This Is My Blood: Brooklyn Winter Lager

After one episode of The Crown, it was only 9:15, which was too late for another full hour of The Crown, but too early to go to bed (or so I inferred from Pam's "Do you want to watch something else?"). So we put on an episode of Happy Endings, and I fell asleep on the couch even before the sextet had time to split into A-plot and B-plot (I was told later that the teams this week were Brad/Jane/Penny and Alex/Dave/Max). I awoke suddenly as the credits blared (Hulu's volume levels are fucking wild), and we started the end-of-the-night routine. I usually gather all of the children's various cups and place them in the dishwasher, then start gathering all the formula equipment for when Martha inevitably wakes up in the middle of the goddamn night (I for real haven't had an uninterrupted night of sleep for over a year). I can do a lot of this half-asleep, and tonight was no different. Right before I turned out the lights to end the procedure, I snapped to attention—fuck, I didn't drink a beer today.

So I quick cracked open a random beer—Brooklyn Winter Lager, sure, why not—and drank it in about four minutes. I was tempted to chug it, but I've never been much of a chugger. I did spend that five minutes thinking about why anyone would chug a beer, however. It's something that's always bothered me about drinking culture. I can't say that the tradition is practiced too often in our thirties, but if you had asked us in our twenties, then we would've said that being able to chug a beer is a useful skill to have. Finishing a full 12oz can of Miller Lite was act that was revered.

 

Chugging was not an organized sport, but it still acted as a sort of display of machismo in plenty of scenarios. I remember hanging out behind the factory at the end of Magee Ave. and watching as Kyle and Max shotgunned beers over and over, trying to one-up each other. I remember being handed a beer bong in Burholme Park woods and failing so spectacularly that I literally fell into the creek (the kid who handed me the bong would later kill himself in a car crash on the Roosevelt Expressway). I remember looking up in awe at the three-story beer bong attached to the side of the house we rented for Harry's bachelor party. Chugging was a way to prove yourself as a drinker. Some people had it, and some people didn't.

It's funny how often people equate being a drunk with being good at drinking, and how inaccurate that assumption is. I was always careful to make sure that people knew that before picking me to be on their Case Race teams—just because I was the sloppiest person on any given Friday night did NOT mean that I was going to be able to finish ten beers in 30 minutes. If my stomach was an engine, then I knew exactly how hard to rev it, and if I pushed it too far, then the engine would be flooded, i.e. I would puke.

That's really what it comes down to—what kind of stomach you have. If you're prone to gagging and hurling, then chugging was not an option. I've always had a pretty sensitive stomach. I don't know what else to tell you. I can't chug. And I used to hate when people realized that about me. Because of that aforementioned false equivalency, the room always deflated a bit when I had to stop for a breath after six ounces, or I doubled over and grabbed my stomach in agony, or the hose of the beer bong popped out after three seconds and spilled the rest of the beer all over the sidewalk. The disappointment is palpable. It was like I was less of a person because I couldn't chug.

Okay... let's just stop right there. That paragraph ended in an emo place that I didn't intend it to. I don't want to blow this out of proportion. Chugging beers was a silly little thing that didn't have any impact on my emotional well-being, there was no need to get all serious about it. I don't want this short blog post to be about one of my numerous shortcomings. Rather, I was hoping to just speculate on why chugging beer was even a fucking thing at all.

If you really wanted to get that drunk that quickly, then let me introduce you to shots of liquor. If you want to drink beer because you enjoy how it tastes, then why shovel it past your taste buds so hastily? And I can say from experience that drinking one beer every fifteen minutes gets the job done almost as efficiently as drinking one beer every fifteen seconds. The difference is null.

The conclusion must be that chugging beer is the same as any other "feat of strength" that kids participated in to make themselves look cool. It was the same as doing a flip off a diving board or snorting pixie sticks or, I dunno, playing Circle Slap. The younger you are, the more you feel like you need to prove your worth in the most ridiculous ways. And the older you get, the more that internal desire fades away.

And yet there I was, 10 PM on a Tuesday night, drinking a beer as quickly as I could. Maybe not chugging speed, but the idea was the same—I have committed to the insane act of drinking a different beer every day for 366 days, and I needed to prove my worth by drinking a beer on Day 344, as quickly as I could. If someone asked me to chug a can of Miller Lite right now, I would laugh in their face, but tonight tells me that the general need to do stupid shit will never go away, for any of us.

I did not sleep well.

NOTES

BEER: Brooklyn Winter Lager

STYLE: Schwarbier

ABV: 5.6%

BREWED BY: Brooklyn Brewery

LOCATION: Brooklyn, New York

PURCHASED AT: Giant Huntingdon Valley

PAIRED WITH: a strong desire to sleep for ten hours

GRADE: 3 puke out of 5

 

BEER COUNT: 514