beer

Back to light-hearted topics.

Name 3 favorite beers

Saranac Caramel Porter (bottle)
Blue Moon Belgian White (bottle)
Hefeweizen with lemon (on tap)

Note that this is not the kind of beer you would normally find at your average fraternity beer drinking party (and I say this on purpose.) Once upon a time, I did have a few cool friends who, for various reasons, joined fraternities in college. However, (I'm going to stray from the "light-hearted topic" part for just a moment) the amount of people I know who had really messed up experiences at some of those parties (girls getting roofies slipped into drinks, etc) has affected my outlook. I hope none of my students waste their time chit chatting about frat parties when they really should be doing something more constructive (like, say, analyzing the effect of the male gaze in The Virgin Suicides.) Unless they can find a really good way to relate it to the book.

Describe some of your most formative beer drinking experiences

When I was two or three and visited some relatives in Michigan, my aunts gave me sips of their beer and told me it was champagne. "Can I have some more champagne?" Also, I was about the same age when my dad was at some point fixing the television (when we lived in New York). When he put his beer can down on the coffee table and I asked if I could drink some of it, he said "just a sip" and then both my parents turned their attention back to the television. The next time they turned around, they found I'd drained a sizeable portion of the can.

(At least, thats how I remember it!)

I also remember that I used to be totally grossed out by the name of one soda, called "Squirt." I thought that "squirt" meant the same thing as "spit." Years later, when I was 19 and went on a study abroad trip in Peru, I drank a kind of corn beer called chicha, which some of the people in a village offered me, and I thought it was pretty good. Then, with a delicious look of glee on her face, the professor told me that the traditional way of making chicha involved masticating the corn, spitting it into a pot, and allowing it to ferment for several days. After seeing the look on my face, she reassured me that it probably wasn't still made that way in this instance!!