I Am a Beer Snob

The other night I drove over to Cen­tral Mar­ket. I was osten­si­bly going there to get Kim some cof­fee [1. decaf Snick­er­nut] but the real rea­son I was going was that I was out of beer. The last Späten Opti­ma­tor was gone and I’d tried a sin­gle of Cooper’s Stout but the Tra­di­tional ‘Lost’ Beer [2. It’s a tra­di­tion now. I just have a beer, in my Guin­ness pint mug, each week dur­ing ‘Lost’. Just some­thing I do.] had been missed last week because I drank the Cooper’s dur­ing ‘Bat­tlestar Galac­tica’ so I needed a new six pack.

But what to get? So many to choose from. I wanted some­thing dif­fer­ent since I’d been drink­ing stouts for so long. Anchor Steam would have been fine but they were all sold out. Started look­ing around at all of them. Samuel Smith. Späten vari­a­tions. Maybe a six pack of Cooper’s? The Rar Brew­ery from Fort Worth? They have about 300 beers so it’s hard to choose.

So I decided to wing it and try Coal Porter from the Atlantic Brew­ing Co. I wanted some­thing dif­fer­ent, a porter would do. When held up to the light I couldn’t seen through the bot­tle which is usu­ally a good sign. Just not a fan of those Bud-esque light-as-water beers.

It sat in the fridge for a night and then I was going to have one last night dur­ing (don’t laugh) ‘Danc­ing With the Stars’ when my in-law’s showed up. My father-in-law hit the fridge [3. Some­thing he does with fright­en­ing reg­u­lar­ity] look­ing for some­thing and out he brought a cold vir­gin Coal Porter. I hadn’t even had one yet and he was tak­ing one.

I hadn’t offered one to him. The damn stuff cost $10 a six pack, so I was reluc­tant to part with one for just any­body, but he’s my father-in-law, so what are you going to do? Tell him he can’t have one? I lived with the guy for a year while my cur­rent house was being built, I’m too stingy to offer him one beer?

He opened it and drank and his eyes went wide. “Wow…that’s strong.” 3 more swal­lows and he was done. He set it down and walked to play with my kids.

A wasted beer. One freak­ing wasted beer.

I wasn’t going to drink after him, that’s just not what I do. I don’t take free sam­ples from peo­ple hand­ing out food unless I’m at Sam’s, so I wasn’t going to drink after him. We (the fam) just got over a virus, who the hell knows what he’s car­ry­ing in that mouth?

That bas­tard beer sat there on the kitchen counter until 10 pm that night. After Yam­aguchi had won the com­pe­ti­tion I went and poured the remain­der in the sink. Hershey-brown liq­uid headed for the drain, n’er to be seen again. With it I placed my other pint glass that had once held the sec­ond Coal Porter, now drained into me.

It was pretty good. A lit­tle thicker than the usual porter I like, but pretty good.

So yeah, I’m a beer snob. I don’t want peo­ple touch­ing them with­out ask­ing, capiche?