American Swill

[The Seer]

Not your best effort, but not a bad read.....

At this rate we'll know as much about you as your parents do...

Oh, and FYI, the pull tabs were put in the cans so as to not step on them barefooted....

[huh?]

Some of my Catholic friends would give up beer during Lent, and drink liquor instead. I decided to give up religion instead of beer. But I drank liquor too, when it was around.

Nice.
Seems like a very practical approach to me.

[Tom In VA]

That's like giving up porn but jerking off to national geographic, victoria secrets catalogs, the sears catalog female underwear section, or ....

Sigourney Weaver in Ghost Busters, towards the end there, where she's all possessed and shit.

[Kid Nashville]

As a fellow Ohioan I gotta rack the Little Kings. The first alcohol that ever passed my lips was Blatz as a toddler in the Mitten. Gramps used to sneak me a sip. First beer I ever bought as a legal adult was Coors. It had just arrived in Ohio.

[huh?]

As a fellow Ohioan I gotta rack the Little Kings. The first alcohol that ever passed my lips was Blatz as a toddler in the Mitten. Gramps used to sneak me a sip. First beer I ever bought as a legal adult was Coors. It had just arrived in Ohio.

I'm updating the database...standby.

[Wolfman]

Draft beer tasted better than beer out of a bottle or can for some reason.
Maybe because draft beer is not pasteurized as canned/bottled. Also makes that beer go "punky" when the lines are not clean. When I go for a draft beer in a place I've never been to, I ask them to pour me what "they are pouring".

[PSUFAN]

Skunking:

http://www.epinions.com/review/Beck_s_B ... 7813686916

A good part of the reason for that is the green glass that Beck’s is packaged in. Green glass is the “in” thing for mass market European imports, and unfortunately the American consumer by and large seems to associate green glass with quality, Indeed, some even come to think that the “skunked” flavor in green glass packaged beers is the way these beers are supposed to taste.

They’re not, of course. Skunking is a phenomenon that occurs when certain wavelengths of light-energy stimulate chemical components present in hops. The result is trace amounts of the same chemical that skunks produce, which is not something I want in my beer.

Brown glass does a much better job of filtering out these harmful wavelengths than green glass does, though it’s not entirely perfect either. Sadly, the marketing people always seem to win out in these battles, and so the uninformed consumer ends up buying defective beer.

Just about every "skunked" beer is probably far betterwhen it is delivered in a different way. Yuengling Chesterfield Ale is an excellent beer, but they put it in that green glass, and the taste - subtle at best in that sort of beer - is overwhelmed.

Wolfman makes a great point about tap lines. I worked at a bar when I was younger that was managed by a 75 year old dude with a lot of experience. He constantly yammered on about how he poured the best beer in town, because he diligently flushed his lines out every morning with a lyme solution, AND THEN with plenty of water. It took me a while to appreciate this, but he was right - I got to the point where I could recognize how clean the draft line was when I was served a beer at a restaurant.

[Mikey]

Heineken was for some reason a big deal around here when I was in college and my 20s. Imported and more expensive, I guess, but it had that skunky taste about 90% of the time.

[The Whistle Is Screaming]

Good read 88 and a great topic.

1st taste of booze was when I was 8 day's old, drank a little Manischewitz before "Shakes the Moyel" whacked off my foreskin. 1st drunk was 11, lot's of wine at a friends sisters Bat Mitzvah, 1st hangover followed. Started drinking regularly around 13 when we would either steal booze from our parents or get an older sibling to buy it for us. The drinking age was 18 so it wasn't hard to get beer or whatever we wanted. $2 got you 6-pack of anything you could want and usually some change. We drank mostly Miller, Genny (cream ale or 12 horse, we avoided Red Eye at all costs), Matts or Bud, but once in a while got Maximus malt liquor or Mickey's Big Mouth and occassionally we'd get 40 oz Genny Cream Ale. If it wasn't beer it was Boones Farm, but that usually when we had chicks with us. Later in highschool we drank a lot of tequila and vodka becasue it was easy to hide in drinks. We also started going to bars, first fake ID's then using a license of someone of age that fit your description. NY didn't have pictures on their licenses so it was easy, all you had to do is remember the name and address. College was a free for all with a mixture of cheap beer & booze, but started to aquire a taste for "good" beer at that time. Now I drink mostly beer and my liquor choices are "higher end" as I prefer them on the rocks or straight up. I rarely have a "mixed" drink, but do like a good glass of wine. Bottom line, booze is great as long as you don't let it ruin your life.

[Cuda]

Not your best effort, but not a bad read.....

bullshit- it was quite rackable

Oh, and FYI, the pull tabs were put in the cans so as to not step on them barefooted....

Pull tabs were for pussies & young whippersnappers

we used these:



kept 'em on a string around our necks so we wouldn't lose 'em

-sin
Mikey, Goober, & Wolfie

[Wolfman]

The projection on a .45 magazine worked in a pinch when you didn't have a church key ! Set your can on on a solid surface, put the projection on the edge of the top and give it a whack with the palm of your hand--repeat at the other side and enjoy !

[Tom In VA]

Bottom line, booze is great as long as you don't let it ruin your life.

RACK. I've met several folks who've been able to drink for a long time. Doing their thing, building their life, their only sense they're alcoholic comes when the doctor says - "Your liver is shot, you have cirrhosis, probably have 6 months to live if you keep drinking the way you're drinking".

Conversely, I've met people who've been total fuck ups who haven't seen it.

Both stopped drinking successfully with a little help and their bodies healed and in the case of the total fuck ups they were able to change their shit around and un-fuck themselves.

I was a "tweener" I suppose. I was on the fast track to being a total fuck up while trying to be the dude that could keep his shit together and drink. I'm fortunate I was able to stop in time. I got lucky.

That being said, if I could drink successfully like many folks apparently can, I'd love me some Guiness Stout. Vodka was cool. The Jack and Jim's of the liquor genus usually winded up getting bruised and bloody knuckles so I stopped them awhile ago.

Was never a big wine drinker. That being said, most of the times I fired for effect whether I planned on it or not so I'd pretty much drink anything and everything once I started drinking. The relaxing Guiness during a hockey game typically turned into all the Guiness PLUS a case of Bud (cheaper) AND my wife's wine if there way any.

I do miss the taste, sometimes I miss the feeling of the cool buzz and even the occasional shitfaced. Occasionally I get a wee bit thirsty, like reading this thread. But I don't miss the consequences one bit. Not even a little. I reckon if drinking = consequences, it's time to take a look but the bottom line is:

You're only alcoholic when you say you are. And you'll only stop when you do something about it.

Of course in my circle of friends and family, I was the last to know.

ScienceSpeed to y'all. Good trip down memory lane for me.

[Bobby42]

Drink beer and then drink beer, again.

[smackaholic]

First swig of beer that I recall was probably around 10 or so. My grandpa kept a 6 of black label in the fridge. He and my grandmother would have a glass with dinner.....when they had spaghetti.

Only spaghetti.

I like beer with spaghetti too, but, I also like beer with pretty much anything other than maybe a really really good homemade carrot cake. It kinda clashes with the cream cheese frosting.

Weird how the old folks seemed to have such consistent habits. Never, ever saw them touch the stuff at any other time. They did keep a big jug of wine around though that they drank regularly. When I was little they were also big with the afternoon highball. That seemed to fade out though by the time they got into their 80s

I recall not caring for it much. Prolly cause it was black label. If they had hooked me up with some good stuff, I'd probably be a drunk now like Tom.

As for drinking with friends, first was during a school trip to DC. We were staying in Arlington. The age was still 18 and there was one chick that was of age. So she bought a shitload of lowenbrau dark. I thought that stuff was the bomb! Fukk, so wouldn't anybody who's prior experience was a sip of grandpa's black label.

Upon reaching drinking age, 18, thank god!!!! I spent the better part of that summer drunk as hell. My best friend Jay and I developed a taste for michelob for some reason. I still think it's OK for 'mericain swill.

First memorable bad experience was me and jay picking up a 6 of hefenrefer malt licka, aka green monsters aka kneegah beer.

We choked that shit down at a drive in movie. (I think there's some homosmack in that sentence) Got purty fukked up for just 3 16 ounce bottles. I did something that night that I haven't done since. I yakked it up about 5 hours later. I've had plenty other episodes of alcohol induced upchucking, but, they have all occured immediately after drinking too much bad tequila, usually.

When cash reserves were low there was good old schaefer long necks. 4.99/case. Gawd was that shit horrible. There was only one reason for drinking that shit.....getting hammered. There was absolutely nothing in it for my taste buds.

After joining the navy I discovered what is to this day one of the most cost effective buzzes.

The Beast. And a few years later, beast ice.

It wasn't sam adams or even michelob, but, it was a hell of a lot better than schaefer and similarly priced.

Drank a hell of a lot of that shit well into my married days.

Now, I am becoming a bit of a beer snob. Not on a U&L level, but, if I am spending my money, it's usually a SA product or maybe honey brown. HB, in my opinion, is one of the best deals out there. It tastes as good as more expensive micros for about the price of michelob or bud. HB is the only reason I might be a little sad if alqueda gets hold of a nuke and drops it on crapchester.

[Left Seater]

Excelent topic.

I didn't start drinking till college and even then not until my Jr year. Most of you know about my dad and so the late start prolly makes sense. Combine that with athletics and learning to fly and I was near the bottom in consumption.

After college the 24 hour "bottle to throttle" rule at my company made drinking anything difficult. Also, officiating HS and college football meant that there would be no drinking on Thursday or Friday nights. Today with reduced flying and officiating, but more radio time means that I still don't drink that much.

All that said, I don't drink beer. Much. Like 88 said most drinking is to get a buzz and why have to drink four times as much to get there? Plus, its funny to watch all the beer drinkers making trip after trip to the head, while I have a better buzz and haven't had to go once. That's not to say that I haven't had a beer before. In some situations I will drink it, but I won't buy it to drink for myself.

I stick with the Vodka and on every once in a while will drink a tequilla neat. The wife enjoys red wine so I can also drink that with her.

My wife and I like to entertain and we always have people over. Therefore we have a kegarator, a beer fridge, and a well stocked bar. I never want to ask someone what they want to drink, and then say "oh, we don't have that." I prolly have 10 bottles of liquor that are still unoppened, but you never know when that will be someone's drink of choice, and by god I will have it.

I think this will be a Vodka lunch day.

[PSUFAN]

I definitely enjoy beer quite apart from the effects of alcohol. I would drink it to enjoy it as a beverage first. When you drink vodka, you're essentially setting aside enjoyment of the beverage for the intoxication, right?

[Left Seater]

Isn't that the purpose of having a drink/beer? There are so many other things that taste better than beer or alcohol that when we reach for either, aren't we doing so with a purpose? However, I can have a vodka at lunch and enjoy it without getting drunk.

Further, cause of my dad, I will not have a drink and do anything within prolly 4 hours. Add more than one and start adding hours.

[PSUFAN]

I have been alcohol free since July 4th...mostly as an experiment. I don't really miss any part of it except the taste of a good beer. I know it's a subjective matter, but I really enjoy a well-crafted beer - and to varying lesser degrees whiskey and wine - for the taste alone. If you didn't have to ruin the taste of beer to make it alcohol-free, I'd probably enjoy drinking NA.

[Dinsdale]

I have been alcohol free since July 4th...mostly as an experiment.

You sick, masochistic bastard.

Fear not, brother... I've been picking up his slack.

[PSUFAN]

I have been alcohol free since July 4th...mostly as an experiment.

You sick, masochistic bastard.

I basically asked myself...do you know what it feels like to be free of alcohol for an extended period of time? The answer was, no.

I have been happy with the results. It's only been a few months, and I wasn't a heavy drinker, but I'm pretty amazed at how different I feel. Ultimately, I find that I'm not missing that much.

[Dinsdale]

do you know what it feels like to be free of alcohol for an extended period of time?

I imagine it's much like being named the manager of the Department of Redundancy Department.



Sorry. Too many "different than," "period of time," and assorted other linguistic butcherings on this board where a certain VP candidate's intelligence/knowledge is being bashed.

[KC Scott]

, but it had that skunky taste about 90% of the time.

We had a bad beer "phase" here too, when I was in school:



Worst beer ever - no idea how this swill ever made it to the shelf of any store

[Terry in Crapchester]

Excellent topic.

First alcohol I ever had in my life had to be about age 10 or 11. I was an altar boy, and after Mass you had to wash the chalice. Most of the time, it had some leftover wine in it, so I used to drink that before I washed it out. More backwash and water than wine.

When I was 12, we moved, and my dad wanted to do it ourselves rather than hire movers. For some reason, I got out of school a day ahead of my brothers that year, so they were in school that day and my dad and I did all the moving. When we got the last of it into the house, first thing my dad did was grab a beer. Carling Black Label, IIRC. Because I had worked so hard, my dad let me have one too. I remember it tasting horrible, and I didn't even finish it.

About a year later, I broke into my parents' liquor cabinet with a friend. I got grounded for that one.

I didn't start drinking on anything approaching a regular basis until my senior year of high school. I was 16 (I had a late birthday, so I didn't turn 17 until a few months into my senior year) and starting to feel my oats. Mostly it was Genny or Miller, occasionally something like a Matt's Beer Ball, and even rarer still, somebody might spring for something like Molson. The drinking age was 18 back then, and New York didn't have photos on the drivers' licenses back then. But like I said, I was the youngest in my class, and my parents did a pretty good job of keeping me under their thumb. So mostly, I went along with what everyone else was drinking.

College, as others have mentioned, took drinking to a different level. There would be parties in our dorm just about every weekend. Indiana was a 21 state even before that was mandatory, so my buying alcohol at first was out of the question. Generally, they'd take a collection of $4 per guy and make a booze run. Lots of really cheap, and not good, beer back then -- mostly Hamm's, Old Milwaukee and PBR (I'm getting a little queasy just thinking about it). They'd also buy liquor, usually vodka or rum, for a punch that was primarily for the women.

Since I went to college on a NROTC scholarship, I went into the Navy, another heavy drinking environment, after graduation. At that point, I made a conscious decision that I would no longer drink the same sort of cheap beer I drank in college. On school breaks back home, I had developed a taste for Canadian beer, mostly Molson and Labatt's, but that was hard to find in the South, where my ship was homeported. So I mostly drank Michelob Light while I was in the Navy. It was illegal to drink or possess alcohol onboard the ship. I never wanted to run the risk of violating that particular rule, so I didn't even try. And while certain forms of contraband were relatively common -- e.g., porno movies and, in my case, a portable electric fan that had not been safety-checked and which I asked my parents to send me during a Persian Gulf deployment so I could actually get a little sleep, 'cause it was too hot otherwise -- I never saw a whole lot of other people chance that rule. The Navy allowed you, after 50 consecutive days at sea, to drink two beers onboard if you were 21 or over. My ship once spent 108 straight days at sea, so we got two beer days during that time -- the only time I ever drank onboard.

When I got to law school, I made the conscious decision to cut back on my drinking, primarily for financial reasons but also partially because I knew too much alcohol would be a bad thing. I've pretty much stuck to that ever since. I'd have to plead guilty to having gotten behind the wheel in an intoxicated condition on more than one occasion. But I've long since grown out of that, and I was fortunate enough to learn my lesson without hurting myself or, more importantly, someone else. Or even picking up a DWI or DUI, for that matter. I wouldn't even think of doing that today, and with a professional license, the potential collateral consequences are also deterrents. Also, since I now have kids, I don't want them to see me drunk.

I was never that much of a wine drinker until I met my wife. She likes red wine, so we occasionally have some together. It's always at home.

I usually don't drink hard liquor unless either the wife buys one of those frozen drink mix thingies during the summer, in which case I'll make it up and there will always be plenty to go around; or otherwise, if I'm at a wedding and it's open bar, I'll drink liquor rather than beer. I rarely drink beer anymore these days either, and like PSUFAN said, the only thing I really miss about it is the taste of a good beer. Some here have mentioned that they don't like the taste of beer, and that's understandable. But if you drink it enough, eventually you acquire a taste for beer, and there is a difference in taste between quality beer and cheap swill.

[BSmack]

I basically asked myself...do you know what it feels like to be free of alcohol for an extended period of time? The answer was, no.

I have been happy with the results. It's only been a few months, and I wasn't a heavy drinker, but I'm pretty amazed at how different I feel. Ultimately, I find that I'm not missing that much.

Been going through the same thing after the birth of my son. Nights out are few and far between. I not complaining either. Though I haven't shaved off nearly as much weight as I would have expected, I'm feeling a whole lot better.

[Cuda]

do you know what it feels like to be free of alcohol for an extended period of time?

yes, but then puberty came along

[PSUFAN]

do you know what it feels like to be free of alcohol for an extended period of time?

yes, but then puberty came along

Exactly. It had been that long for me as well.

[PSUFAN]

Scott, that pic of Mickey's Big Mouth has the twist-off top. I'm sure you remember the bizarre huge pull-tab top that always cut you?

[Tom In VA]

Though I haven't shaved off nearly as much weight as I would have expected, I'm feeling a whole lot better.

Careful with "replacing", you know eating instead of drinking. Early on, I actually went through some withdrawal symptoms, I was told to eat sugar. Fundamentally, booze, gets digested and has a blood sugar on some people. Anyway, I noticed when I got that irritable I need a drink feeling, a milkshake would calm that. Of course being what I am, I got that irritable I need a drink feeling quite a bit - so there were a lot of milkshakes.



Anyway, I packed on about 20 - 30 lbs. Lost that, then quit chewing tobacco, and whoa nellie.

God and Science, this little neurotic defect of mine is a pain in the ass.

Good Luck

[Tom In VA]

Scott, that pic of Mickey's Big Mouth has the twist-off top. I'm sure you remember the bizarre huge pull-tab top that always cut you?

Yep.

And boy did I do stupid shit when I was partying. Remember that dude in Platoon ? Grab the can by both ends, make sure the incisors puncture the can and twist ?

Sliced my lip once doing that. Some dude couldn't believe I was doing so he kept handing me beer cans.

That and using teeth as a church key, it's a wonder I still have teeth in my head.

[KC Scott]

Scott, that pic of Mickey's Big Mouth has the twist-off top. I'm sure you remember the bizarre huge pull-tab top that always cut you?

I do - sliced the fingers numerous times.

We also used to "test" the chicks that ran around with us to see if any could their mouth around the opening, then chug one with no hands.
I watched three or four nearly drown trying.

Where was digital cams and youtube when you really needed it?