I faintly remember the first time I ever had a beer from Pizza Port Brewing Company. It was at the Great American Beer Festival about 5 or 6 years ago. I waited with my band of beer geeks in what was an absurdly long line consisting almost soley of more beer geeks. Just to give you an idea of the vibe, many of the beer geeks (i can only assume) would probably slap a baby for a taste of Pizza Port’s beers, if that’s what they thought it would take. When I finally got to the front of the line, I ordered an IPA. I got my ounce of beer and tried to get away from the gaggle of geeks, partly to escape the chaos, but mostly because I didn’t want to see any babies get slapped . Standing there with my own beer geek friends, I felt as if I was about to partake in a world altering experience (at least in terms of my perception of what beer was and what it could be). I imagined it would be something akin to the first time I took acid. In fact, I almost felt obligated to make myself experience something special. Because this is what I was told should happen. This is what I read should happen. So, standing amongst my beer geek friends, all of us geekily warming our beers with our hands, swirling our beers, and examining the aromas emancipating from the Pizza Port nectars in our glasses, I drank.
And it was good.
But certainly not world altering.
Certainly not as cool as acid. But good.
Had I come to the beer on my own, without the influence of beer geeks and websites, the beer drinking experience might have been totally different. The beer wasn’t existing on its own. Rather, it existed in a haze of personal accolades, rave reviews, and a cult following. The beer wasn’t independent of any of these things at this particular moment in time. I questioned myself as I tasted the beer because I expected something amazing and surreal and instead just had a sip of a well made India Pale Ale. A well made IPA should have been enough to make me happy, but instead, I had the reputations of the beer to deal with while I tried to enjoy it’s flavors and aromas. I didn’t realize what was going on back then, but out of some sort of need to catagorize beer based on quality, and in an attempt to provide some sort of connection with the beer comunity, I had created in my mind a “beer heaven” of sorts where only certain supreme beers exisisted. It made life as a beer geek simple. A beer could be good and a beer could be bad, and there was always thousands of people to confirm either.
But it missed the point entirely. The major problem was that I wasn’t letting myself settle on the fact that the beer could still exist without the praise from beer geeks, without positive beer ratings and reviews. In fact, beer flourishes when it’s approached and enjoyed from the standpoint that it exists only as beer. Not beer that has been reviewed, rated, or praised.
In the end, I came to the conclusion that if I want surreal out of something I ingest, I’ll just take acid again.
