| Vince Capano is a two time winner of the prestigious Quill and Tankard writing award for humor from the North American Guild of Beer Writers. Vince's column is now a regular feature of beernexus.com Check back often for the next installment of Vince's Adventures in Beerland |
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Another Year of Beer
by Vince Capano
Last year at this time I had become a legend in my own mind. I had just
completed a successful quest to drink one thousand different beers in 365
consecutive days. Yes, Oprah, Jimmy, Dave, and Jay all called asking me to
appear but I was holding out for the return of Johnny Carson, or at the very least,
Chuck Barris. I blame that hallucination on the fact that I had to drink five beers in
the last 14 minutes before the year’s end deadline. Now another year later I’ve
added 546 beers to my total, solid performance but not quite in my own former
league. Then again since there are no repeat beers in the 1,546 it’s still worth one
more Beerland column, don’t you think?
This year’s mini-quest brought its own revelations and thought provoking
comparisons to the Year of the Thousand. Drinking over 500 different beers in a
year was fun, drinking 1,000 was work. Okay, so it might not be a task that will be
featured on TV’s Dirty Jobs show, but it wasn't all fun and games. Even worse, it
was a job without a vacation. Forget about having a Coke or iced tea or even a
second round of a beer I liked. Reaching one thousand meant having 3 different
beers a day, every day so no lolly-gagging or repeats allowed. This year however
I could stop and smell the hops. My goal this year was that there was no goal
(think the USA team in the World Cup). So here’s my first lesson learned one year
later – good beer deserves to be enjoyed as a leisurely pleasure not as a
statistic.
One imposing legacy from the thousand that I carried with me all this year was an
extra twenty pounds- most of it around my waist. Yes Virginia, there is such a
thing as a beer belly. Oh, I’ve read the studies that say beer doesn’t really put
weight on and that the “beer belly” is simply caused by overeating, not drinking.
Well they didn’t study me. At the end of the thousand I got on the scale and it said
“to be continued”. This year I couldn’t seem to lose any of it. In fact when I got on
the scale this morning it read like a phone number. My friend Arty, the head
brewer at Baker Street Ales, told me his foolproof solution to any beer drinker’s
weight problem. Why did I ask Arty for advice? Well if brewers got me into this
trouble it makes sense they could probably get me out of it too. “All you have to
do”, said Arty, “is eat next to nothing, exercise a lot, and give up all beer except
those made at Baker Street.” Gee, thanks. On the plus size, I mean side, I can
now proudly wear my extra large “never trust a skinny beer drinker” t-shirt. Ah, the
power of beer- I've been transformed from shaky character to Mr. Trustworthy!
Beer may be the drink of the common man but it can get expensive even at my
local watering holes which has a “Free Beer Tomorrow” sign over the bar.
Bartender, let me order another pint while I wait for that deal to kick in. We beer
folk are proud of saying that for $20 we can get a bottle of one of the best beers in
the world while the wine snob can’t even sniff the cork of a great wine for that
price. Still, I discovered that I was down a hefty chunk of change in drinking 500
beers this year (I was afraid to add up last year's total). I’m fairly sure that if I gave
up beer on the day I finished that one thousandth bottle, I could be writing this
column from a fine pub in Belgium enjoying what I gave up to get there. Actually
I’m glad I didn’t do that, then what reason would I have to play the lottery?
Perhaps the most expensive beer I had this year was Odell’s Woodcut #4 at
twenty-five dollars a bottle. No, that is not a misprint. Truth in journalism demands I
now admit that I actually didn’t buy this beer but only tasted it (several times) at the
Stouds beer festival in Adamstown, PA. The beer was so good I was actually
tempted to order a bottle direct from a store near the brewery in Colorado. Sadly,
the shipping fee wasn’t included in the price so it was a no sale. However they did
offer free shipping on Sam Adams Utopia at $599 per bottle. What a deal.
In this year’s adventure the largest beer store I visited was “Dave’s Liquors” in
Northport, Long Island, NY. Dave carries over 800 bottles of beer and still has
room for 8 taps of New York’s finest brews. All taps are located on the wall at the
far end of the store right over the boxes of empty growlers just waiting to be filled.
Now a logical person might say all I had to do to have easy and immediate access
500 different beers and end my quest in one stop was simply to camp in Dave’s
parking lot. Even more, after drinking the 500 there would be nearly 40% of his
inventory waiting for my following year’s adventure. I did think about it but Dave
said he wouldn’t let me keep the same camping site. It took up too many parking
spots. And for the record there are no available apartments within ten miles of
Dave’s. How did all of those people find out about this place before me?
It was interesting to see how differently people reacted to learning I was on a
mission to drink 500 beers as compared to last year when I told them my goal was
a thousand. It was yawn v. awe. One thousand was insanely cool; five hundred
merely wacko pedestrian. One thousand was absurdly chivalric and quixotic; five
hundred was over-indulgent and insensible. I had no choice but to change tactics
or to be more accurate, vocabulary. Style over substance usually works. So for
most of this year I wasn’t trying to drink 500 beers, I was on a actually on a Quest
for the Half- Grand, Pursuit of the 500th, and a Pint Pilgrimage for 499 Plus one .
Feel free to send me your vote on which one you like the best.
For those wondering, my calendar year of beer counting begins and ends on June
21. Why June 21? Simply, it was the day in 2008 that I decided, for no particular
reason, to write down every beer I was going to drink. Now that I think of it, June
21 is also Martha Washington’s birthday and the day New Hampshire entered the
Union so maybe it was fate. Hey, it’s well known that Martha’s spouse had a
brewery, not to mention a distillery, right on the old homestead and that the Granite
State is one of the five stables for the Budweiser Clydesdales. Mere
coincidence? Sure it is…. just like Lincoln and Kennedy having 7 letters in their
last names and there being 24 hours in a day, 24 cans in a case of beer.
I’m now a few days into year three of this ongoing adventure. In fact, I now have a
fresh new flip pad to write down all the new beers I’m looking forward to trying. As
for using a pad instead of my traditional recording medium of bar napkins, well
don’t blame me. The pad was a gift from my friend Greg. He said he just got tired
of seeing me mistakenly sneeze into my work notes. Gesundheit.
I’m sometimes asked if I’m worried about finding new beers this year. In response
may I quote, in a fashion, William Shakespeare – “Age cannot wither beer nor
custom stale its infinite variety”.
Time for a beer….. a new one.
by Vince Capano
Last year at this time I had become a legend in my own mind. I had just
completed a successful quest to drink one thousand different beers in 365
consecutive days. Yes, Oprah, Jimmy, Dave, and Jay all called asking me to
appear but I was holding out for the return of Johnny Carson, or at the very least,
Chuck Barris. I blame that hallucination on the fact that I had to drink five beers in
the last 14 minutes before the year’s end deadline. Now another year later I’ve
added 546 beers to my total, solid performance but not quite in my own former
league. Then again since there are no repeat beers in the 1,546 it’s still worth one
more Beerland column, don’t you think?
This year’s mini-quest brought its own revelations and thought provoking
comparisons to the Year of the Thousand. Drinking over 500 different beers in a
year was fun, drinking 1,000 was work. Okay, so it might not be a task that will be
featured on TV’s Dirty Jobs show, but it wasn't all fun and games. Even worse, it
was a job without a vacation. Forget about having a Coke or iced tea or even a
second round of a beer I liked. Reaching one thousand meant having 3 different
beers a day, every day so no lolly-gagging or repeats allowed. This year however
I could stop and smell the hops. My goal this year was that there was no goal
(think the USA team in the World Cup). So here’s my first lesson learned one year
later – good beer deserves to be enjoyed as a leisurely pleasure not as a
statistic.
One imposing legacy from the thousand that I carried with me all this year was an
extra twenty pounds- most of it around my waist. Yes Virginia, there is such a
thing as a beer belly. Oh, I’ve read the studies that say beer doesn’t really put
weight on and that the “beer belly” is simply caused by overeating, not drinking.
Well they didn’t study me. At the end of the thousand I got on the scale and it said
“to be continued”. This year I couldn’t seem to lose any of it. In fact when I got on
the scale this morning it read like a phone number. My friend Arty, the head
brewer at Baker Street Ales, told me his foolproof solution to any beer drinker’s
weight problem. Why did I ask Arty for advice? Well if brewers got me into this
trouble it makes sense they could probably get me out of it too. “All you have to
do”, said Arty, “is eat next to nothing, exercise a lot, and give up all beer except
those made at Baker Street.” Gee, thanks. On the plus size, I mean side, I can
now proudly wear my extra large “never trust a skinny beer drinker” t-shirt. Ah, the
power of beer- I've been transformed from shaky character to Mr. Trustworthy!
Beer may be the drink of the common man but it can get expensive even at my
local watering holes which has a “Free Beer Tomorrow” sign over the bar.
Bartender, let me order another pint while I wait for that deal to kick in. We beer
folk are proud of saying that for $20 we can get a bottle of one of the best beers in
the world while the wine snob can’t even sniff the cork of a great wine for that
price. Still, I discovered that I was down a hefty chunk of change in drinking 500
beers this year (I was afraid to add up last year's total). I’m fairly sure that if I gave
up beer on the day I finished that one thousandth bottle, I could be writing this
column from a fine pub in Belgium enjoying what I gave up to get there. Actually
I’m glad I didn’t do that, then what reason would I have to play the lottery?
Perhaps the most expensive beer I had this year was Odell’s Woodcut #4 at
twenty-five dollars a bottle. No, that is not a misprint. Truth in journalism demands I
now admit that I actually didn’t buy this beer but only tasted it (several times) at the
Stouds beer festival in Adamstown, PA. The beer was so good I was actually
tempted to order a bottle direct from a store near the brewery in Colorado. Sadly,
the shipping fee wasn’t included in the price so it was a no sale. However they did
offer free shipping on Sam Adams Utopia at $599 per bottle. What a deal.
In this year’s adventure the largest beer store I visited was “Dave’s Liquors” in
Northport, Long Island, NY. Dave carries over 800 bottles of beer and still has
room for 8 taps of New York’s finest brews. All taps are located on the wall at the
far end of the store right over the boxes of empty growlers just waiting to be filled.
Now a logical person might say all I had to do to have easy and immediate access
500 different beers and end my quest in one stop was simply to camp in Dave’s
parking lot. Even more, after drinking the 500 there would be nearly 40% of his
inventory waiting for my following year’s adventure. I did think about it but Dave
said he wouldn’t let me keep the same camping site. It took up too many parking
spots. And for the record there are no available apartments within ten miles of
Dave’s. How did all of those people find out about this place before me?
It was interesting to see how differently people reacted to learning I was on a
mission to drink 500 beers as compared to last year when I told them my goal was
a thousand. It was yawn v. awe. One thousand was insanely cool; five hundred
merely wacko pedestrian. One thousand was absurdly chivalric and quixotic; five
hundred was over-indulgent and insensible. I had no choice but to change tactics
or to be more accurate, vocabulary. Style over substance usually works. So for
most of this year I wasn’t trying to drink 500 beers, I was on a actually on a Quest
for the Half- Grand, Pursuit of the 500th, and a Pint Pilgrimage for 499 Plus one .
Feel free to send me your vote on which one you like the best.
For those wondering, my calendar year of beer counting begins and ends on June
21. Why June 21? Simply, it was the day in 2008 that I decided, for no particular
reason, to write down every beer I was going to drink. Now that I think of it, June
21 is also Martha Washington’s birthday and the day New Hampshire entered the
Union so maybe it was fate. Hey, it’s well known that Martha’s spouse had a
brewery, not to mention a distillery, right on the old homestead and that the Granite
State is one of the five stables for the Budweiser Clydesdales. Mere
coincidence? Sure it is…. just like Lincoln and Kennedy having 7 letters in their
last names and there being 24 hours in a day, 24 cans in a case of beer.
I’m now a few days into year three of this ongoing adventure. In fact, I now have a
fresh new flip pad to write down all the new beers I’m looking forward to trying. As
for using a pad instead of my traditional recording medium of bar napkins, well
don’t blame me. The pad was a gift from my friend Greg. He said he just got tired
of seeing me mistakenly sneeze into my work notes. Gesundheit.
I’m sometimes asked if I’m worried about finding new beers this year. In response
may I quote, in a fashion, William Shakespeare – “Age cannot wither beer nor
custom stale its infinite variety”.
Time for a beer….. a new one.
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| Another Year of Beer by Vince Capano |