1001 Arabian Beers

For the past two years I've been a regular at my now favorite watering hole, The Backyard Ale House. It's a place with an eclectic mix of people, young, old and everything in between with great food on top of the over 500 different beers they stock with a knowledgeable staff to guide a customer.

Every Tuesday they have what they call the 545 Tasting. It's five 4 oz. samples for five bucks of whatever beer they happen to choose for the week. Sometimes it's a mix of different styles and other times it's a theme, recently it was five DIPAs. Another time it was five "pumpkin" beers (it's the only tasting I've never partaken in for reasons I will surely post about in the future).

A couple of weeks ago I sampled my 1000th different beer in the past two years at the BYAH. I'm not really sure how many more I've had at different places, probably a few hundred if I was forced to guess. To some that may seem like a lot and I'm sure to others it isn't that many. Without any specific data, I'd say to someone who likes to try different beer it's probably a middle of the road amount.

This is a great way to discover different beer, you don't have to worry about dropping a fiver on a draft or 10 or more on a bomber to only find out you don't like it. I think I've only pushed away a handful of those samples because they were just bad beer. I remember one in particular was a gluten free beer, it was just plain disgusting, undrinkable. If I had issues with gluten and this was typical of the style I'd give up beer outright. I won't say I liked every one that wasn't pushed away, in fact I know I haven't but most were good examples of the style and not cheap bottom of the barrel swill. Those do occasionally sneak in but I don't think it's something put there to get rid of stock. At least I hope not.

Regardless, pushing away a handful of beers out of a thousand says a lot about the people putting this out for their customers, four guys who love beer as much as anyone.

As an aside, I've asked one of the owners to join us here at Brew Conspiracy as a contributor, I hope he says yes. I think a bar owner could add some insight into beer selling as well as writing about beer in general.