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Grandpa's Beer

popula.com

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It's a treasure to find someone who can have an elder act rudely toward them and reflect, "I also felt like, hey, this is a great moment, sad and interesting and funny. This is what old people do. You will do this one day, and you will not know you are doing it." It's easier when, like the writer, you are not around that person all the time, but it's an excellent viewpoint that allows people to enjoy older people who are losing perspective, but still have much to offer.

Thanks for calling out the deeper aspect of the article rather than the superficial beer-related aspect.

> You will do this one day, and you will not know you are doing it.

That is a profound statement.

I see older people behave in certain ways and think I will never be like that. Then I realize that I will be, and that when I am like that I will not know it. And therefore maybe I already am like that.

> I see older people behave in certain ways and think I will never be like that. Then I realize that I will be, and that when I am like that I will not know it. And therefore maybe I already am like that.

The problem is that this isn't always true, and it's hard to know when, since there's another thing that causes all old people to do something: They all lived at the same time.

There are certain ways that older people relate to food that is based not around being old, but having lived through the great depression. The same with the baby boomers, etc. We can already see that people who grew up around 9/11 and the recession will be different in certain aspects.

Even hobbies, may have much less to do with being old, and more to do with carrying over hobbies from an earlier age.

Think of it like 'old people names'. Those aren't old people names, they're 'teenager names' 65 years later.

I'm English. A lot of beer here was traditionally served at cellar temperature even though today, most beer is served cold. I've been known to complain about the temperature of beer too.

This well-written tale should be a salutary lesson to me about getting too fixed in my opinions :)

> today, most beer is served cold

It depends what you're drinking & where you're drinking it. Almost all the beer I order is served at room temperature.

'Room temperature' is a funny thing - people say you should drink most red wines at 'room temperature' but apparently people's ideas of room temperatures has changed and increased by more than a couple of degrees over the last century. A small and hot dinner party kitchen certainly isn't what is intended by 'room temperature.'

Many sommeliers really recommending serving 'room temperature' red wines closer to cellar temperature or have fridges that just reduce temperature by a couple of degrees from the dining room in order to get what they want.

Eg it would be quite a waste to drink the 16.1% ABV Mikkeller Black (https://www.ratebeer.com/beer/mikkeller-%E9%BB%91-black/8383...) straigth from the fridge.

In the US a bar served me Mort Subite at the same temperature as they served lager. In a plastic cup. I think that really kills the brand over a longer time.

A travesty, for sure, but unlikely to tarnish that brewery's reputation given the nationality of the perpetrators.

Another serious problem with ordering such beers on tap in the U.S. is that the beer in the line is often flat and stale, having sat for perhaps days due to its unpopularity here. Compounding this, I've found our bartenders are sometimes unfamiliar with the beers, and may add insult to injury by denying there's any problem.

If you're drinking in anything other than a true specialty bar in North America, from my experience it's best to stick to bottled beer from one of our excellent local alternatives, such as Ommegang or Unibroue.

Don't understand how people can drink beer at room temperature.

I've been to the CAMRA beer festival in Paisley a few times with some friends and we usually go to a pub afterwards as tradition.

That cold pint of Tennents is heavenly after dealing with all the lukewarm ale.

Heavier bodied and more complex beers do better with warmer temperatures. Eg a lager is best drunk cold, a stout (or lambic) should be a bit warmer.

Whether that should go all the way to room temperature depends on how warm your room is. (And how you like your beer.)

Eg https://belgium.beertourism.com/belgian-beers/duchesse-de-bo... suggests you drink the Duchesse de Bourgogne at 8-12C. If you start at 8C and let it warm up as you sip, you'll notice the taste change over time and the flavours and aromas develop.

If you sip your lager slowly, you are just going to have an insipid drink. Especially if you started with something as bland as Heineken.

Heineken is pretty good for an industrial lager. A lot of brands seem to cheat with the malt sheet or hop to make beer cheaper. Having said that, I just don't like lager/pils that much to begin with. Tried 20 in the Beer Museum in Prague that were very well made and only two or three hop forward ones I would order again.

> Eg https://belgium.beertourism.com/belgian-beers/duchesse-de-bo.... suggests you drink the Duchesse de Bourgogne at 8-12C. If you start at 8C and let it warm up as you sip, you'll notice the taste change over time and the flavours and aromas develop.

Same with Westvleteren XII. You're supposed to sip it over time. Lesser Quads don't taste great over the whole temperature range.

That’s really interesting about Duchesse! I’d noticed that qualitatively (when we have some, it goes in the fridge). It definitely opens up over the 45 minutes while we watch a TV show

My Duchesse never lasts that long: I like it too much. But I start drinking it only when it's warmer.

I even managed to get it on tap on a few occasions.

That's how I discovered it! A local place included it in a "different beer" flight they were doing. I went back two weeks later and they were out, so I had to figure out where to find it bottled around here.

It's relatively easy to get in London and cheap.

But was impossible to get in Singapore for years. I now found a supplier that has a few.

Of all places, Japan had good availability. But they seem to have a thing for Belgian beers.

I don't think Heineken is bland. It's got quite a unique aftertaste.

Well, it's definitely not as complex as a lambic.

But that's OK, sometimes you want a simpler beer and sometimes a more complicated one.

(Though to be snobby again: there are way better lagers around than Heineken..)

> (Though to be snobby again: there are way better lagers around than Heineken..)

Definitely. I do like a lot of the craft lagers/IPAs.

Scotland is great for them. We've got tons of great brewers like Innis & Gunn, WEST Brewery, Williams Bros etc.

Innis & Gunn is notable as being AFAIK the only widely available oak-aged beer where you can actually taste the oak. Well worth trying IMO.

They're oaked beers are good, but TBH I find them overly-sweet and a little one-dimensional.

They sometimes do "seasonal" specials, which can be more interesting.

>Don't understand how people can drink beer at room temperature.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000384v

Meanwhile, Cherry Healey is learning how four basic ingredients – water, malted barley, hops and yeast – can be manipulated to make dark, heavy ales, light, fragrant lagers and everything in between. She is also uncovering the secrets of the perfect pint in a scientific study which shows that drinking beer from a curved glass makes it taste fruitier, while a frothy head and a higher temperature also improve flavour. Which is a win for the traditional British warm pint.

I like a good cool beer or stout, but get disgusted at cold beer. It's not enjoyable, so it gives me time to talk with friends as the beer warms to a proper temp.

I like my Lagers & Pilsners cool but Americans (generally!) really do sometimes take the cooling to extreme measures (such as keeping even the glasses refrigerated). In Central Europe a least even the cool-served beers aren’t served at quite the near freezing temperatures you’d sometimes get in the US.

Whether that strategy works depends on the carbonation of your beer (and your preferred level of carbonation).

The warming up curves and going flat curves have to play together nicely.

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