeks!  So many compassionate customers were desperately seeking any way they could to support innocent Ukrainians ASAP and thankfully we were able to step up right away and provide that avenue due to our personal connections with colleagues at Fozzy.

Raising Money

Our crowlers generally cost $10, so we added $5 to the cost and the brewery also matched $5 for each sold.  We quickly raised $20,000 and sent the proceeds to the Bank of Ukraine Humanitarian Relief Fund that was on a list of trusted organizations provided by Fozzy.

At the end of March, our importers reached out with a personal plea.  They were in the process of reconstructing a building in Chernivtsi City to house 350 of their displaced employees and suggested that we send funds directly to this project.  We were even more confident that the donations went to support our Ukrainian friends with no bureaucracies involved. 

Fozzy continues to suffer setbacks.  I’m shocked at the number of their stores and warehouses that have been bombed, and they turn around and rebuild right away.  They are such strong, resilient, determined people!  Their stores have become crucial humanitarian public services in many ways.  

Fozzy works diligently to maintain their food supply chains so they can quickly deliver any humanitarian aid from anywhere in the world to any of their 650 stores.  Many have generators that continue to work during blackouts and they are able to supply people with power to charge their devices.  

We have raised over $140,658.89 through December 2022. Russia’s unnecessary war continues to rage on the innocent Ukrainians, and they will continue to defend their sovereign nation.  

In the words most often written by Ukrainian friends in my correspondence, “We will win! Glory to Ukraine!

It’s My Round is a regular feature on All About Beer featuring personal essays relating to beer experiences and journeys. Learn more or inquire about submissions by emailing Info@allaboutbeer.com

The post Raising Beer Money for Ukraine Because Putin is a Dick first appeared on All About Beer.

It was a lot more pleasant than carrying her around on my back–and fortunately, she didn’t have to carry me. 

My daughter, Sierra Hieronymus attended two GABFs as an infant/toddler in 1997 and 1998. She was in utero in 1996, when my job at the festival was to stand behind a table and hand out free copies of All About Beer Magazine. I remember then-publisher Daniel Bradford coming up to me and saying, “You don’t look that bad!” Since I was about two months away from giving birth, he expected more enormity. 

She was one of the very few, if not the only, child at GABF during those years, and probably one of the very few who ever attended. The rule then was, as Brewers Association economist Bart Watson put it, “No feet on the ground.” So if your child was old enough to walk, then they were too old for the fest.

From a safety standpoint, it made perfect sense, and today, there’s a straight 21 and over policy.  

GABF Then and Now

Stan Hieronymus and I attended our first GABF pre-Sierra, in 1993, when there were 208 breweries. While he has attended nearly all of them since then, my last was in 2010, when 408 breweries attended. It has been 10 years since then (jumping the pandemic-so-no-festival crevasse), and the festival looked quite similar to 2010’s, with about 500 breweries.

Silent disco and the special food event were around in 2010, but the awards were still being announced in the hall. And back then, the women standing in line for the restroom would laugh, because it was that rare event where the men’s restroom line outpaced the women’s.

But gender parity is starting to show, and the women’s line is now easily as long as the men’s. And one thing that has never changed is the din, or the shouts and howls when a glass breaks–though several times this year we saw a glass fall but not break, resulting in hearty cheers.

Looking through the list of 1993 GABF winners, it’s nice that some of them (or their offshoots) medaled this year, such as Sierra Nevada, Coopersmith’s, Boston Beer, Sudwerk, and Deschutes.

Seeing the Festival with Fresh Eyes

Sierra approached the festival like the young adult she is. She used the GABF app to keep track of what she was drinking, and during the awards she texted a friend back in Seattle when any of the locals won.

“The awards ceremony was maybe the most exciting thing for me,” she says. “It was fun seeing breweries I recognized and finding out about breweries in the PNW (Pacific Northwest) I haven’t gotten to yet.“ 

I, on the other hand, was happy to see veteran breweries like Topeka, Kansas’ Blind Tiger Brewery and Restaurant, which has been around since 1995, and Left Hand Brewing Company, which started in 1994, take Brewery of the Year honors in their size categories.

Left Hand was the 50th brewery Sierra visited, right before the 1997 GABF, and that was the last time Left Hand founder Eric Wallace had seen her before we congratulated him Saturday afternoon. 

Sierra arrived at this year’s fest with a bit of celebrity. Stan has talked about her occasionally (well, more than occasionally), and she has been featured in some of our writings, so quite a few brewers had heard of her over the years but never met her.

Others had met her when she was younger and couldn’t believe how much she had grown. We stopped by the table of Ska Brewing, whose staff once mailed back her coloring book when she left it at the Durango taproom, and had the Checkered Future IPA and Oktoberfest.  

Growing up, Sierra didn’t like carbonation, so no soda for her. Somewhere along the line, that changed. We figured that she wouldn’t be underage drinking during high school, but … you can guess how that went.

And today, being our daughter, she talks about which beers are widely distributed, points out when a beer isn’t true to style, is too sweet, etc.

In fact, it’s her turn to weigh in on the festival, while I finish this beer. 

A Daughter’s Perspective

In the years since turning 21, and particularly in the last year of serving at a cocktail-focused restaurant, I’ve become interested in observing how people drink and what they’re drinking. IPAs, pale ales, and sours have noticeably grown in popularity even in the brief time I’ve been drinking.

The most entered categories in the competition were American Style and Juicy/Hazy IPAs. As a hazy IPA and sour fan, it’s nice to see breweries producing a lot of those styles–even if it’s cajoled by popular demand. 

Though construction at the convention center this year may have limited the number of breweries pouring at the festival, I wouldn’t know the difference.

I tried at least 70 beers from more than 50 breweries across the two sessions we attended. Since trying my first smoked beers a few years back, I’ve been a fiend for finding every smoked beer possible and made that my mission at the festival.

My mom had her own inadvertent quest, trying Oktoberfests and peach beers for a time, and waiting in line for a “whale”’–Sierra Nevada’s E.H. Walker Barrel-Aged Bigfoot, which was only distributed in an online sale.

She reports it was well worth the wait.

(Note from Daria: We did not actually name Sierra after Sierra Nevada, although when I suggested the name, Stan did say, “When she’s learning to walk, we can call her Bigfoot and they’ll send us free beer.” But I think he was kidding.)

While we didn’t participate in any of the non-beer drinking activities other than the photo booth, it was fun to walk by the Silent Disco and see people crowded in like it was a club, dancing to music only they could hear. Some very … confident karaoke singers serenaded the crowd with ’80s songs, too. 

Would I go back? Am I my parent’s daughter?

It’s My Round is a regular feature on All About Beer featuring personal essays relating to beer experiences and journeys. Learn more or inquire about submissions by emailing Info@allaboutbeer.com

The post A Mother-Daughter Duo Return to GABF first appeared on All About Beer.

For many working women, the decision to start a family is fraught with anxiety. Will I be physically incapacitated? Will nurturing a tiny, shrieking beast affect my ability to do my job? For a certain subset of us, that decision is made more complicated by one ineluctable fact: We built our careers around fetus poison, otherwise known as “beer.” As our numbers grow, more women will find ourselves in the position that I did earlier this year—asking for spit cups at tastings and retiring to my hotel room to put my feet up instead of joining the cheerful, buzzed conviviality after-hours on media trips.

As I became more obviously pregnant, more women began approaching me for advice and, more importantly, reassurance that getting in the family way wouldn’t prevent us from indulging our love of beer. To all those women: It can be done! Don’t be afraid.

To address the elephant in the room: Every pregnancy manual, and nosy strangers everywhere, will warn you that there is no such thing as a safe amount of alcohol. It’s true that excessive alcohol consumption is associated with fetal alcohol syndrome, which is tied to deformities, behavioral problems and learning disabilities, among many other scary consequences. Drinking is part of my job, but I would not put my family’s health at risk to do it.

But the key word is “excessive.” As University of Chicago economist Emily Oster details in her book Expecting Better, there is just no good data that shows that occasional to light drinking hurts your fetus. “I reviewed approximately 50 studies in detail, covering 80,000 women,” says Oster. “I focused on studies that came as close as possible to comparing identical women who differed only in their drinking behavior. In these studies there is simply no evidence that occasional drinking has harmful impacts.”

With the country’s history of temperance movements, American studies on drinking while pregnant are often conflated with other factors, like cocaine use. In other words, drinking while pregnant is treated as at-risk behavior. But if you’re not in the habit of snorting up—and you don’t take your one to three drinks in the form of a half-dozen vodka shots on Saturday night—your fetus is no more at risk than a teetotaler’s.

After a first trimester so addled by morning sickness that I could barely eat a spoonful of French onion dip, I was able to start tasting beer again in my second trimester. Privately, my doctor assured me that an occasional half-pint was fine. Although we still faced public censure, the women I spoke to felt comfortable with low levels of consumption. In my case, that meant a few ounces of beer once or twice a week. In most cases our bodies put the brakes on for us.

“[My obstetrician] felt that moderate and spaced-out consumption was fine throughout pregnancy, and physical fitness was … more important than if I had a couple of ounces a week,” says Jamie Baertsch, the brewmaster at Wisconsin’s Dells Brewing and mother of two. Her taste panels added up to about 12 ounces a week, which she spread out to 1 or 2 ounces of beer a day.

Working in the beer industry can place demands on other parts of your body besides your liver. It’s possible to circumvent chores that require heavy lifting, but if you have your doctor’s OK, there’s no reason you can’t keep working right until birth. “We had a hot night two weeks before my second baby,” says Caitlin Jewell, the co-owner of Massachusetts-based Somerville Brewing. “Through Braxton Hicks [contractions, which occur before labor actually begins], I loaded the fest gear into the truck—even a few full sixtels!”

And if you’re working within the brewery itself, remember that it is an inherently dangerous environment. “Carbon dioxide, chemicals, hot-water tanks under pressure, and there you are, walking around with pregnancy brain,” says Baertsch.

“Even with all my precautions, I had one accident,” Baertsch recalls. “I was cleaning a new tank and got knocked out by carbon dioxide, which knocked a bucket of sodium hydroxide on me. I had to be decontaminated in the parking lot. Everyone ended up being just fine, but it is just a little more nerve-wracking when you’re trying to grow a baby.”

Ultimately, the pressing issues that we deal with in beer are the same as in any other industry that is made up of small businesses. For example, arranging maternity leave seemed more difficult than reducing beer consumption. “When I approached my team, I let them know I had prepared measures to put in place during my leave and considered how to counteract my absence with as much pre-planning as possible,” says Francesca Zeifman, the public relations manager at Atlanta’s SweetWater Brewing who was expecting her first in December 2014.

But this is more encouraging than other-wise. Aside from the occasional disapproving glance, women in beer shouldn’t feel discouraged from starting families, any more than baristas, graphic designers or other creative professionals. “To be pregnant in this industry is just like every day in beer. You need to live in the moment, know your limits, lift with your knees and stay hydrated,” says Jewell.

“I imagine it’s probably difficult for a woman in any field—not just the beer industry—who cares about her career to make the decision to start a family,” says Liz Melby, the director of communications at Harpoon Brewery and mother of two. “Hopefully, any fear you might have won’t hold you back, because the reward is so great.”

This column appears in the March 2015 issue of All About Beer Magazine. Click here to subscribe.

The post Pregnant in the Industry first appeared on All About Beer.

My first encounter with homebrewed beer was an unusual one. It happened in 1982 when I was the Middle East correspondent for The Associated Press, based in Cairo, Egypt. I had moved to Cairo from Beirut in August 1981 after a couple of crazy years covering the wars in Lebanon, Iraq and Iran. No sooner did I arrive in Cairo that it got crazy there, too. In October 1981, I was sitting behind Egyptian President Anwar Sadat when he was assassinated at a parade in Cairo. 

But back to the beer.

I got a meeting at the U.S. Embassy with Jim Hastings, the inspector-general of the U.S. AID program in Egypt. I was working on a story about America’s $2.3 billion annual aid program. It is not easy to give away that much money every year. Hastings had some good stories about abuses of the program. After I interviewed him, he asked me what I thought of Egypt’s national beer, Stella (no relation of the Belgian beer of the same name), which came in 750-ml bottles.

“Well, it’s kind of hit and miss,” I said. “Some bottles taste OK. Some are undrinkable. Some people say they put formaldehyde in the beer as a preservative. Mummified beer. I do find my lips go numb after a couple of bottles.”

“I don’t drink that stuff,” Hastings said. “I make my own.”

“Really,” I said. “Tell me more.”

Hastings explained that he had just done a three-year stint in Saudi Arabia, one of the countries in the Middle East where alcoholic beverages are strictly forbidden. He said he and the other Foreign Service officers attached to the embassy in Riyadh were able to get ingredients for homebrewing in the diplomatic mail. Apart from work, there is not a lot to do in Saudi Arabia. Hastings said he and his friends spent a lot of time making beer in their kitchens—light beers, amber beers, porters and stouts.

As I got to know Hastings better, he treated me to some of his homebrew. It was excellent, and I was envious. But I had no access to malt extract or hops.

A couple of years later, AP announced it needed me in Manila, the Philippines, because President Ferdinand Marcos was in trouble. I was very excited about a new posting. But my wife, Ellen Foote, declared she had had enough of following me from one trouble spot to another. We had our first child in Beirut and the second in Cairo. “I am not taking these kids to Manila,” she said resolutely.

We returned to New York in June 1984 and settled in Park Slope, Brooklyn, an up-and-coming neighborhood. I left The AP for a job on Newsday’s foreign desk. My colleagues at the AP, led by a guy named Mark Porubcansky, who would go on to work in Moscow, had a going-away party for me and gave me a very nice homebrewing kit. Newsday was a great place to work, but I missed the excitement of the Middle East. I started brewing beer at home on a fairly regular basis. I made amber ales, porters and stouts, standard beginner homebrew styles. I bought Charlie Papazian’s Complete Joy of Homebrewing.

My beers were good, but not great. I got to know the guys in the New York City Homebrewers Guild, including one of the founders, Garrett Oliver. He made great beer.

I started reading about the micro-brewing movement that was gaining steam in the West. In the East, I read about Newman’s Albany Amber Beer and Matthew Reich’s Old New York Brewing Co. with its New Amsterdam beer. I started dreaming of starting a brewery in Brooklyn, a part of New York City that had been home to more than 45 brewers in the 1890s. Eventually, my downstairs neighbor in Brooklyn, Tom Potter, a junior banker at Chemical Bank, and I quit our jobs, raised $500,000 from family, colleagues and friends, and started Brooklyn Brewery in March 1988.

In 1989, Papazian attended an Oktoberfest party at our warehouse in Brooklyn. He signed my copy of his book, “Relax, have a homebrew, and a Brooklyn Lager too.”

Years later, at a World Beer Cup awards dinner in New York City, I was sitting at a table telling Fritz Maytag my story. I told Fritz I since had learned that the Saudi royal family did not ban alcoholic beverages until 1954 when American oil workers poured into the country to develop the oil fields. I had read somewhere that the Saudis objected to the Americans serving alcoholic beverages to the locals, so they issued the ban. When they did, the Arabian American Oil Co., ARAMCO, issued a pamphlet telling its employees how to brew beer at home.

A young man at our table said, “That is a true story, and I have a copy of the pamphlet.” A few weeks later, he sent me a copy. On the cover was a convoluted title that seemed to me to be an effort to conceal the contents of the pamphlet. Or perhaps it was a parody of the flowery circumlocutions of the Arabic language.

This column appears in the September 2014 issue of All About Beer Magazine. Click here for a free trial of our next issue.

The post Steve Hindy: Homebrewing in the Middle East first appeared on All About Beer.

I think we’ve all experienced something like that because it’s a powerful thing is smell. Not only is it a primal link to our inner Neanderthal to warn us if something is OK to eat or drink, it’s the strongest memory trigger of all our senses, so I’d like to encourage you to use it just a little more.

I say this because, not so long ago, I had a powerful reminder that taking the time to smell the beer (or the roses, for that matter) shouldn’t only be about letting you know it’s free of faults and drinkable. It should also help you capture moments that you’re enjoying with friends and loved ones.

I say this with conviction because I experienced “smell recall” recently when the mere act of opening a little wooden box led to the unearthing of a memory that was so joyous, so visceral, that it brought tears to my eyes and a huge smile to my lips.

It was a memory of my granddad, Alf Cole, who was a man I loved dearly. In fact, I’d go as far to say idolized. He died when I was 12, and, to this day, I find it heart-breaking he didn’t live to see me grow up. I hope he would have been proud of me, but, if nothing else, he would have enjoyed more than his share of free beer, that’s for sure!

But what was it that unleashed this tidal wave of emotions? It was actually the mundane action of opening a little box where I keep little mementos like concert or cricket match stubs, a rosary my grandmother gave me and a few other bits and bobs.

So, despite having opened it hundreds of times, when I lifted the lid and the box wafted its muted sandalwood scent at me, powerful memories were unleashed. I was transported back at least 30 years to a bright summer’s day in the Barley Mow pub garden on idyllic Englefield Green in Surrey, where my granddad was holding his pint glass to my lips for me to take an illicit sip, which I’m pretty sure is my earliest beer-related memory. But it’s so much more than that.

With that aroma came a host of other remembered scents—over the pungent nuttiness of the beer, I could smell the smoke on his fingers, the Brylcreem in his hair and, throughout, the woody note from the Old Spice shaving cream that he used, whisking it to a lather in its branded china pot with a badger hair brush.

I then remembered how I would find him in the morning, carefully shaving in a mirror at the kitchen sink because it had the best light, wearing just his vest and trousers, with his braces flapping around the backs of his legs; how he’d pretend I wasn’t there as he carefully finished, then wiping any excess foam away before giving me a good morning kiss and making me my breakfast, which was always a bowl of cornflakes followed by blackcurrant jam on toast—the latter of which I still love to this day.

I am so pleased to have these precious memories gifted back to me for the rest of my life, by the simple act of opening a wooden box, that I just want to suggest a way you can do the same.

Stop for just a second, when you’re out enjoying yourself with friends or loved ones, to just quietly inhale the aroma of your beer. Just a few moments of committing that smell to memory and perhaps, one day, you’ll be drinking that same beer and you will be back transported back to that exact moment in time of joy and companionship—and I hope it brings a smile to your lips as you take a salutary sip.  

This column appears in the July issue of All About Beer Magazine. Click here for a free trial of our next issue.

The post Scented Memories first appeared on All About Beer.

“Umm, sure.”

An eternal moment passes as my father takes the phone to hear my voice for the first time.

“Gary?”

“Hey, Ed.”

Pause.

“How are ya, man?”

Longer pause.

“Good, Ed. How are you?”

“Good. It’s nice to meet you.”

Excruciatingly awkward pause.

Finally, my father asks me, “So, Gary … do you like beer?”

“Ed, it’s funny you should ask.”

**********

I was raised in a household that didn’t drink. It wasn’t taboo; it just wasn’t something that Momma and Poppa Rosen, my adoptive parents, generally did. So I never quite understood where I acquired my obsession with all things beer. I collected bottles, crowns and anything else that a youngster could get his hands on. When my high school friends slapped down ten-spots for a case of what was on sale, I used my money to buy a 12 of German imports.

By the time I turned 21, I wanted to find new beers almost as much as I wanted to find my biological parents. I was raised in a wonderful, loving environment, but I always knew I was adopted and often felt different. So a lot of things started to make sense when I met my biological parents. Through them and with them my passion for beer has grown and never abated.

I was 29 when I first met Ed and Lee. They had had me young but stayed together and gave birth to my sister 10 years later. The night after our initial phone conversation, they came to my house, and I answered the door to find a couple I had never seen but immediately recognized. My haircut mirrored Ed’s (read lack of hair) and we wore the same earring. He held a six-pack of Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale.

“I thought this was appropriate,” he said.

Sierra Nevada is among my favorite breweries, and I can’t think of any beer that’s ever tasted better than those we drank that night.

I brewed my first homebrew with Ed and Lee. I joined my first homebrew club with them, and the three of us felt our love for this incredible art and industry grow and grow. Not long after, we attended our first beer festival as a family—TAP New York. We sought out different styles but had similar takes on “best in show” and our likes and dislikes. Since that weekend almost 10 years ago, we’ve gone to countless festivals in countless states, including the Great American Beer Festival.

One afternoon a few months after we met, Ed asked me if I wanted to go a local brewery with him. It was the first time he and I “hung out” alone. I quickly became a regular at that brewery, and when life later threw me a curveball or three, I gave up my profession as a therapist and college professor and went to work there. After working several positions in the brewhouse, the owners called on my knowledge of beer and psychology and promoted me to New Jersey sales rep.

Two years later, I moved over to Shore Point Distributors and am currently the craft beer specialist in eight Central New Jersey counties. I find it interesting that the people who are responsible for giving me life are also fairly responsible for starting my life in the craft beer profession.

Even though Momma and Poppa Rosen didn’t drink often, they have one rock-solid tradition: On every one of their wedding anniversaries, they share a glass of wine from the chalice they used at their wedding. Because of this, I’ve always associated alcohol with celebration, joy, love and family. I just had no idea how true that feeling would prove to be.

I recently read a quote from Renee DeLuca, who discovered around the same time I found my parents that she’s the biological daughter of Jack McAuliffe, who founded America’s first modern microbrewery. She said, “I knew I had beer in my blood.” I can’t recall ever feeling closer to words. Brewers are artists who share their soul in their beers. And through beer my soul’s biggest question has been answered.

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On the walk up Putney High Street, my toes turned to little frozen nubs. It was the first of many pub nights I’d share with two friends I made through our semester exchange program in London—Kayla from Oregon, a left-wing blonde with a lip ring, and Sissel, my hall-mate from Stockholm with old Hollywood curls. We were 20 years old. Unable to drink in the United States, we were eager to have our first legal sips of alcohol. The pub, we were told, had great drink specials and cheap plates of bangers and mash and fish and chips, among other dishes. In London, everything is expensive. But you can get a pint for 3 pounds, sometimes less.

The door swung open, and I knocked the snow from my boots. It was a Wednesday, and the place was alive. Two men stood by the entrance, eyes fixed on a screen above the bar. They had long tattered hair and teeth that hung over their bottom lip. “Another,” one called out to the bartender. I figured they were regulars, as the guy behind the bar quickly pulled each another pint.

The bar was packed with locals, and I was nervous to order, but soon found myself wedged between gents at the bar, examining what was on offer. Some of the taps looked familiar—Fuller’s, UBU, along with staples like Heineken, Stella and the ubiquitous Guinness.

I’d spent the previous summer interning at this very magazine and had picked up a few bits of knowledge along the way, so as I stood there mulling over the choices, the bartender made his way over to me and asked to see some ID.

I handed over the little plastic card. As his finger traced over the photo, the birthday, he looked up at me, then back down at the picture. I spoke up and asked what local beers were on tap.

“A Yank? Here, let me get you something,” said the short man. “You can call home to Mummy and tell her you had a real ale.” He had a tone that suggested he wasn’t taking my business seriously.

“No need,” I snapped quickly, “I’ll have a London Pride. You know, it’s funny. Maybe I’ll call my boss at the beer magazine I work at and tell him I had a real ale instead.”

He stopped, wide-eyed, and smiled. My clenched fist on the bar to show him I wasn’t taking his condescension. We conducted the transaction; I took the pints and walked back to the table, enraged and ready to move on to the next pub. The only thing that stopped me was the London Pride. It was the best first beer I could have had. It was golden, crisp and tasted a little like caramel. My glass had a web of lace where it had been emptied. As we drank, we talked about women’s rights, and by the end of the night Kayla had me convinced I needed to move to Oregon, both for the beer and for the politics.

By the third round, whether it was true or if the beer had gotten to my head, the bartender softened, realizing that we were serious about good beer. I was feeling kinder as well and ordered a Wychwood Hobgoblin. Our conversation turned to Stockholm, where, according to Sissel, people are so shy they stand five feet apart at the bus stop. As I sipped the Hobgoblin, she talked about her summers on an island off the coast of Sweden. The beer was heavy on the malt compared with the London Pride. It was a little bitter on the finish. It was thick like winter, and the three of us dreamed of summer in Sweden.

On the way out, I thanked the bartender. He was pouring another beer for the men with gnarled teeth by the entrance. He set down the pints and waved.

The sun had been down for hours by then, and the wind cut through our coats. My lips froze together, but my belly was full and warm from the Hobgoblin. As we huddled together at the bus stop, I faded out of the conversation. Suddenly, on the still sidewalk, the night sky clear and the river Thames running cold and smooth under Putney Bridge, I understood the name of my first beer in London, Pride.  

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I’m a lover of all good beers, but especially those Belgian. I’ve traveled extensively in Europe to Germany, the Czech Republic and throughout the Netherlands and Belgium on work-related trips before my retirement several years ago.

One of my great loves is De Koninck beer made in Antwerp, Belgium. Expertly poured, this amber ale forms a creamy head, has a slight fruit/spice yeasty flavor with fine balance of malt and hops followed by beautiful Belgian lace cascading down the sides of the glass. It’s ubiquitous in the city, and one can easily drink several in a sitting since it’s not high in alcohol and is relatively inexpensive as well. De Koninck is a delight and in my opinion one of the best beers in the world when fresh on tap. It’s traditionally served in a bowl-shaped goblet: When requesting a bolleke, everyone in Antwerp knows this signifies a De Koninck beer.

A number of years ago, during some time off from one of my work trips in Europe, I was lucky enough to arrange a personal tour of the De Koninck brewery. It was very informative, and my guide, Dennis, was very friendly and helpful. At the end of the tour, one of the office workers came by in a rush and excitedly told us there had been an accident in the United States. From the little I could understand by the description given in Flemish and only partly translated into English, people had been killed when a plane crashed into a building in New York City. I imagined it was a small plane whose occupants had perished, which was certainly distressing to hear.

A little later, I walked across the street to the Het Stoopke pub to enjoy a couple of beers with several of the brewery workers who frequented the bar at the end of their shifts. A special treat at Stoopke was the optional shot of De Koninck yeast that could either be drunk straight or added to your glass of beer. Very tasty!

After about an hour had passed, I was informed that the owner of the brewery and a Belgian brewing icon, Modeste Van den Bogaert, requested to meet me at the pub. I was flattered and told I should feel honored by this special occasion. What I didn’t realize at the time was that Mr. Van den Bogaert wanted to express his condolences to the U.S. citizen who he heard was visiting at his brewery. I spoke with him briefly, although it was difficult to communicate since he spoke little English and I spoke no Flemish. It was only after I went back to my hotel room later that evening that I finally discovered while watching television the true magnitude of the terrorist attack that took place at the World Trade Center Twin Towers on that day of Sept. 11, 2001.

I’ve told my family and friends this story many times, and of the kindness shown to me by strangers during a time of great tragedy. I now had a personal connection to a brewery I had long admired, and it only increased my desire to return. In April 2013 my wife and I had that chance.

Although I was aware that Mr. Van den Bogaert had passed away a couple of years ago and the brewery had subsequently been sold to Duvel Moortgat, I was hoping to revisit and say hello to some of the people I had met there in 2001. I sent several emails to the brewery and waited for a reply. Although I didn’t hear back, I decided to stop by while we were visiting in Antwerp.

We arrived at the brewery around closing time, and I knocked on the door of a small administrative office near the entry gate. I spoke with the employee who answered and briefly explained the reason for my visit. To my great surprise, the person speaking with me was Dennis, the same man who gave me the tour back in 2001! My wife joined us as I shared some of my old pictures. We talked for a long time about the brewery, Belgian beer in general and the best bars in Antwerp. I now have pictures of Dennis and me drinking De Koninck beer at their brewery back in 2001 and now in 2013.

We both have a little more gray in our hair, but we’ve cemented our friendship brought about by a tragedy in the United States, my love of travel and De Koninck beer.  

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As I reflect on my journey into craft beer, I feel obligated to address the elephant in the room, the same pachyderm that many of us in the industry delicately tiptoe around in an effort to avoid being hip-deep in a pile of dung. My family has a long—sometimes colorful, sometimes bleak—history of alcoholism that has gone hand in hand with libation. Having opted to work in the industry, I regularly ask myself, “Why am I drinking today?” Or, “Is my job just an excuse to get drunk?”

My childhood beer memories revolve around my dad’s alcoholism. Back then, genome sequencing was a sci-fi dream, but I knew that my dad had a “problem” (cured when he gave up drinking on his 40th birthday; he’s been sober 37 years). Genetics certainly played a role: His dad drove a beer truck for a living and died from cirrhosis. My dad also had a habit of combining drink with work, being an academic adviser to a fraternity at the local college. I vaguely remember beer-drinking parties being a lot of fun, but there was obviously a dark undertone to my father’s way of imbibing, a thin line between vivacious and violent. We had to tread lightly when daddy was drinking.

My mom often reminisces about her own childhood, walking into town with a bucket to bring beer back for her father. Her reward? She got the first sip. The kids on my mom’s side of the family all had an early acquaintance with alcohol in the “European tradition” of drinking, but the fact that we are raising a fourth generation of potential alcoholics causes me some discomfort.

Having seen my own parents drunk and feeling helpless to do anything about it, I admit no small amount of guilt at being drunk in front of my own kids. I’ve also stood behind a bar, watching colleagues drink on the job, wondering how many they had before they showed up at my work and how many more they’ll have before calling it a day. And then I look in the mirror and know, “There but for the grace of God …” It’s easy enough to “just say no,” but the reality is that many of us in this line of work are predisposed not just to like our potent potables, but also to abuse them.

I never planned on working with alcohol, despite the fact that my first “real” job was managing a craft beer bar. Of course, back in the late ’80s, that’s not what we called it. Goatfeathers Coffee Bar & Restaurant in Columbia, SC, was better known for its cappuccino and cheesecake than for the 80-plus bottles of beer in its inventory. As students were guzzling Coors, I was getting acquainted with Orval, Old Peculier and Samuel Smith brews. American beers were limited to the stalwarts: Anchor and Sierra Nevada. The first ­really interesting beer I tried was Brouwerij Lindemans’ framboise. It was a revelation. Despite this fecund environment for craft beer experimentation, I spent more time sober than sipping suds. I didn’t know how to balance my desire to drink with the demands of running a bar. Moderation never seemed to be on the continuum.

When I moved to New York in 2007, my personal and professional lives quickly went the way of the economy. I felt that I was losing my mind completely, and drinking to block all that out was an easy choice. I was desperate to find community, which I stumbled upon via the local food movement. I found my place as a locavore among farmers and artisanal food purveyors who made the city less formidable.

Working in the locavore community proved auspicious, as I quickly became acquainted with Jimmy’s No. 43 in New York’s East Village, where I sampled many craft beers in the rotating draft lineup. I met brewers and distributors, and my “beerducation” grew with new opportunities.

Finding a community that embraced craftsmanship over profit margins and good taste over cheap ingredients didn’t exorcise me from excessive drinking. The fact remains that I still need to ask myself, “Why am I drinking today?”

By matching my love of local food with a love of great craft beer, I can mitigate some of the dangers. Craft beer has provided a way for me to drink what I love in a way that nourishes my spirit rather than racks my body. Yet I need to be aware at all times that I’m not crossing a line. Oh, and I don’t drink on my days off. It’s a delicate balance, but keeping tabs on my genetic predisposition is how I play in the craft beer world with the cards I was dealt at birth.  

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