I don't think I really need to tell you, dear reader, how much I like drinking beer. The subject has been covered exhaustively here on my blog for years. There was the teenage revelry, of course, but also more recently a certain pushback against constant bacchanalia. You know me. You know I love beer, and you know full well all the consequences that come along with such a love—physically, emotionally, socially.
And so, here we are at the start of a new year, and I embark on a mission that may seem suspiciously suicidal without further explanation. Please allow me to over-explain.
Every day for the next 366 days (2020 is a leap year), I will drink a different beer. And every day for the next 366 days, I will write about that beer in some way, shape, or form, right here on the blog.
My goals for this project are two-fold, and appear at first glance to be at odds with each other:
1) I want to learn to appreciate and understand beer in a finer sense—finer, at least, than I have in the past, which involved lots of cheap beer guzzled as quickly as possible. There's lots to learn about beer—why does a certain genre taste a certain way, or why do beers from specific regions have a certain flavor, or what separates a stout from porter, etc.—and I want to know it all. I want to experience it all. I will spend the next 366 days boning up on the subject, because as it stands now, I really don't know shit about a drink that I spend so much time around.
2) I want to drink less. This goal is a considerably harder sell: "How the fuck do you expect to drink less by making a commitment to drinking every day?!" To which I respond: "Fair point." But I'm looking at it this way. I'm committing to drink one single beer, and savoring that one beer, instead of drinking multiple beers, so if that pattern continues through the year, I should actually be able to cut my beer consumption levels to about 1/3rd of my usual rate.
This is what I'm calling a "chemotherapy" approach to solving my alcoholism. Just like chemo blasts those toxic cancer cells with other, different toxins, so too will I be trying to destroy my alcoholism with other, different alcohol. This is not a proven method, but I'm going to give it a try, and see what happens.
(And just like chemo is usually combined with surgery, I am also setting a hard year-long limit for how much alcohol I consume. 550 servings through the year, including the 366 for this project, is my goal. This averages out to about 1.5 servings per day, which means if I play my cards right, I can still let a little loose during the odd bachelor party or wedding reception or even the rare party without kids. Seeing as I'm in sniffing distance of 1500 alcoholic servings for 2019, 550 is a big cut. But this is all only tangential to the This Is My Blood project.)
So anyway, let's see what happens. I'll be writing a blog post for every day's beer adventure here on the blog (they will be retroactively posted on the day that I drank the beer, even if I do the actual writing days later). I don't know what this project will become, over time. It's possible that it could become a tasting guide to different beers, a travelogue of the shit I did to discover and enjoy the beer, or a creative-writing exercise... probably all three, at certain points (probably not a Joe's New Summer Redux, but maybe sometimes!). If you know me because you know Puke on Your Birthday, then you already know what kind of nonsense is going to be scribbled on these 366 posts.
For the beginning, at least, I'm gonna start out just getting my feet wet and writing about the beers themselves, and we'll see where it goes from there. I have a Beer Tasting book that I'll write about soon, but just know for now that I am not going into this thing blind. I want to gain knowledge—it's that old Cliff Clavin theory that you kill brain cells with beer, and replace 'em with even smarter brain cells.
All of this brings us to today's beer, the inaugural 2020 beverage. I wanted to pick something called "New Year's Ale" or some shit like that, but sometimes life is going to dictate what I'm drinking, and today, life dictated that I end up at Craft Hall, a beer hall that houses Mainstay Independent Brewing Company. If you haven't been there, picture dozens of kids crawling all over a big indoor playground while haggard parents with bloodshot eyes drink overpriced beers at the high-tops on the perimeter. I will have much more to say about Craft Hall when I'm not trying to finish this introductory beer-a-day blog post by sticking to the script.
The script, it seems, calls for me to describe how the Poplar Pils beer tasted. If you think about it, this is a lot more difficult than it sounds—hence the desire to get better at it. If I were to blindly describe how this beer "tastes," then I would probably say something like: It was bitter, which is a good thing. It was a little flatter than I would prefer? I don't know why it was bitter or slightly flat; there is more to learn.
One should also consider that the description on the can might deceive one to taste things that aren't necessarily there. It is called "Poplar Pils," and after holding a sip in my mouth for a few seconds, I think I could taste some wintery, tree-like flavors. The can also said "bracing hop-forwardness," which, yeah, I could taste what I would call "hops." Was my perception skewed? Maybe; there is more to learn.
Before we get too far in the weeds with the more "creative" aspects of this blog series, I'm probably going focus a good deal on understanding taste. What do I taste in this sip of beer, and why do I taste it? So I suppose this could make for some monotonous reading in the next month or two. It'll get better... maybe. No promises. Thanks for coming along for the ride.
Notes
The script, it seems, calls for me to describe how the Poplar Pils beer tasted. If you think about it, this is a lot more difficult than it sounds—hence the desire to get better at it. If I were to blindly describe how this beer "tastes," then I would probably say something like: It was bitter, which is a good thing. It was a little flatter than I would prefer? I don't know why it was bitter or slightly flat; there is more to learn.
One should also consider that the description on the can might deceive one to taste things that aren't necessarily there. It is called "Poplar Pils," and after holding a sip in my mouth for a few seconds, I think I could taste some wintery, tree-like flavors. The can also said "bracing hop-forwardness," which, yeah, I could taste what I would call "hops." Was my perception skewed? Maybe; there is more to learn.
Before we get too far in the weeds with the more "creative" aspects of this blog series, I'm probably going focus a good deal on understanding taste. What do I taste in this sip of beer, and why do I taste it? So I suppose this could make for some monotonous reading in the next month or two. It'll get better... maybe. No promises. Thanks for coming along for the ride.
Notes
BEER: Poplar Pils
GENRE: Pilsner
ABV: 5.0%
BREWED BY: Mainstay Independent Brewing Company
LOCATION: Philadelphia, PA
PURCHASED AT: Craft Hall (on-site)
PRICE (AT THAT LOCATION): Advertised as $7 for a pounder, but including tax it was $8, and including tax and tip it was $9 (FUCK)
PAIRED WITH: An insane Willow K*** going down the slide over and over and over
GRADE: 2 pukes out of 5 (These grades will be so arbitrary that it'll hurt. I'll just be going with my gut feeling. So, like, just get ready for Hamm's Premium to get 5 pukes out of 5 eventually, okay?)
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