I have been drinking beer since I was 21 or so (not because of age limits – 19 in Ontario, where I am from – but because I couldn’t handle the taste of beer at 19 and 20). I have been attempting to try new beer since I was 25 or so. By age 35 I had tried around 1,500 beers, that I am aware of (so maybe closer to 1,600 or 1,700, allowing for some alcohol-induced memory lapses). I have been tracking these ratings using unpopular rating sites – first I used a facebook app then I used BrewGene. I have switched to RateBeer but have yet to import my BrewGene ratings.
Beer, to me, is a wonderful aesthetic experience with more variety than I can imagine. No other alcohol (to my knowledge) contains the variety of flavours that beer does. No, not even wine.
Some of my favourite styles:
- American Barleywines
- English Barleywines
- Doppelbocks
- Dunkels
- Belgian IPAs (when done well)
- Black IPAs
- Brett IPAs
- Vermont/East Coast IPAs
- West Coast IPAs (sometimes)
- APAs
- American Porters
- Imperial Porters
- Sour Porters
- Saisons
- Black Saisons
- Some types of sours, including hopped sours
- Adjunct stouts and Imperial Stouts
- (Russian) Imperial Stouts
- Sour Stouts/Sour Imperial Stouts
I am willing to try just about anything and appreciate styles that fuse styles or violate rules
Styles I dislike
- Kolsch
- American Lager