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I managed to steer clear of beer most of my life, never taking to the stuff. When I went to college people thought I'd acquire the taste. I didn't. When I joined a fraternity people thought I would surely acquire the taste. I didn't. I got through college drinking only one can of beer that I can remember. It was a Bud Light, chilled ice cold, on a hot summer day, so it may as well have been water. My brother moved to Alaska to attend graduate school in biology and picked up home brewing from a professor. His first beers must have been crude with minimal facilities available. My dad decided if his son could make beer so could he. Dad retrieved his old wine making carboys from the garage and began making beer. Dad kept offering me beer insisting this was different from the Blatz the guys drank in college. I politely declined for a couple of years until I accidentally smelled one. I was helping my dad install a modem in his computer when he offered me a beer and as usual I declined. He got himself a beer and as I was working on the PC I caught a whiff of Toad Spit Stout. Wow! "That doesn't smell like beer." Well, I tasted my first stout and liked it. I asked what commercial beers would be similar to my dad's homebrew and he steered me toward Guinness Stout and Newcastle Nut Brown Ale. I also borrowed my dad's copy of The Complete Joy Of Homebrewing by Charlie Papazian, the source of the Toad Spit Stout recipe. I read the book and thought it sounded simple enough - besides Charlie's motto for brewing was, "Relax, Don't worry, Have a homebrew." When my brother was home for Christmas my dad, brother, and I went to Jimmy Kelly's Irish Pub so I could try some beer. They ordered two Guinness Stouts and a Newcastle so I could try both. The first taste of Guinness was a bit too much for me and I chose the Newcastle, which was my first favorite beer. Within a month I was brewing. I immediately became a regular at my local brewpub, The Oaken Barrel. Whenever I travel I make an effort to visit as many of the local brew pubs and microbrews as possible. I enjoy sharing what I find with friends, which led me to writing the newsletter for my local homebrew club for a couple of years. I was more interested in writing about visiting brewpubs than writing strictly about brewing, so that's what they got. Someone suggested I publish the newsletter on the web. I did. Publishing the club information was interesting enough that I created my own page about the time my wife and I had our first son. That happy coincidence led to the original content being mostly baby pictures, but now I've had time to return to the pubs.
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