What made me love craft beer!

The beer that got me started loving the craft and art of creating quality beers was Fat Tire.  I had a group of friends that were older than I was from church when I was 20 years old.  I always heard them talking about this great beer that we could not get (at that time) here in Indiana.  Making semi-annual trips to St. Louis they would come back with a car load of beer they would hand out to their friends and then drink for the next six months.  Their detection to this beer was staggering.  

On my 21st birthday after a night out at the bars (which I will only say I was less than an active participant in my classes the next day) I was given a six pack of this beer.  Still to this day when I am at home and have a Fat Tire it takes be back to that first taste sitting in front of a television in a friends room watching, if my memory serves me right, the Big Lebowski.  A beer not meant to be chugged but one that was meant to be savored with friends and making memories that would be remembered not just the next morning but ones that will shape the corse of who we are as a person.  

This is less of a review and becoming more sentimental about some of the best times during my developmental years.  Yet it lead to what only lasted a few weeks but was enjoyable evenings with friends one semester called New Beer Mondays where several of us would all grab a different six pack and sit around watching Monday Night Football in a cramped house on the college campus (one of those friends pointed out a few months ago that we have now all known and been apart of each others lives for more than a decade).  Each Monday brought fun activities, lively story telling, and a growing bond between friends.  

It is this kind of bonding and fellowship that comes from sitting around a table, bon fire, or tailgate with something that is created with care.  I hope that the journey of discovery and drinking local can create memories that become as sentimental as the ones I have; because when you have those special moments with craft beer they can always be relived one glorious pint at a time.