I didn't say it was going to be fun or interesting. Just get out there and have what the next guy's having.

The Beer Nut, 9 February 2009

Once when I was in undergrad, I was in a line-up, slightly bleary from the night before, signing up for seminar topics in English lit when the girl in front of me turned and said "sorry for taking the last Keats!" I gave a dazed look, wondered when I had been out drinking with her and then shook my head realizing that she was talking about the romantic poet and not the regional mass produced beer. "Keats" - in the local pronunciation - was Alexander Keith's IPA, a pretty standard macro-lag that had and likely still has massive levels of loyalty in my homeland of Nova Scotia.

I've written about the pub life of Halifax twenty five years ago in earlier editions of The Session. It was fun and it's where I bonded with many of my pals that I still know better than most anyone else despite they years in between. And it was infused with Keith's phony IPA. No one cared that it was not an IPA or that the bond had nothing to do with the taste, price or adherence to style. It was the taste of beer. In New Brunswick the same was the case for Alpine lager as it is for Schooner beer in eastern PEI. Beer was what you drank and its likely what your Dad drank, too. It had that beer flavour.

I haven't had a Keith's for at least six years and it'd be many more years before that since I bought any number as my beer of choice. But I bought one today to make the Beer Nut happy. I was a little ticked at paying $2.25 for one can as I think I paid $2.75 a six pack when I was buying them.¹ but nothing is too good for my man Beer Nut...even if his Twit-posts this evening prove he has abandoned us all and this Session's theme of watery gak and flown off to Belgium! Today he twits: "...everyone's on Kwak. But baby needs lambic." You. Are. Killing. Me.

So now for the beer. The can opens with the crack of a billion other cans of beer. It pours a light amber and smells like Keith's with all the accompanying memories of various unfortunate gastric phenomena and awkward social situations. A bit of unexpected round appled maltiness in the mouth meets some harsh-ish Mt Hood meets steely German hopping. The finish includes that odd but tell tale macro-crap tightening of the surface of the lips that makes one think that you have just consumed anti-wrinkle cream. And that is it. Is it awful? No. It is going to return to my life? No more than my Gary Numan 45s.

So in the end, a good topic about bad beer. Hopefully the next session will bat better than .500.

¹Note how the Oldie Olson theme is being continued