Beer Moment: A Beer On The Rim
From recent posts you might gather that I’m something of a traveler but that’s not so; I usually manage one or two decent trips a year either for family fun or work related stuff. This year has been a bit different in that I’ve gotten to Oregon (for the first time) and to Utah and to Colorado but that’s probably going to be it for 2009. Quick on the heels of the Colorado jaunt was a one-day quick trip up to Grand Canyon to meet family members intent on celebrating a birthday by taking a helicopter ride
We did our visiting while strolling around Grand Canyon Village on the South Rim and my nephew, who is something of a beer geek in his own right bought me a glass of beer from Grand Canyon Brewing at the bar in the El Tovar Lodge. He’d gone on at some length about a Grand Canyon Porter or Stout he’d tried the night before at a bar near their hotel in Tusayan. One would have thought that we’d have spent that brief, quiet time comparing notes on all things beer related but we didn’t. We quietly downed our pints with an offhand comment about the bar décor and a brief comparison of the pilsner at hand to the stout my nephew had tried the evening before. It was as if we were meeting for a routine pint after work. I don’t see my nephew or the rest of my extended Colorado family nearly often enough but the ease with which we simply slide into a familiar routine is comforting to me in a way.
Incidently, the beer we tried at El Tovar was a pilsner from Grand Canyon Brewing. It wasn’t all that noteworthy, but the setting and circumstance more than made up for what the beer might have been lacking!
Closing The Book
I filled up my first beer notebook a week or so back. The first entry is dated May 9, 2008 and was written during a visit to the Yardhouse where I noted my first sample of Old Speckled Hen. The final note is dated October 18, 2009 and indicates I was rounding out the notes with a Deschutes 2009 Jubelale. (Excellent beer, as always.)
I’ve debated whether or not to even start a new beer notebook. Frankly it’s a bit of an obstruction to actually enjoying the beer: the sniffing, the sipping, and the rabid jotting of notes. The Brits seem to have a term for folk who do this; they’re called “tickers,” and I’d liken them to those really ate up bird watchers who let their lives go to hell while they’re out looking for yet another bird to add to their life list. I don’t want to become a ticker, but I think I have.
On the other hand, without a notebook, I won’t have any way to document what I’ve done beer-wise and thus, no way to post comments on this blog. To lose the notebook would be to lose the Beer Rant blog, which in life’s large scheme wouldn’t amount to muck (another British term, I think). But I need to write, even if I don’t write all that well, and for now, blogging is writing for me.
So, I have purchased another book for beer notes. It’s the same style Sokkia Engineer’s Field Book that I just finished up with; they’re sturdy, somewhat waterproof, brightly colored so they’re not easily misplaced and they’ve got plenty of room for notes. My dilemma now is to decide what form my notes will take this time around. I don’t believe I’m going to be going into as much detail regarding color, head, smell and taste because doing so seems to slow down my process and usually that information isn’t even used here at Beer Rant anyway. I subtitled Beer Rant as a “beer diary” so, moving forward, I’m going to try to document more of the Beer Moments in this second beer notebook. We’ll have to see how that translates to what appears here at Beer Rant.
Finally, my thanks to those silly few of you who’ve chosen to “follow” Beer Rant. I’m planning to put together a post that acknowledges as many of you as I can, with links to your blogs or websites, but in the meantime, I appreciate your stopping in from time to time and I enjoy seeing your comments posted.
HAPPY HALLOWEEN!
No comments:
Post a Comment