Update: Not Allergic to Beer
The bad news on my health: my rash persists. It is unpleasant as hell, though I’ve managed to reduce the territory it had conquered somewhat. The ugly news is that it remains stubbornly idiopathic. That’s not the same as idiotic, though sometimes it feels so. (Idiopathic: adj, relating to or denoting any disease or condition which arises spontaneously or for which the cause is unknown.)
The good news. After a full month of drinking not a drop of beer or alcohol of any kind, the condition was unaffected. This suggested that beer might not be the cause after all, and so a week ago I gingerly poured this out to see what would happen:
pFriem Oud Bruin.
Twenty-four hours later and … no change. A couple evenings later I went back to the well, sampling this:
Upright Supercool IPA (and later Pilsner).
Again, no change. I tested it out a third time at Old Town (no pic, but a quickie Sherpa: they have a rice lager on that is amazing—crisp, dry, complex and quite zingy), which would seem to fully exonerate our favorite malty beverage.
So my trials continue, but not in beer’s absence. (For a scary week there I also tested coffee as a possible culprit, wonderful, critical, necessary coffee—but that too passed the test.) Look for me in the pubs, drinking happily—and scratching.