Wednesday, December 31, 2014
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With the end of the year upon us and the impending delight,
surprise, drama, or doom of the New Year, I felt like this was a great time to
drop a little wisdom on the ol’ family blog.
It’s been months since I’ve spun any tales here. Mostly, this is due to timing, specifically a
lack of it. I’ve had the inspiration,
tons of beginnings, but no endings on topics.
Well the end of the year is just that, an end to a ‘topic.’
My travel schedule is the complicating factor. This got me thinking. Travel is a pain and I have to do it a
lot. So when I do, I try to keep it
simple, travel light, and just focus on essential things. When traveling, I only require three things
and if I don’t have these three things, the travel sucks balls. The three things are:
1. Internet
– so I can communicate with the free world, more specifically my family
2. Soft
pillow – sleeping doesn’t come easy on travel so a soft place to drop your head
is integral
3. Cold beer
– Comfort food. When in a foreign
country, you want comfort food. For me
that is beer
On New Year’s Eve, a discussion of beer seems incredibly
appropriate and useful for my audience. I’ve been reading this book. It was a gift for my birthday
last month and it’s called “The Book of Beer Awesomeness.” If you haven’t read this fine literary
masterpiece, I highly recommend it. I’m’
not going to get into a deep thoughtful review here. I just want to dig into a concept it
proposes. That’s the concept of proper
beer drinking etiquette. The book
suggests that there are 15 Rules to Proper Beer Drinking Etiquette.
With the rules below and my interpretation, you should now
be able to consume a healthy libations and not be mistaken as a crude and
uncivilized heathen.
1. Always
perform toast when drinking the first beer of the day.
A toast is essential.
I read somewhere that the sound of glasses clanging during a toast was
thought to ward off evil spirits and bring prosperity. Tempting fate? Is that something you really
want to do? Toast to your health,
family, friends, or whatever it is you appreciate. The toast will be therapeutic to externalize
the importance of appreciation.
2. Never
complain about free beer.
We all know ungrateful bastards like this. If the sweet nectar of the Gods is being
offered to you at no cost, why would you complain about it? These are the type of people who ask for a
favor and then critique how the favor is being delivered. Basically, nothing is good enough. Free beer is better than no beer at all. Remember that and always be considerate.
3. Always
have at least one six pack in your fridge at all times.
If the Boy Scouts of America could drink, then this would be
their rule. Always be prepared. It’s really pretty obvious. Came home from a sick time riding your
bike? You need a beer. Replacing some fence in the back yard? You
need a beer. Unplug a toilet from a
family member’s granite-like fecal deposit?
You need a beer.
4. Have a
bottle opening apparatus on you at all times.
I have an infinite number of occasions where I was asked if
I had an opener. In my house, they are
everywhere. A bottle opener on the
fridge in the house, a bottle opener on the beer fridge in the garage, a bottle
opener on the wall hanging above the work bench in my shop, a bottle opener in
the car (it’s only illegal if you’re drinking), even several drawers in the
kitchen have them. And now I have a
credit card sized tool that I carry in my wallet for beer opening.
5. At house
parties, mark your beer so you know it’s yours.
There are scoundrels out there who will jack your beer at a
house party. Brand your beer so you know
it’s yours to ward off the infiltrators who know no couth and will take your
beer because they didn’t bring their own.
Yes, your beer should be left behind after the party has concluded and
it will have your name affixed on it.
The host will then see this remaining inventory and knon two things: 1.
You brought your beer to a his or her party and are not a free loader. You in fact have enough respect for them and
your beer to assert yourself and your beer in the community. And 2. You understand Rule 8 below. Beer gets left behind after parties as a
token of appreciation and gratitude to the host.
6. Never
pooh-pooh another drinker’s preference, everyone has their own poison.
There are nearly 100,000 types of beers on this orbiting
rock of a planet of ours. Don’t be so
arrogant to say that you’ve drank a sample of all of them and that you’ve been
indoctrinated as the supreme ambassador envoy to the stewardship of beer
excellence and proficiency. Seriously
dude, everyone has their taste. Some
like hoppy, some like stouts, and some like beer-flavored water. If you haven’t noticed, beer is the one thing
that all cultures and civilizations have in common. Why not stop judging and start embracing the
differences and similarities? Beauty is
in the eye of the beer-holder.
7. At keg
parties, only fill up two keg cups at a time per person. Any more than that, get back in line.
Filling keg cups at a party is kind of like merging onto the
freeway. Everyone just wants to get
going and not have their momentum impeded.
Equally, you don’t want to have someone stand in your way to sweet sweet
libations, so why would you do this to another patron? It’s kind of like the golden rule of beer
distribution. ‘Keep the line moving,
keep the beer flowing, and keep the peeps drinking,’ I always say.
8. If you
bring beer to a party, you may drink it, but you’re not allowed to take any
extra beer home.
This is one that truly annoys me about people. They are the same ones who complain about
free beer. For once, they bring their
own beer, use your fridge and conveniences, eat your snacks, disparage your
preferences, and then take the beer home.
Your beer is a token of goodwill, an offering of prosperity, a gesture
of thanks, not a yo-yo of libations.
9. If
someone buys you a beer, you must finish it.
This is a simple matter of respect. If someone extends his or her courtesy to you
in the form of a beer, you should drink it and thank them for such an action. Now it’s not and hard fast rule for
females. If a dude buys a chick a drink
and the chick choose to not drink it, whether that be because she dumps it on
him or that she was using her girlish wiles to procure said drink for her
friend is irrelevant, she is her accord to not drink it should she choose. But if you decide to not drink it for some
caloric or dietary reasoning, then you’re just a quitter and you suck.
10. If someone
buys you a beer, you must buy them the next round.
Much like Rule 9, this is a return showing of respect to
another who has previously celebrated you buy purchasing you a beer. Return the favor. At times, pub logistics may not allow for
neutral round purchases. When this
happens, keep a mental ledger of your unbalance beer book. Make sure you pay it back in some way, shape
or form. Be a good beer drinker.
11. If someone
buys a round for the group, the group should toast to the buyer’s health.
This is the combination of Rule 1 and Rule 10. Toasting is a sign of respect and
appreciation, especially the buyer who bought a round for the group. Celebrate this person’s supreme awesomeness.
12. If you
spill someone else’s beer, you owe them a new one.
This is what we call a ‘Party Foul.’ They happen.
Most of the time, they are accidents.
Their frequency increases proportionally with the amount of beer
consumed. So you can’t avoid them. What you can avoid is being a D-bag and not
acknowledging the incident and not rectifying the situation. If you disrupt someone’s consumption of beer
by way of spillage, be a Good Samaritan and apologize and fix the
situation. There’s nothing more sad that
a spilled beer with no home.
13. If someone
leaves their seat to get a new beer, you must honor their claim on the space
for five minutes.
Seating at pubs can be a high-value item. Sometimes you’re the seat predator, and
sometimes you’re the seat prey. We’ve
all done it, watched for someone to get up and buy another beer or hit the
restroom, then swoop in and rest our tired ass on their seat. But you must honor the effort of their
claimed space as you don’t know the effort to which it was originally
procured. Honor thy time limit unless of
course the person doesn’t claim the space then it’s yours.
14. Never bring
beer into the bathroom. It’s just weird.
There are exceptions to this rule. Bringing a beer into a public bathroom at a
pub or restaurant? That’s just
stupid. Bringing a beer into the men’s
restroom at CenturyLink field during a Seahawk game? Absolutely
acceptable. That’s why there are folding
beer trays above the urinals. At home,
this rule doesn’t apply. There’s nothing
more perfect than a beer in the shower.
Trust me. I’m the theorist of the
three greatest inventions of mankind: 1. Beer, 2. Running water, and 3.
Toothpaste.
15. Clean up
after yourself. You weren’t’ raised in a
barn.
I mean, even if you were raised in a barn, you must know
that you need to clean up your stall.
Seriously, don’t leave your bottles and cans strewn about your home or a
host’s house. At the very least, ask “Do
you recycle?” Most likely the host will
tell you, “Let me take care of that for you.”
And just like that you’ve used the Jedi Mind trick to pick up after
yourself. Worst case is that the host
tells you where to place the empties.
And then you’ve helped them clean up their abode and will look like a
patron saint of drinking who will now be invited back due to your appreciation
of personal space. Yay you for
continuing your beer prosperity.
In conclusion, rules are made to be broken but only in the most extreme or
extenuating circumstances. As I
mentioned above, civilization after civilization and culture after culture, we
have all shared in the commonality of beer and celebrated its unique taste and
satisfaction. Through its and our
diversity, we’ve found harmony. So
listed above are the 15 Rules for Proper Beer Drinking Etiquette. While I can’t take credit for this
hypothesis, I can take credit for my biased interpretation of the rules listed
below each.
While I may not be an expert on this, or anything for that
matter, I do know I love beer. Being
that it is one of the greatest inventions of all time, one of the things I
require for my travel comfort, and embodies the true definition of awesomeness,
it seems incredibly appropriate to pen down some text about beer on New Year’s
Eve.
Tonight, enjoy your beers, appreciate your hosts, toast you
friends and family, and kick out 2014 for great start to 2015.
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