Extreme beer!

Man every time I come home I get excited, and not just because I haven't seen my family for about 4 months, or that the weather is warmer, or that I have access to all sorts of delicious food on the cheap (free), but because it means I can finally start drinking extreme beers again.

I'm a huge fan of extreme beers, though not so much the term. To me extreme calls forth memories of adderall and mountaint dew fueled sugar freakouts and bland corporate attempts at alternative guitar rock, which I hesitate to associate with my new beverage of choice.

Needless to say, extreme in this case definitely means a deviation from the norm more than a high energy turbo crash.

Extreme beers are characterized by their unwillingness to conform to our notions of what beer should be, going even so far as to violate the sacred tenets set forth by the Bavarians in their Reinheitsgebot. I mean a lot of beers do that, namely any beer from Belgium, but you get my point. The German model for beer, a beverage made of malt, yeast, water and hops has dominated the american scene for so long (though we introduced rice into the equation because it diminishes taste, at least that's why I think it's there) that Americans often forget that other kinds of beer exist and have existed for longer than German style.

This is not to trash the German style mind you, I grew up on it. With such limited ingredients the Germans created an amazing variety of flavor that I can still hardly believe. It's just that extreme beer offers something more. It offers beer fermented with raisins or algae, or beer that has been hopped for 2 hours and then dry hopped for a month! It offers stouts that are so dark no light can escape them. Now how could I, as a burgeoning beer snob, ignore such exciting developments in the field of beer? Let's not be mistaken either, though the Belgians were often freer with their beer than the Germans, even they are being surpassed by us now. We are taking their models and pushing them to extremes, because we have the technology and the know how to be the greatest beer producing nation on earth and by GOD WE ARE


I am not at all sorry that this entry turned into a rant about America. I love this country's beer and frankly I think we get a bad rap because certain corporations have been shoving the same swill down our throats for so long that the rest of the world associates our beer with horse piss.

anyway

I'm going to use this break to drink extreme beers, and not just made by Dogfish either. Reviews to be forthcoming.