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

A Beer Drinking Game For Sitting Outside

Liquid Gravity Nuthin But A Left Coast thing, IPA
A patio beer while I listen for reasons to drink it

I came up with my own beer drinking game. Would you like to know it?

Alright, good.

It’s simple. It’s nerdy. And it requires you to be outside – not the best time of year for this, I know. No, this is not something like the best games for playing in a beer garden or outside, it’s something else. Something for sitting.

My favorite part might be that you can play it by yourself, if you want. Plus, it’s good if you drink beer in the suburbs or in an apartment with a good window seat.

If you are a dork like me that enjoys sitting outside, relaxing with a beer, maybe listening to music, writing in a beer notebook and watching the clouds go by, have I got a drinking game for you!

It is a simple observational drinking game.

This is for beer because beer rules. But hey, I am not the drinking police – use this game with whatever drink you need to.

Here are your Beer Drinking Game For Sitting Outside, prompts.

Drink when you:

  • See a squirrel.
  • See or hear a plane.
  • Hear a car stereo.
  • Hear your neighbor fumbling around (sweeping, taking garbage out, ect.)
  • See a bird (one type per session).
  • Hear or hear a pine-cone, branch or leaf fall.
  • See a different squirrel.
  • Hear a train (two drinks).
  • See a rainbow (down the whole beer).
  • Hear wind chimes.
  • Hear a lawnmower.
  • See a different kind of bird.
  • Hear a leaf-blower.
  • Hear kids playing (one session only).
  • Hear a car horn.
  • Hear a gunshot (actually just go back inside if that happens).

You could add your own prompts too then print it out – if you have managed to keep a WORKING printer – printers are not easy to keep working.

On a nice spring day, you could get pretty lit playing this Beer Drinking Game For Sitting Outside.

(this game needs a real name)

Anyway, you can play at night too!! Because I also have a NIGHTTIME EDITION!

I mixed in some of the appropriate daytime edition prompts with additional nighttime ones that start at the top of the list.

Take a drink when you:

  • See a satellite.
  • See a shooting star (down the rest of your beer).
  • Hear a bat, owl or any bird, actually.
  • Hear a cricket (once a session only)
  • See your FIRST firefly of the night (regional).
  • Notice a light get turned on.
  • See or hear a plane.
  • Hear a car stereo.
  • Hear your neighbor on their patio (or balcony for apartment dwellers).
  • Hear a pine-cone, branch or leaf fall.
  • Hear a train.
  • Hear wind-chimes.
  • Hear a gunshot (get back inside until you hear the police sirens).

Remember to hydrate. Eat some snacks. Stock up on hangover preventives.

But most of all, have fun!

Cheers!!

(If you play this and have the time, I would love to hear about it in the blog comments!)

How To Cleanse Your Palate For Beer Tasting

Premium crackers, Daisy Cutter Pale, Pure Project hazy, Moose Drool Brown Ale
Crackers & beer: it’s a thing

You’re having a flight of beers, or you are at a beer festival, or bottle share, maybe you do your drinking from the kitchen table, or are busy sweeping an Untappd board.

Whatever the hell it is, you’re going through a lot of beers.

But you want to taste the next beer as genuine as you can. The cleanest way. I am here to try and help.

These are MY real-world picks, not generic trash results I got off the Internet.

How to cleanse your palate between beers

  • Crackers. Unsalted crackers are the best but salted still work.
  • Chips. This works for when you are out in the field drinking. Most places don’t have crsckers but they have chips.
  • Nuts. Mostly a tip for when you are in a bar or at home. Not that practical anywhere else.
  • Water. Super boring option and not the best way to reset your palate, but usually there is some around and you should be drinking some anyway.
  • Your hand. What the hell!? Your hand!? Yes. Give your hand a good lick. Taste that hand – you know where it has been, it’s fine. Almost give it a hickey even. This is the best option when there is nothing around and by the way, I do it often.
  • A different style. If you are stringing a bunch of IPAs together it’s a good idea to break it up with a Stout or Brown or something. You would be surprised how improved a hoppy beer can be, drinking one after an opposite style.

Again, these are all ones I do myself. If there is science behind this, it’s unintentional.

Resetting your palate before a different beer is something I highly recommend though.

Non-beer geeks (and even some actual beer geeks) might scoff at you. Let them. Be sad for them. They just don’t know. But now you do.

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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

Search volume for Sierra Nevada Pale

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 “Sierra Nevada Pale Ale (what the Internet thinks)”