Time flies when you're having fun, doesn't it?
Is it right to reanimate this blog from ye olde days of yore? Though, given the loss of breweries like 21st Amendment and now, more recently, Rogue Ales, maybe a little necromancy is in order.
I'm older, not much wiser, and, well a lot has changed since 2012...
I did eventually get that Victory at Sea, hell, I managed to get cases of it back when I was working for "evil grocery corporation" and now Pliny the Elder is so popular, you can find it practically anywhere. Shit, they've got it on tap at the bar across the street from where I work now, and it's always Happy Hour. No, seriously, this bar has like a six hour long "happy hour", wherein beers are $6. You can't fucking beat craft beer at that price.
Hell, even "near beer" got better in the decade I've been slacking off from the blog. No shit, I like Heineken 0.0 over actual leaded Heineken. La Chouffe even has a near beer! And...it's actually good. Yes, non-alcoholic beer is becoming tastier and more accessible.
Truthfully, I quit writing for a long time until around January of 2024 when I sat down in a fit of mania and ended up not only completing but publishing a fantasy novel under a pen name. My dad, the best drinking buddy and staunchest supporter I had, used to ask me from time to time why I didn't continue "the beer blog". Truth is, I don't have an answer. Once I started working full time I just sort of put any designs I had of being a full time writer on hold. I forgot about it. But, maybe only recently have I been reminded that you can still be an adult with responsibilities and continue pursuing shit that makes you happy. Hell, you have to. The world is...well, did any of us ever wake up and expect the last five years to end up the way they did?
I lost my dad in 2016, and ended up moving to Monterey in pursuit of happiness some time later. While I didn't find what I was looking for in the end, I did end up drinking a lot of great micro beer and read a lot of Steinbeck. Actually, the craft brewery next to my first apartment just announced they're closing their doors too. Now that all will remain of English Ales is a sweatshirt I bought out of necessity and a personalized stein because I wanted to be one of the cool kids. And that's a fucking shame, honestly. As these were proper fucking English style ales and not some reimagined version of the kind of pint you'd find in the Isles. I was fortunate, in hindsight, I lived close enough to Dust Bowl Brewing that you'd undoubtedly find me chilling out on the patio, enjoying the one week of sunshine we were afforded, drinking the grassiest India Pale Ale. I lived stumbling distance from English Ales at one juncture. And later I haunted places like Alvarado Street, which had a monopoly on local craft beer, or California Seltzer Company in Pacific Grove. But to be fair, while I will never be a seltzer gal, they did have oysters as big as my fucking face on happy hour and I was happy to gobble them up.
Maybe I should've revived the blog during my adventures in Bulgaria. Where, surprise surprise, they have a craft beer scene that puts our sours and pastry stouts to fucking shame. You haven't lived until you've had tomato beer. That's right, fucking tomato beer. Not a Michi, a fucking ale brewed with tomatoes that tastes like a damn V8 but goes down like redneck water on a humid summer after wandering around Sofia for hours. I certainly thought about it, sitting at High 5 night after night, for a couple weeks and shooting the shit with the Russian ex-pats who run the place.
Craft beer is what ended up bringing my dad and I together, sort of. See, after his longterm partner died, we tried to find *something* to bond over. Cue Thanksgivings up in Oregon, wherein, despite being underage, I got to drink with the guy because we ran on European rules. He took me to numerous craft bars when I turned legal age, indulged me in stopping at random holes in the wall on adventures, and brought home weird foreign beer for me to try on a regular basis.
Perhaps with the loss of independent breweries coinciding with the ten year anniversary of my dad's death, I'm back in mourning. It certainly feels like it. While this was never an insanely popular blog, it was my way of spending time with my dad. It was something I looked forward to.
Maybe its return is part memory lane and part act of rebellion. Like I have written at the top, "Beer is proof God loves us and wants us to be happy". While I can't save every microbrewery from here to Timbuktu, as I'm certainly not a wealthy woman, I can write about them.
And I'm rather fond of writing these days.
