How To Drink Good Beer While Living in the Suburbs [part one]

Having Couch Beers is a great suburbs drinking pastime.

I don’t like to admit I live in the suburbs. While I am, in fact, in the middle of the city, it is still the suburbs. It’s much cooler to be in “the city” or whatever.

Main drawback: I don’t live downtown next to a cool brewery.

Hell, I don’t even live by an industrial park where new breweries seem to live.

There is a daycare on my block along with a State Farm Insurance office and a notary. Not exactly party central – except the days when I play a drinking game or bust out a beer garden style toy in the backyard.

Boring suburbs or not, that doesn’t mean you or I can’t have a good time with a nice beer in our neighborhoods. We just have to plan.

I have some initial thoughts that popped in my head to help you drink good beer while living in the suburbs:

Beer runs. Stop off at a brewery at some point in your week. Load up as much as your budget allows because who knows when you’ll make it back down here.
Ship it good. The Pandemic did at least one good thing and loosened up the beer shipping restrictions. Many states allow you to get beer shipped to your house directly from the brewery – as long as you’re still in the same state as the shipper.
A solid grocery store. If you are lucky enough, you have a grocery store with a decent Craft selection. This is the one thing I am lucky to have (although it is two blocks away [sighs in beer nerd]).

I will be honest with you, the main thing I do is get beer from a nearby grocery store. It is the most boring of ways for a beer geek to get their beer, and I do it often. My street cred fades day by day.

Today I went to my only nearby bottle shop/beer bar. That is something, anyway. At 3:30 in the afternoon, it was pretty packed with all sorts of people. grabbed my five overpriced cans and left without even so much as having a taster.

You see, if I have one, then I want more and I can’t do that again. People expect me to be at home most of the time, so I can’t trust myself to start up.

Tangent Warning! You have to be careful with your suburban drinking as a parent. Parents from your kid’s school are everywhere!

Yeah ‘cause, you think you’re safe at your neighborhood Mexican restaurant bar gettin’ stupid, but unknown to you little Tommy’s mom for the PTA was sittin’ in the corner the whole time watching you throw back Modelos (because it is the only drinkable beer this place has) and can’t wait to tell everyone at the next meeting how obnoxious you are and (worse) your taste in beer sticks!

[not that that has happened to me or anything]

There is a lot to unpack in this beer geek sub-genre. Definitely more to figure out on how to drink good beer while living in the suburbs. I’ll dig deeper in future post and on my newsletter for sure.

-Mikey

My 7 Tips For Better Beer Drinking (2023)

A can of Fifty Fifty Brewing "Totality" Emperial Stout — Maybe Imperial Stouts will have a comeback this year, like this Fifty Fifty Totality Stout

I don’t know what beer style will emerge (if any) this year. In fact, I predict NOTHING will. It will get so fucking boring that old styles will get a bump.

Stouts will make a comeback. There. I said it. Remember it. Stouts.

I am not even rooting for it. I Just feel the Stout category is so quiet these days, it is bound to have a comeback. Yeah?

Well, I am not here to make predictions, actually. Nor am I here to play the best games for a beer garden. I am here to pour out some good beer drinking tips to focus on this year. This is for me as much as it is you.

Drinking even MORE West Coast IPAs. I went strong with Westies last year and I don’t see that letting up AT ALL this year. Around these parts, Westies have made a bit of a comeback from the haze craze days and I will continue to support that. #clearbeer
Trying a seasonal beer in every season. Even if the beer style is not my thing, focusing on, at least having ONE beer that is known for the season. Setting aside the cost of buying one, it can’t hurt, yeah? Tastes change so could end up realizing I like a style that I didn’t before.
Visiting taprooms a little more. I say only a little more because I am big on having beers at home. But I could use more time in a beer garden AND definitely more brewery beer to take home.
Not opening another beer when already hella sleepy. What good is wasting half a beer and not really enjoying the other half because you’re falling asleep in a chair with your beer next to you? Training to cut myself off.
Normalizing lunch beers. I feel like 30 years ago, having a beer at lunch (during a workday even), wasn’t a big deal. Why not have ONE (maybe two if you’re low on the alcohols) with your lunch before heading back to work? Tell your boss I said it was okay.
Drinking water before sessions. Loading up on water and making sure I eat before a drinking session prevents hangover. When I get one, I didn’t do one or both of those things.
Roll all the Hazy beers. Yes, rolling your hazy beers is a thing. Take it for a walk if you have to:

Okay. Good luck to you and your drinking this year. If you keep these tips in mind, I think it will be a better one.

Can You Edit Your Check-in Location On Untappd?

Beer on the bar in the Floodcraft taproom inside Whole Foods Santa Clara — Forgive the blurry Half Acre beer, I want you to look at the Untappd board. I messed this check-in up, but I learned how to fix it

Can You Edit Your Location After Posting On Untappd?

Yes. You can totally edit your location after you check-in on Untappd and change it to the right one.

I recently used Untapped (tired as I am at taking pictures of my beer) to check-in a beer at Whole Foods.

I know, weird right? Yes, this particular Whole Foods is one of the ones that have a taproom too, so it was totally cool and legit that I was drinking beers inside a grocery store.

Anyway, I check my beer into Untappd, and they have a live board so I am waiting to see my stupid ass face pop up at the bottom of the screen. And then… nothing. The screen gave me nothing.

I made sure to use the venue both on location and purchase but I still was not coming up on the board.

Turns out that this place has multiple location options for checking in and chose the wrong one. There was:

Whole Foods Market – Santa Clara
Floodcraft (the actual name of the taproom)

After some research, I figured out the right one. For some reason it turned out to be “Whole Foods Market – Santa Clara” which I thought is weird. It should have been “Floodcraft” which is the one I checked in. Nope. I never came up on the board.

But it’s too late, right? I already checked in.

Nope. It’s NOT too late.

How To Edit A Check-in On Untappd

Pull up the post/check-in that needs correcting and click on it. You should have “Check-in Detail” at the top of the screen now.
Click the three dots at the top right.
You should have an option of “edit”, so click that.
Under “Location” find the proper location you want to change to and do the same for “purchased location”.
Save it. Now your check-in should show up as you wanted it to.

It may take a minute before you see your check-in displayed on the board. Also, MAKE SURE to check-in the place you purchased the beer in “location” AND “purchased location”, otherwise it might not get up on the board.

Because sweeping the board is sometimes the only interesting thing to do in a taproom.

P.S. I have a guide to Untappd that you can have for nothin’

Sierra Nevada Pale Ale (what the Internet thinks)

a sixpack of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale bottles — Sierra Pale Ale, there is nothing more important

This is an appreciation post for Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. I feel like I can’t have a beer geeky blog without more acknowledgment of the greatest of all time Pale Ale.

Yes, to many of us Sierra may taste outdated. But it is the greatest “outdated” taste of all time and the best palate-reset beer in the business.

And as we are about to see, as Craft Beer goes, so goes Sierra.

Sierra Pale is a great barometer for how beer/Craft Beer is going. Just look at the search volume for Sierra and it totally goes along with how popular Craft Beer has been in the past fifteen years

Yes, you read that chart right, we are at our lowest level of the Internet searching for things related to Sierra Nevada Pale. What a sad world we live in.

What is everyone asking the Internet about Sierra Nevada Pale? These are the top searches:

Continue reading →