The beer that got you into beer

Sam Smith's Oatmeal Stout and Taddy Porter. Absolutely freaking delicious beers! I never went back to crap beers after that....

Dogfish Head Aprihop. The journey started there.

All of them. Ha!

Just kidding... Actually it was Sam Adams Boston Lager, which was better than any American style and as good or better than most imports I had sampled.

Fat Tire/ Firestone double bock
Oh ya it is nice to live in the land of IPA's to!!

Dales pale ale and old chub while out visiting in CO

TowsonTiger22 said:

Dogfish Head Aprihop. The journey started there.

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I see that, and I always think about getting it, but never do. Maybe next time.. lol

Back in the day when all I had to choose from at my small town pub was BMC and Newcastle. So I opted for Newcastle. It wasn't until I went to school out in Arizona and had Sierra Nevada Pale Ale that I became hooked. After coming back to the Midwest and had Dogfish Head's Raison d'etre, my desire to expand my palate exploded.

No single beer got me into brewing, as I enjoy many styles. I have a few friends who brew and their influence and encouragement were key to getting me to take the plunge.

Maybe better to say which beer got me into better brew in the first place. I started moving away from BMC back in the '70s, when import beers were the best you could do. At that time I particularly enjoyed Czech pils, which meant Urquell, about the only one I could find in those days.

DFH Midas touch got me in the door but Victory hop devil got me hooked for life

Was stationed in southern Germany with the us Army. Fell in love with hefe weizen. No not so much. I love IPA's

Pete's wicked Ale. Haven't had one of those in years.

Stone IPA

Progression:
The first step away from the Keystone Ice and Natty Light I drank in college was Bass. I thought that was pretty fancy at the time (I was probably 20).

The next step was Samual Adams. Not necessrily just Boston Lager but I thought their wide range of different brews was cool, and I started to like a bunch of non-American-lager styles.

Then came Stone Arrogant Bastard. After that this obsession spiraled out of control.

Like a lot of Us from the left coast......Sierra Nevada Pale Ale.

Pete's wicked for me.... I thought it was great back then!

SA Boston Lager

Oddly enough, I had developed an interest in homebrewing before I was drinking beer regularly. I was a microbiology undergrad, out of school due to lack of funds, when I happened across a copy of the original CJOHB at the local library and became entranced with the idea of creating something that didn't taste like the swill I had come across up until then. It was Good Ol' Charlie Papazian who convinced me that beer didn't have to mean BMC. I while it would be a year or so before I started brewing (this was in 1989, when brewing supplies were much harder to come by), I did start investigating such 'unusual' beers as Guinness, Bass, and the then-endangered Ballantine IPA. I was fortunate enough to live in a place where imported beer was fairly well avaialable, and even discovered Chimay Rouge after a bit of work.

Black Butte Porter

Well, this thread is as good as any to get my first post.

14 years ago...Mt first "real" beer was a Corona. I live in Kansas and was working wheat harvest. I was 19 years old. It was a Friday night and all my co-workers left me to finish up. It was 95 degrees I was pissed because I was the only one left at work on a cab-less combine covered in chaff and dust. I came home at 9:00 at night. Had to cancel a hot date. My dad saw I was pissed off. He handed me a Corona. It went down about as fast as any beer I have ever drank. Nothing like an ice cold brew after a long hot day. They went smooth and fast. We sent my mom out for another 12 pack pretty quick. We spent the remaining evening on the deck outside swilling beer, cranking the Allman Brothers on the stereo, and talking about crappy jobs we've worked. Obviously at 19 I had no real experience to know what a crap job was.

I quickly moved on from Corona. New Belgium Brewery was the real brewery that got me hooked. I'd buy whatever version of beer I'd never had from them just to try it. They will always have a special place in my heart.


When I did my first home brew 5 years ago using a buddy's kit I bought an Old Rasputin 4 pack. It was on. Then.

Vomitous, disgusting guinness.

I'm still shaving my tongue.

My aha moment was when I ordered a Bell's Best Brown. I had been trying some occasional different beers like guiness, which tasted like burnt coffee and cigarette butts to me at that time, and Sam Adams Boston Lager but was never impressed

Then came that Bell's. Over the next month I drank every Bell's beer I could find.

For me it was Brooklyn Summer Ale. I too was an occasional commercial beer drinker. Didn't care for many of them but I drank them to be social. Then my old drinking buddy O.T., RIP, got me to try Brooklyn Summer Ale. I was blown away that a beer could actually have a lot of flavor that I found VERY interesting. He explained to me what "craft beer" was I have never looked back. I was already a mead and wine maker so this was a natural path. Now I drink tons more beer than I ever did because there are soooooooooooooo many different flavors outside of bring old grainy tasting commercial beer.

Sierra Nevada pale ale.

I was 16 years old and working with my grandfather installing copper roofs. I'd worked with him for a month before the first 100 degree day came. 8 hours on your feet, working with reflective copper on staging 5 stories up. Complete and utter hell. Between him an I, we drank 5 gallons of water that day and neither of us peed once. It was bad.

Anyway, we called it a day and got back down to his truck, popped the tailgate, and reached into a cooler and pulled out 2 Sierra Nevadas buried in ice. He popped it for me, gave me a smile, and said 'There's nothing like an ice cold beer after a brutally hot day on the roof.' We sat in his truck in the parking lot, windows up and a/c on full blast, drinking our beer. I felt like a man...

I still think of him anytime I drink one.

Unfortunately Michelob amber Bock. I've progressed since then. St Bernardus abt 12 got me into really good beer.

Fat Tire and Sweetwater 420 did it for me

Dogfish Head 90 Minute IPA was what did it for me. Haven't looked back since

Double_D said:

I moved to an apartment with my future SWMBO around the corner from Tenaya Creek Brewery here in town. Sam Adams cherry wheat was what got me trying the micro brew.. And then I started homebrewing.

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Same here. I always appreciated a Becks,Guiness or Stella but Sam's Cherry Wheat got me started.

Prior to turning 21, I worked at a local liquor store. I was oblivious to all the craft beers on hand and really had no idea what I was getting myself into. At the end of the night while restocking all the cold cases, the manager would encourage "Research and Development" to help me when assisting customers. The beer that hooked me was Allagash's Grand Cru Winter Reserve.

Mine was an oddball. Friend of mine got ahold of some Fraoch Heather Ale. No idea where he got it but I loved it right off and it turned into my basement and spare bedroom being filled with beer stuff.

aww man. gonna show my age a bit. DFH 60 was my first foray into real beers. when i turned legal i knew i wasn't into BMC/corona/etc but i wanted to do something since i was legal. i grabbed a six of 60 minute and ended up downing it in 40 minutes. walked back and grabbed two more sixes. stoudt's esb and troeganator. been full speed ahead ever since.

I got into real beer living in Fort Collins in the mid-90s. Prior to that I drank some swill but never really liked it. I started to branch out into Newcastle, Bass, Negra Modelo and stuff like that but when I moved to FC in 94 Fat Tire, SNPA and Odells 90 Shilling were the first good beers I remember getting into. We drank some Sam Smiths too but it was expensive for my budget at that time.

If I had to name one I'd say Newcastle. It was the first non-swill, non-yellow beer I ever had.

Jeeperforlife said:

Mine was an oddball. Friend of mine got ahold of some Fraoch Heather Ale. No idea where he got it but I loved it right off and it turned into my basement and spare bedroom being filled with beer stuff.

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Aw, I love Fraoch! Didn't discover it until well after I'd established my love of beer, but it's still fantastic. Fraoch is one of three (along with Alba Scots Pine and Dog Fish Head Midas Touch) that really made me love ancient and weird recipes.

Unrelated, however many dozens of pages ago I recalled Deschutes Cinder Cone Red as having been the beer that got me into beer. They discontinued it years ago after a recipe change that didn't go over too well (in my opinion, at least), but the brewery just announced last week that it's coming back permanently in 2014, in bombers! Hopefully they go back to the old formulation...

For me, it wasn't any particular beer. Every year I'd been go to a friend's place for one week to drink, eat BBQ, play video games and watch movies (he's single LOL). Well, he got into home brewing a couple years ago and that year he had about 6 different brews for me to try. THAT hooked me and I haven't looked back. So no particular beer, just home brew in general. In fact, I won't drink BMCs anymore. I've been brewing since last July and any BMC I had after that tasted just like my first ever beer...horrible! I advocate that everyone's first beer should be a home brew.

I was buying 5 L English Brown Ale mini kegs from the grocery for $20 and decided I can make better for less. I have not been disappointed.

Duvel

My family drank micro most of my life.

By the time I was able to buy beer, I was poor and in college. 30-packs and malt 40's all the way. Once I could afford better beer, it never occurred to me to actually buy it.

One day, I picked up a twelver of Sierra Nevada and a twelver of Eye of the Hawk. I liked them enough to ask myself why I was still buying swill.

I've always liked beer. But scoring a fresh pair of Pliny the Elders is probably what kicked off my obsession with IPAs.

Boulevard Unfiltered Wheat

The beer that got me into homebrewing was Sweetwater IPA. They are local and were a big deal when the original owner was there.

Now I'm hoping to land a job at Terrapin if they'll ever post job openings.

I would have to say boulevard wheat and blue moon. Both I rarely drink now

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Over the hump of thinking beer tasted like cold piss, or actually being a beer fanatic? Prior to turning 21, beer was pretty much something just to choke down to get a buzz on. I didn't drink a ton before that age but when I did I preferred some sort of rotgut rum or vodka mixed with something to do the job. A friend of mine turned me onto J.W. Dundee's Honey Brown, and I drank a fair amount of that, and actually liked it fairly well.

The real change came though about 5 years later, when I asked a bartender "what's a good beer you've got on tap, I'm sick of the Labatt and crap like that." He pulled a couple ounces of Great Lakes Burning River into a rocks glass and slid it over. And, as they say, the rest is history