This Is a Post About Beer

Er... Scratch that. It's a post about immitation beer. No wait, that's not even right. "Wannabe?" "Fake?" "That which should not even bare the name 'beer'?" Something like that.

Beer is a bit of a luxury around here because it's not exactly a necessary grocery item (oh, be quiet, Kris). For this reason, I'm making plans for a little homebrew operation, but that's another post for another time.

See, I like beer. Not as fanatically as my brothers like it, but I do. Not even as an everyday thing, and not even a whole beer most of the time. Wimpy as that may sound, the fact is, I like to have it with food, and my stomach is simply not large enough to hold my meal and a whole 12 or 16 ounce beer. That may be because when I have beer, I want something substantial. None of that fizzy pee-water stuff for me. Nathan teases me that I like a beer that I can stick a fork in. Something like this:



That was an Espresso stout that I had with my dear friend and sister-in-law, Loraine, while visiting in Oregon a while ago. Yes, a 10-ounce glass. Perfect.

And yeah... another post for another time.

Anyway, back to the matter at hand.

Yesterday, I held a "jam session" --no, not the music kind, but rather the actual "jam" kind... you know berries, sugar, pectin? Jam.-- here at my house with two other families. After spending the day whirling berries in the food processor and canning the result, we made pizza to feed our families. This pizza, with it's bubbly, cripsy, garlic-oiled sourdough crust, was just calling out for beer. So I sent Nathan and another guy on a beer-run. They went to the nearest tiny-town, where the choices are, well... limited.

Here's what they came back with:


(Yeah, that's right. Read it again. Bask in my glorious non-photoshop skilz!)

This is something I had never tried before.

This is something I really never had the inclination to try.





But we were eating pizza, after all, and good pizza. And this called for beer.

BEER, I tell you.

So I opened it up, and took a swig.

And I was instantly transported... back... back in time....





Back to washing endless dishes in my Mom's kitchen. Seems like I was always on KP duty...




Becuase, I'm telling ya... this stuff tastes like Dawn.

Yeah, ya know, the dish soap?


No mistaking it. I sip that stuff and get a definite whiff of "brother blowing a handful of soap suds in my face."

Or that time when I was really little and Kristin emptied the entire bottle of Dawn into our bathtub and we splashed until we had mountains in of bubbles over our heads and then Kristin started crying because he got soap in his eyes...

Are those the things the fine folks at Anheuser-Busch want me to be remembering while I drink their so-called "beer?"

I mean, come on. It doesn't taste even remotely like lime. Did someone forget to rinse the brewing equipment, again?

I wasn't imagining it, either. Everyone at the table agreed that it tastes distinctly like Dawn.

Ick. Give me a good, dark, microbrew anyday.