Confession: PBR

Man, this is a terrible thing I need to get off my chest here people.

I'm a bit of a beer snob, I guess.  I like beer a lot.  A LOT.  I happen to have a palate (mostly the nose, really) that can discern a wide range of subtle flavors, and so in a lot of comestible-related areas, I'm a bit--well, not a snob, really, because I really don't have the money for that, and besides I grew up, like all good Southern girls, on fried chicken and greens, and like all good New Mexican girls on 3-for-a-dollar greasy chorizo tacos (my mouth, it waters).  But beer snobbery is relatively affordable, and I like it.  I like it a lot.

That's not the confession, not yet.  See, my husband has no palate and no sense of smell at all.  He seriously cannot tell why Fat Tire is good--he can tell it tastes stronger than the cheap shit he drinks, but that's all it tastes like to him is just strong.  He likes it alright, but he feels the money for good beer is wasted on him since he can't get all the good stuff out of it.  So, he buys cheap beer.

And it started like this, see.  I discovered that his cheap beer was an excellent cooking medium.  My beer is often too strong for whatever I'm cooking and overwhelms any other flavors (not always--sometimes a strong beer is exactly what's needed--I guess I should say I cook with beer a lot, mainly because we can't usually afford decent wine), but his beer works wonders.  I started cooking with it a lot.  And of course, sometimes you have half a can left over and...

This is the confession.  I really like Pabst Blue Ribbon.  I can't tell if I really like it like it or if it just brings back sweat-soaked memories of all the time I spent at punk shows at Jay's Upstairs, that venerable den of perdition, that fire hazard where once my face was shoved right up into Mike Watt's crotch.  You can see why I would wax nostalgic over something like that.

I drank a lot of PBR at Jay's in those days.  It was sort of the house beer at Jay's, and indeed it was probably the favorite beer of all on our campus.  When you got a shot of Jagermeister* at Jay's (and one of my favorite things about Jay's, aside from the music, was that they had Jagermeister** on tap), you got a chaser of PBR***. 

Drinking that illicit half-can the other night, I was instantly transported back to Mike Watt's crotch, man.  I could hear the Fireballs of Freedom and the Volumen playing, feel the thick fog of secondhand smoke giving me cancer, admire once again the completely shitty lighting, smell the bathrooms.  Ah. 

And suddenly I find myself drinking PBR.  Even though I have Guinness and Alaskan Amber (not to mention gin!) in the house.  WTFF?  Dude.  I am so ashamed.

*which is totally a sipping liqueur

**yes, I remain opposed to the umlaut.

***"yeah, since the day I left Milwaukee...been making the bars lots of big money and helping white people dance"

P.S.  If you ever see me in the liquor store buying Jag, stage an intervention, please.