Book of Lists: 2) Best Drinking Experiences (General Category)
#6
A publishing phenomenon arrived in the 1970s: The Book of Lists. It was a series of apparently wildly popular books first published in 1977 that functioned as pre-internet topic-surfing. People love lists (pre- or post-internet) and it is exactly the kind of material blogging was invented to showcase. Which got me thinking. I can do lists. Hell, I can do definitive lists. So I gathered my resources and have set forth compiling a modern-day version of the Book of Lists here, on the subject of beer.
Today we turn to the experience of drinking beer. As you recall, researchers at Beervana Amalgamated Sentences have been at these questions for months, applying the most modern statistical methodologies to come up with definitive answers on each subject. They went to the best schools, they’re whip-smart, and they all have Ph.Ds in abstruse subject areas. Their findings have been verified by sophisticated AI modeling. Cutting against mere human preference, their results can surprise. Strisselspalt is the second best hop? Yet we here at Beervana Amalgamated Sentences stand behind these findings, and consider them the gold standard of beery listicles.
The researchers all agreed this was a fun one to work on because we were flying them all over the world to test out new places and conditions for beer-drinking. They drank Tipopils in gondolas in Venice, parachuted with cans of double IPA over Utah (not recommended), spent nights “on the hoof” under bridges in Paris with Kronenbourg. Hmmm, as I look through their receipts now, I see they they really tested out beach-related experiences as well. We have totted up the numbers, and now present you with the best beer-drinking experiences.
The criteria for inclusion on this particular list revolves around the experience of drinking, not the beer (necessarily). We looked for experiences potent enough to bring you fully into the moment, to make you aware of your deep sense of pleasure. It might be a singular moment or one that recurs—the satisfaction of the moment is the key element. The top ten beer-drinking experiences:
10. In the first half of a sporting event in which you are not deeply invested. Sporting events are festive affairs, and drinking a beer early in a game helps elevate the sense of occasion. It builds a mood of camaraderie, binding the watchers in the clink of glass. The beer itself tastes of promise—of the next couple hours, of a win, of greasy food and more beer. By the second half of any sporting event (later innings in baseball, third period in hockey, etc), the drinking event has become a sporting event and attention turns fixedly to the game. Ah, but those first minutes…
9. At a well-loved dive bar full of relaxed locals. The North American dive bar is very specific. The vibe is consistent across the continent: grungy, dark, relaxed. It is a place so modest that the only thing to do is waste time. Inexpensive, it is accessible to all. The dive bar, along with airports, are the only locations on earth untethered from time; life’s pressures remain safely outside its walls. Two hours inside a dive bar can be as relaxing and restorative as a brief Hawaiian vacation.
8. In the back yard with a friend/family member who doesn’t require speech. The profundity of companionable silence.
#7
#9
7. While a noncommercial brewer makes a batch of beer in front of you. Thanks to the Patron Saint of Homebrewing, Charlie Papazian, we have all learned to recite the incantation (“relax, don’t worry, have a homebrew”) and sip our sacred nectar, and joining a friend for a session of homebrewing is one such example. But this category could be as exotic as sitting next to a giant copper cauldron of juniper water bubbling over a wood fire. Either way, it is the act of creation and connection and it is awesome.
6. In a brewery cellar at the end of a tour. Many breweries offer tours and a few give you a snort of the good stuff, straight from the tank. The most famous case is at Pilsner Urquell, where the beer they serve was actually fermented and lagered in the old wooden vats. If you’re very lucky and a brewer is around, they might let you taste a sip from a few of the tanks. If you’re very, very lucky, things might escalate, so that the brewer is pulling samples from wooden casks or hauling aged bottles from a cellar.
5. Around a campfire on a chill, late summer evening after a day hiking in the forest. The last eleven words are negotiable.
4. Inside a cozy drinking hole as the weather rages outside. I can’t speak to tropical storms, though I suspect they offer a wonderful opportunity. But on those spiteful January afternoons when dark starts descending at 3:30 and rain cold enough to rattle like stones falls in sheets, nothing is more satisfying than the warmth of a pub. See also #snowdrinking.
3. As the publican of an Irish pub quietly closes the curtains and locks the door. The government requires Irish pubs close at 11:30 most nights, and in a strict sense, they do. But sometimes they are only closed to those wandering the streets. Anyone “locked in,” or still in the pub when the publican locks the door, may stay, drink, and make merry. It is the most delicious of mildly illicit acts.
2. In a pub that has been serving beer for hundreds of years. Beer is very old, as human institutions go. In venerable pubs, generally European, that age imparts a substance that scents the air. Like a potent psychedelic, it transports the drinker back in time, through dynasties and eras of flagrant facial hair, to times of plague and war but also births and marriages, so that drinkers can almost see the pre-electricity flicker of candlelight. In these bars, something happens.
1. At the bar in an unfamiliar city/town next to a gregarious local.
Nothing in the world makes the foreignness of place fall away faster than a bar stool. This works as well in the neighboring but rarely-visited town as a distant country. Everything is unfamiliar, possibly thrillingly, perhaps overwhelmingly so. But a bar, with a local on hand to welcome and guide, has the power to transform the unknown into the familiar and accessible. Sitting at the bar is a cheat code that makes every place feel like home.
COVER PHOTO: #2