Hold my beer

One of these things is not like the other...

I went to my first beer share this weekend. If you're unfamiliar with the term, a beer share is like a wine tasting, but with craft beer. All of my beer share knowledge comes via the Captain.

Give him a chance and he'll spin yarns of beer shares among thousands of people in the cold, cold springtime rain of northern Indiana or with a few buddies in the heat of summer in someone's back yard. Or in parking lots between beer lovers who connected online and find a stolen moment when one is driving through the other's state and meet in real life to exchange beers the other can't easily get. 

Jeff has a large group of guys who rotate hosting shares. There are women, too, who take part, but it's mostly a male crew. Beer shares are where friends or strangers from around the globe are united by their deep love of craft beer. They drink from tiny cups with short pours of all sorts of fluids that resemble the beer of your youth much like butterfly wings resemble steel wool. 

Sours, stouts, wheats, saisons, pale ales. Hoppy, acidic, chocolatey, piney, chalky. The adjectives roll off their tongues like rain on a Seattle roof as they sip and swish and swallow. 

I love them all, and they are sincere in their appreciation, but I confess to making light of the conversation when Jeff and his beer buddies get together. They can describe beer so poetically you'd think they were speaking of the loves of their life. And I guess, in a way, they are...

Smart beer sharers arrange their rides home ahead of time because while each sip of the nectar is a small one, within the space of a few hours, you can imbibe from dozens of cans and bottles. See the shot above -- the required "kill shot" that memorializes the samplings of the night. That compilation is in addition to everyone "checking in" the beers they tried on a beer app where people around the world exhalt or bemoan each of the beers they've consumed.

I was in no danger of drunk driving as A.) the beer share was in our basement and B.) some of the beers cracked open last night were beverages I had no interest in. 

I'd opened the wrong bottle of champagne on Valentine's Day and had been nursing that lesser-vintage bottle since Friday. So I brought my own brew to the party and stuck around (mostly) because my friend Sara was also there. She's a more sophisticated beer drinker than I am, though I think it's fair to say her husband loves it more. 

That's right: I went to a beer share and drank (mostly) champagne.  

I usually make myself scarce when Jeff hosts a beer share, and I don't think I've ever gone to one outside my own home. I can't keep up with that crowd for volume or type. I don't have -- and don't really want -- a palate that appreciates beers as dark as Dick Cheney's heart, as thick as a lumberjack's bicep or as sour as a persimmon in May. The range of beer these guys drink is immense. Some of it poured like motor oil. No exaggeration.

I'm a pale ale or juicy Maine Beer Company kind of girl when I drink beer. I would much rather drink champagne. And not Miller High Life, which as everyone know, is the champagne of beers. 

Bubbly wine doesn't have to be from France to make me happy, and it doesn't have to be expensive. We did, however, have a lovely, 2004 Perrier-Jouet Belle Epoque for our anniversary that Jeff had found at a bargain price and had been saving for a special occasion. 

In my opinion, the best side effect of his craft beer obsession is that he often comes home with wine for me. If liquor stores ever focus only on beer, I will be bereft. The bottle I'd opened ahead of the pricey PJ was a Veuve du Vernay Brut, which can retail for less than $10 a bottle. So you can imagine Jeff's dismay when I popped the wrong cork... 

Neither Sara nor I lasted the entirety of the beer share. We watched part of Saturday Night Live drink-free before she and her husband left to take care of their dogs. I went to bed and it was another couple of hours or so before the beer sipping stopped. 

Once he'd made it out of bed this morning, Jeff asked Ali if his revelry had kept her up late. Silly dad.  "I had my headphones on," she said. 

This wasn't Ali's first beer share rodeo. Sometimes I wonder if she's going to enjoy college. She's been surrounded with this high-end, complicated beer for so long I'm pretty sure that kegs of Bud Lite aren't going to excite her. 

I'm OK with that side effect, too.

Speaking of the redhead, here's a picture of her Herron High School record-breaking relay team and a fun shot taken at the end-of-the-season get together. She declared the other day that she has only 99 days of high school left, which may or may not have resulted in me having extra bottles of bubbly in the fridge...