What Was Your Beer Epiphany?

[Bizier]

Started as a big coopers drinker (significantly cheaper too 9 years ago) found the vintage releases freakin' awesome.

Always drank cheap euro imports, because they were far more drinkable and sometimes dirt cheap per case. Got onto the Weihenstephan, going thought the various styles opened my eyes to variations within the German rainbow. Then going through other examples within those styles really alerted me to how many good beers there are, and just how bad our general fare is. More of a progression really, but the Weihenstephan was my gateway drug.

 

[~MikE]

probably when i was about 17, had only ever really drank aussie beers, and then mostly coopers (still my default beer of choice if there's nothing interesting) - was at a farewell party for this polish dude i played hockey with and he brought along some Żywiec, which i tried (this was the first time i'd tried a european beer). well i couldn't get over the fact that this beer had some rather unusual and very pleasant aftertaste (which i later found out was flavour hops). yeah, that's probably what started me on my quest to try lots of beers...

 

[PostModern]

I had my first whole glass of beer when I was 11 or 12, Guiness Stout with a teaspoon of sugar and a raw egg given to me by my Nana as a tonic. Nearly fell off the kitchen chair!

Since then, I have tried every beer I can. As a teen, I used to like the pale lagers in summer, but mostly was an Old or Coopers Sparkling drinker. Can't say I ever had an epiphany as such, I've always liked beer and gradually grew into good beer.

 

[bradsbrew]

It would be interesting to see just how many people found this forum while searching for a LCPA. I know I did and the great beers I have tried and the improvment in my brews since finding this site . So it would have to be LCPA as the obsession starter.

Cheers Brad

 

[BEC26]

When I was about 4 -5 yo, it was my job to open dad's beer after he had done the grass.

The old Tooheys Flag Ale or Pilsner with the 2 triangle holes from the can opener.

My reward for gettng it ready was the first sip.

First some head and then the beer.

Can still picture it to this day.

Oh, waited till I was 18 before fully partaking lol

Cheers

 

[boingk]

I was encouraged by my parents to have a drink at special occaisions from 15 onwards. The moment that sticks in my mind as my 'first beer' was down at the coast house in Batemans with all the family around. It as deemed appropriate for me to have a beer whilst we were on the deck, which I gladly accepted. It was a Hahn Premium, and I didn;t go much on it. Think I had half before embarrasingly offering it to a cousin.

This sort of semi-aversion continued until I was 17 and I was at uni. Mates reckoned I was soft and needed to get with it [I was drinking Strongbow cider and Schmirnoff mixers]. A case of Tooheys 250ml twisties later and I was hooked. THe first sixy went down grudgingly, most warmish before I was finished them. The last six-pack of them saw me in an inflatable pool on the dorm lawn, reading Zoo magazine in Hawiian shorts. I was surrounded by floating beers, both full and empty. Oh, and I was wearing a sombrero. And a big grin

Things like Becks, Stella and Heineken [and limited funds at uni] inspired me to brew, which I started doing . JS Golden Ale taught me to love hops. Interior yearning for something I hadn't tried saw me brewing porters and chilli beer. Grains caught up with me, and I discovered a whole new form of creative power at my fingertips; black pilsners appeared in my fridge.

Its not so much a defining moment when it all happened, as a journey into the world of beer that sees me becoming more and more engaged. I don't think the quest for knowledge, for new, different flavours and profiles and styles, will cease anytime soon. I'm thoroughly hooked.

Cheers - boingk

 

[Uncle Fester]

For mine, you can blame Stagger. Popped over to his place a few years ago to pick up some AHB stubby holders. Craig was just cleaning up from a double decoction AG. He offered me a sample tray from his fridge. 2 glasses of the Koelsch later, and I was both hooked on this new AG thing, and cursing the fact I had driven instead of talking SWMBO into dropping me off.

So, Stagger's Keolsch for me.


Fester.

 

[goatherder]

It all started on a trip to Europe a few years back. Badgers Tanglefoot on cask in London, Guinness in Dublin, Rochefort 10 in Brussels. I started brewing not long after we got back.

 

[wabster]

It would be interesting to see just how many people found this forum while searching for a LCPA. I know I did and the great beers I have tried and the improvment in my brews since finding this site . So it would have to be LCPA as the obsession starter.

Cheers Brad

+1 for me there on the LCPA clone search. I'd made adequate beers over the years, even during Home Brew MK1 in the 70 and 80s, then again in Home Brew MK11 when I resumed brewing about 2 years back. Initially the experiment was to make a LCPA both I and MsWab enjoyed which I achieved with help from Bill at the Peakhurst Brew Shop.

The trigger for the desire to make the LCPA, and the definitive epiphany, was a visit to the Little Creatures brewery/bar in Fremantle in May 2005. I wanted to make tasty beer like that!

Then I found this site and AG via BIAB, and as others have said, the rest is history though my progress is very slow and I don't brew a huge amount, Cheerz Wabster.

 

[Pollux]

I actually had a distinct dislike of beer during my teenage drinking years, more of a champers person back then....

Was probably once I started working as a cellar man for a few years and had to taste the beers after I'd done a line clean, just to make sure they tasted right, this helped my tastebuds develop...

This would also be roughly the same time I stopped drinking purely Carlton Draught and started to try other more exotic beers...


Now, years later I love my beer, and I love the fact that I made it even more...

 

[Trent]

Starting my nights on Arrogant ******* before moving onto SNPA for the rest of the evening when I lived in San Diego. Australian beer was HORRIBLE after those years!
The second (and most prominent) epiphany also happened in san d, at stone brewery - a mate bought a bottle of Cantillon's Rose de Gambrinus. The AB and SNPA nights were a gradual epiphany, but I will never forget my first sip of Rose de gambrinus. Now, if I could only replicate it at home.....
T

 

[afromaiko]

After thinking beers began with Carlton Draught and finished with VB, I moved into an apartment across the road from the delights of the Belgian Beer Cafe. It became my local for a few years until I moved again. Some great warm Summer nights spent out in the beer garden there.

 

[axl]

Chimay Grande Reserve. Enough said!

Chimay for me also. Truly special

 

[quantocks]

I'd say a picture speaks louder than words, here's my epiphany. Ignore the background, it's meaningless

7am in Rome drinking cans of Peroni wandering around the streets in the freezing cold. You can go into stores where SWMBO can shop on one side and on the other is a small bar area for the men to sit and drink and eat waiting. Absolutely tops.

Plus before I extensively travelled Europe all I knew was VB, Tooheys New and Carlton.

 

[Leigh]

Its not so much a defining moment when it all happened, as a journey into the world of beer that sees me becoming more and more engaged. I don't think the quest for knowledge, for new, different flavours and profiles and styles, will cease anytime soon. I'm thoroughly hooked.

Have to agree with that comment!

Started with the "warm" VB smuggled into a camp...somehow managed to finish the tinnie off...As time went by, I thouroughly enjoyed VB, MB or Crownies while chewing the fat, or after a "hard days work".

Went to Europe a few times and enjoyed many beers over there, but could never remember what I had been drinking when I woke the next day LOL

It would have been late last year, having been brewing k&k clones of the common megaswills, I was in Europe and started taking notice of the beers I was drinking. Alts in Duesseldorf, real ales in England, English lagers etc. I came home determined to find similar in Australia. Have since been drinking the James Squire range when out at the pubs, but the real eyeopener has been the case swap beers...so many styles, so little time to brew them!

To pick a defining moment it would have to be the last trip to England and Germany with the real ales and alt beers.

 

[geoffi]

Weissbier, Englischer Garten, Munich, September 1988.

Don't remember exactly which brewery it was from, but I'd never tasted anything like it.

 

[mje1980]

Showing your age geoff, i was 8!.

I dont think i had a specific moment, i just remember being pissed off that most beer had a crap taste, and i kept thinking "why does it have to taste like crap??". Tooheys old saved me for a while as a youngster, but one year, spur of the moment i bought a HB kit. 6 months later i was kegging, then i moved to the ESB 3kg kits, they are good, then not much after tried a few partials, then in mid 04, i went to BigBrewDay at rays place, and that was it, i was gone. Within weeks i was all graining!!.

 

[mikem108]

Was a Euro lager consumer until I went to the Belgian Beer cafe when it first opened in Cameray 1999, working my way through the list that fateful day, Starting with Hoegaarden through de Konick, Palm, Leffe and a few others finishing with an Orval, although extremely drunk I was in beer heaven! Couldn't get the taste of those beers out of my mind