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| The beer is way better than the ex! |
Craft Beer. You can’t travel to a bigger city in the United States now without coming across at least one brewery, and—frankly—that’s a great thing! Brewers put their hearts and souls into experimenting with ingredients, equipment, and processes just to bring something a little different to the market. Some offer food or partner with food trucks to sweeten the attraction of craft brew drinkers like my guy. And me? I’m along for the ride and enjoy making art at the table and spending time with Mac.
I first tried craft beer about two years ago. I wasn’t big on it. Mac is a big fan of IPAs (that’s India Pale Ale for those who don’t know, and IPAs are hoppy). Now, he has this pint in hand, and he’s delighted. I wanna try, and I do, and I’m slapped in the face by Christmas. “What the hell?! That tastes like pinecones!” All Mac could do was laugh. I was then on a quest to try more, so we got a flight of different beers in Colorado since we were in a taproom.
I didn’t know that there was official profile terms for beers (like hoppy, malty, etc), and I was naming things by pinecones (hoppy) and vampire teeth (the bite) from my craft-brew-virgin viewpoint. We had some good laughs over it, but it stuck.
Fast forward some years, and I’ve tried over fifty different brewery locations and hundreds of different craft beers via, uh, large sips (Mac said I need to stop chugging) and flights and pints. Most all of them have been fantastic… 10 out of 10 would go again so to speak. Now that I’ve been to so many, though, both in Texas and Colorado, I’m starting to forget which ones I’ve had and what I liked. Tomorrow is the Great American Beer Festival of 2023 here in Denver, Colorado, and we have been at breweries a couple days now. I’ve said for a while that I was gonna track ‘em. Well, it’s time!
