The other night I drove over to Central Market. I was ostensibly going there to get Kim some coffee 1decaf 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 2It’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 3Something 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?
“That bastard beer” really got me. My wife and I had a chuckle over that while we were doing the dishes. We really like LOST as well.
As a fellow beer snob myself, I must recount a story from many years ago. While checking out at Central Market in Fort Worth, the clerk went to scan my beer – it was something very hoppy like Anchor Steam, Sierra Nevada or maybe even Arrogant Bastard – when she paused for a moment. With a dreamy, distant look on her face, she shared with me that was her favorite. Then her expression changed. With a look of forlorn sadness, she told me that her boyfriend, on the other hand, would only drink Coors Light. She said it with such disgust you would have thought she was diclosing his violent criminal record or some sort of perverted sexual deviation involving the pre-application of Jesus Juice. Then she said something that will forever stay with me… “I keep telling him that the closing thing to water is Coors Light and a duck’s butt.” From that moment on, the watery swill that is Coors Light has been known to me only as “Duck’s Butt”.