"Best $2k I Ever Spent!" Beers Of My Life, A Timeline Of Drinking

Waiting for a moving truck like I am today is even worse than other things you impatiently wait for, like the pizza guy or The Rapture, because a whole series of thoughts go through your head. Is this a reputable company?  What if they root through my stuff and realize what a filthy pervert I am? Luckily, my waiting is made easier by one crucial, all-encompassing detail: I have beer.

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Specifically, I have this beer:

That's Brooklyn Brewery Local 1, a Belgian strong pale ale that gets an "A-/excellent" rating from beeradvocate.com. Though I'm not really qualified to rate beer on a scale that includes "bottle fermentation" and "mouth feel" (isn't the mouth feel of beer "wet"?), it's gratifying to know that those who are agree with my layman's assessment that this beer is awesome. And, moreover, beer in general is awesome. Surely, many of us who are just now rolling out of bed on Seis De Mayo feeling like we brushed our teeth with Cuervo last night wish we'd stuck to beer, no? Beer is delicious, refreshing, and in the immortal words of Seth Rogen's mom in Observe & Report, "I can pound it all day and still keep my shit together."

So today, as you nurse your tequila hangovers and contemplate never drinking again, I have a better idea: have a beer. You'll feel better, and besides, breakfast is the most important meal of the day. To help you get in the spirit, here are a few thoughts on some beers that have been significant in my life.

Busch Light

Without directly advocating anything illegal, let's just say that there are beers that are made for those of legal drinking age, and then there's Busch Light. Though the universe overflows with "college beers," cheap, shitty beer that would get you laughed out of one of LA's many pretentious gastropubs, it is my personal opinion that Busch Light, the go-to beer of my own collegiate experience, sits atop the leaderboard. Clocking in at an affordable-even-on-work-study $13.99/30-rack (which keeps the price competitive with other modern youth activities like crystal meth addiction), Busch Light is refreshing (when ice cold), pours evenly into a red Solo cup, and doesn't taste appreciably worse than its more expensive and equally scrubby older brothers in the Anheuser-Busch product line (Bud Light, I'm looking at you). I'm fairly sure that if I had saved every can of Busch Light I've ever consumed, I could have knocked a year's tuition off and still had enough left over for the inevitable liver transplant.

Delirium Tremens

I admire a beer that's honest enough to sell itself on the horrifying symptoms you'll experience if you ever stop drinking it. Of course, in the case of Delirium, there's no compelling reason to ever stop drinking it, because it's delicious in that way where, when you serve it to somebody that's never had it before, you usually get some variation on "I didn't even know beer could taste like that!" Later in the evening, when they're hallucinating pink elephants and talking to God, you can debate the merits of consuming more than a bottle at once of this 8.5% nectar, but I can promise you it won't seem like a bad idea at the time.

[photo via]

The Troeganator

In early 2006, I was in Pittsburgh when the Steelers won the Super Bowl. Although I'm in no way a Steelers fan, I'm never scared of a good football riot, so we hit the streets of Pittsburgh looking for fun. We found it in a 24-bottle case of The Troeganator, a maliciously strong "doublebock" with a bearded, horned man on the label. After 8 of these bad boys each, we felt the horns emerging from our own foreheads. Wandering through the streets of the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh, we saw burning couches, refrigerators thrown from rooftops, and a Subway restaurant smashed and lit on fire. At one intersection, a reveler pointed at a nondescript parked car. "Hey, you guys," he yelled at the rioting crowd, "this car likes the Seahawks!!!"

"FUCK THAT!!!" replied the crowd, and they promptly flipped that car over and set it on fire. I guess what I'm trying to say is, the Troeganator is a pretty strong beer.

Happy Friday everyone!!!