Everyone at one time was living in a world drinking bad beer(Bud,Miller etc...) until they had that ONE great beer and they awoke from their sleep and realized there are GREAT beers in this world and I am going to drink every one of them. What was your Red pill and by that I mean what was your 1st great beer, where were you and how long ago did it happen?
I wish i had a "red pill" moment. but for me it was more of a gradual "almost neutral pill" moment. I graduated from bud lite, to blue moon, to dos xxx, to left hand milk stout. I wish I had an epiphany but it was more of a grooming process for me.
Early 90's Three Crowns Pub, Wiltshire - a fine setting for epiphany Wadworth's 6X - A modest bitter Beer changed forever that day
Hands down, Old 21 by the Brew Kettle. Was going there at 16 and one day I was like, " God damn, this is tasty!" A couple thousand dollars later....
Cant really remember when I learned that there was much more to beer than BMC. I was pretty young. I do have some what of a "Red Pill" moment. A year or so ago I opened up a Black tuesday on a Friday night alone. Took one sip and said to myself...wll there is no going back now. Drank the whole bottle. Bad idea.
What a great beer to start with. Wish I had. Instead I floundered for a few years until I finally had Old Peculier (pre Scottish Newcastle days).
I was at the Sugar Maple in Milwaukee with soem buddies. Up to that point, I was a Amstel Light drinker and had recently discovered Becks Dark. I used to go to the Ginger Man in NYC, but never really ventured beyond Guinness. With 60 beers on tap at the Sug, and all being foreign to me, I decided to go with a flight of "dark" beers. Sprecher BBA Scotch Ale New Holland Dragons Milk Goose Island Bourbon County '09 Some Other Dark Beer Hold crap! My world was forever rocked!
mine was avery maharaja a year ago. picked up a bomber of it yesterday to celebrate my first year of craft beer
I remember thinking I graduated from MGD to Coors Light. I thought Coors Light had OOOOH so much flavor! People at work here in Michigan were talking about Oberon one day and how good it was so I decided to give it a try. I loved it and couldn't get enough. Then I tried Two Hearted Ale, and I was fully revived! Thankfully now, it feels like a "Red Pill Moment" every time I find a new brand that I like. I had been loving Founders, and for a while that was all I was buying. Then I tried some DFH and it was Red Pill all over again! Just for money's sake, I tried a sixer of Coors again later on down the road and it was like water... Guess I'm fully awake and looking for my next red pill!
Wish I could say the same, not too many fine beers here when I first started drinking beer in the late 60's, there was crap beer and crappier for the most part. My red pill was original Lowenbrau, which led me to try Chimay Blue, and that truly opened my mind to what beer can be.
It was 2 yrs ago i had my first craft beer. bells two hearted was my red pill and i have been on a mission to continually blow my mind ever since!
In the early 90's I started to develop a fondness for beers like Sam Adams Boston Lager, SN Pale Ale, and Anchor Steam. Then I tried my first real German Hefeweiss. There was no going back to BMC after that.
Late 2009 I had this one beer that I cannot remember. I believe it was either from Belgium or at least a Belgian style beer. I wish I would have noted what it was back then but I didn't and there's no way for me to figure out what it was. Whatever beer it was, although I was already on the verge of changing what I drank, that got things moving.
Sprecher Maibock in the summer of 1997. They were selling it for the same price as Miller so I drank it all summer long.
Yeah, I never enjoyed crap beer. When I wanted to get drunk in college, I used liquor. Even before I was 21, I tried every different beer I could, though it wasn't until I was 23 or so that I really fell in love with craft.
I hated BMC beers and pretty much never drank beer until starting out on things like Blue Moon/SNPA/Lagunitas IPA/Hoegaarden which I enjoyed and would drink but didn't absolutely love. My red pill and definite downward (upward?) spiral started with Alpine Exponential Hoppiness. My first experience with a growler and I was in love from that moment forward.
I took a similar progression. From liquor, to imports, to basically just trying about anything and everything. I guess the first beer I really remember being "craft" was back in 2000 at a bar doing a free glass if you purchased the happy hour beer. I said what the hell, it was a Pyramid Hefeweizen. I wasn't blown away, but I did enjoy it. Many beers later and I'm still finding new ones to enjoy.
I drank Shiner Bock for years and thought I was being different...god I loathe that dirty swill now. I started working next to a huge liquor store and during down time I would stroll over there out of boredom. I started meandering through the beer section and couldn't believe how many options were out there. I guess there would be 2 beers that got me on the right path...Rogue Hazelnut Brown Nectar and Bear Republic Hop Rod Rye. I still remember taking a sip and then staring at my glass in disbelief at what I had just tasted. I know in the grand scheme of things those beers aren't too highly regarded (although Hop Rod is still my go to rye fix) but compared to Shiner Bock they are legendary. I still have these moments as I progress through any and every craft beer I can get my hands on. The last would probably be the Melange 3 I popped the other night...so tasty. That's what I love about this hobby/lifestyle...every once in a while having one of those "stare at my glass" moments. I feel there are many "red pills" left out there for me and I intend to find them...all the while drinking great beers.
First beer I had was Budweiser on my friend's 17th birthday. I was so let down with how bad it was. I just sat there staring at it thinking, "THIS is beer? THIS is what everyone loves to drink???" After that I just drank Yuengling and BMC at the occasional college parties I went to, mostly while playing beer pong. I never really thought of beer as something I would just sit down and drink when there's no game involved because of how much I disliked the taste. During my junior year of college when most of my friends turned 21 I got into some slightly better beers like Guinness, Harp, Killian's, and Blue Moon and drank while watching hockey or other sports with a couple buddies. For my 21st birthday in the fall of my senior year of college, a friend of mine who was just getting into craft beer got me a mixed six pack of craft beer. Nothing too crazy, I remember there was North Coast Red Seal, Monty Python's Holy Grail Ale, DFH Midas Touch, and I forgot what the other three were. I remember I didn't really like any of them except for Midas Touch though, so I wasn't really converted yet and continued buying mostly Harp, Blue Moon, and Killian's. At some point during the spring of my senior year, 2009, the same friend who got me the mix-a-six was getting more into craft beer and took me to a store with a fantastic beer selection (Buy Rite on Oak Tree Road in South Plainfield for anyone in NJ). The whole back wall and one of the aisles is craft beer. I ended up buying Peche Mortel and Stone Imperial Russian Stout. The guy working there, who was really helpful in getting me started over the next year or so, said, "You're jumping into the deep end with that stuff," but I didn't care and bought them anyway. I first opened the Stone IRS and an epiphany ensued. I have been hooked ever since.
1995 @ the very first Flying Saucer downtown Ft.Worth,Tx. at their first Christmas Ale tasting . Had a Cinnamon Porter from Main St. Brewing in Dallas...Amazing beer that was !!
Gumballhead and 60 Minute got me hooked while in college. Upland Wheat was the first craft beer I liked so Gumballhead blew my mind.
I had been drinking a lot of Pale Ales, IPAs, some pretty easy to find stouts (guiness, old raspy), nothing crazy, I really though IPAs were the end/all-be/all of the craft beer world... until I tried New Belgium La Folie. That's when I began my quest to see how far down the rabbit hole goes. Still looking...
drinking fat tire at a friends house and i accidentally called it flat tire. he laughed at me. ever since then i've dedicated my life to becoming the biggest beer snob on the planet. 99% of the way there. just gotta forum stalk Kazoo and point out his mistakes and correct Todd a few more times to get to 100% beer snob jerk happy april 1st!
Gulden Draak, maybe the 5th beer ever that I had tasted, I had it easy. Well that was what got me into craft, prior to that I had had Hofbraeu and it blew me away.
mine was less than an awesome beer.. but decent never the less.. Bass ale started it all. then from time to time a more daring beer.. sometimes resulting i a drain pour. but it did started it all.
Nope. Never regularly drank crappy beer. Discovered better beer via brews named like Arrogant Bastard and Delirium Tremens. Seemed cool initially, but was the flavors that stuck. I took the orange pill.
For me it was a Yeti. I saw a bottle with silver or gold foil on the top and said YETI in gigantic letters and had to drink it. I drank it in my freezing cold apartment that night and though to myself I would rater be drinking nothing else right now. Before then I dabbled with Sam Adams, Sierra Nevada and random other bottles I'd pick up that looked or sounded good, but the Yeti completely took me to the other side.
At a bar in San Diego, while visiting friends. "Hey Greg, I got you a beer." "Cool, what is it?" "Pliny the Elder"
Bourbon County Stout. Went to the Blue Nile's (Minneapolis) stout and porter fest, and had a glass of BCBS, Darkness, and some other big stout I can't remember. Stumbling home that night I thought, wow, beer can be really amazingly good.
NABC Hoptimus. Fourth of July 2011. Me and ten other friends out in the woods of northern KY at the inlaws cabin soaking in a hot tub.
