I have a serious drought (not draught, ha!) of memories when it comes to beer. For a valid reason, I suppose, since most of what is called that in Estonia, is... cat piss. Or so I hear. Disclaimer - have not, in fact, tasted one of those two things. Upon trying three different versions of canned Saku obtained, inexplicably, from a shop in Tokyo sometime last year, I will not argue against that judgement even one bit.
Oh, I just recalled this nature-documentary-survivalist-dude drinking his pee from a mostly! hollowed out snake (yes, that is correct) in a desert (not dessert, ha!). Brain, go home, you're drunk. Except that it really is not, not today at least... Unless one can get drunk off of vapours from a slow-pressure-cooking pot of a mix of beef, lamb and pork that might turn out to be awesome in an hour's time when the pot lets me in again to taste it. Or it might just turn out to have been a bad idea. Who knows. In the meanwhile, however, I have an hour to kill sitting in the same room with said pot for safety reasons, and I've already listened to two complete and two halves of a series of audiobooks today while trying hard not to be in various pains and digging about a hundred staples out of chair legs, thereby acquiring some refreshingly novel ones. Don't even ask... Feel free to guess the author of the books, though - current writing style I don't seem to be able to avoid using is a dead giveaway.
Where was I...
Right, excavating in memory banks (with yellow bulldozers, ha! doubled).
I vaguely recall that H once gave me some dark beer at a sauna evening and that those few sips didn't taste terrible. (And yes, I am aware that there are all sorts of different categories that go under the label "beer", like ales and lagers and pilsners and ipos and whateverthehellnot, but I really have not ever cared enough to learn about these.)
And at another time in a beer bar with A and... and... shoot, forgot her name... this is a bit embarrassing... M? Whatever, name not actually crucial to the story... we drank something that was basically cherry juice with a touch of a kick to it that was actually tasty. (Why on earth we were in a beer bar in Tallinn in the first place, is a mystery, though, because as much as I recall, none of us actually liked neither beer, nor the city.) Also I'm not sure that beverage was technically even beer.
There is also the curious incident of the Octoberfest in April. In Odaiba, Japan. Hmpfffft. I am almost very certain that I have either properly written about, or at least mentioned it before, but just spent 20 minutes looking for it from the borderline-frustrating UI of this blog writing site, and couldn't find a hint of it. In any case, I somehow ended up there (probably Y's fault) oh, perhaps ten years ago? Or five? And just to set things straight, the unclarity here is not due to what one would expect all sorts of unclarities to stem from when it comes to Octoberfests, whatever month they happen to be held in. No, I seem to just be continuously temporally lost. (Blame that wormhole over our roof, if you have to.) But just to prove that it wasn't all (only) in my imagination, here's a link that claims they are still at it. Meanwhile, I spent my time carefully avoiding any beer there, that much I recall. Except for one, uh, thing they called a beer cocktail that came about due to the free drink ticket I got from somewhere (potentially from buying an entrance ticket to the festival area... not that I have any memory of anything like that, but it's just a popular way to do things here. The alternative that someone just gave me one, is equally plausible, though. Comes with the territory of being young and blonde (ha!) in Japan with many drunk, er.. let's call them gentlemen, shall we, around.) ... ... ... What I meant to say is - that drink was disgusting.
Besides those, there was a rather unwanted experience of having to clean out a sauna room after some friends had decided to use beer as a substitute to an aroma oil. (Any worse use-cases and or cleaning-up-needed events I outright refuse to remember.)
And that's it. Those were ALL of the instances where this particular beverage has ever crossed through my life in more than the periphery that I know of. Until, in the beginning of this week, D went for a quick work meeting, ended up having coffee in a park, shopping for used guitars and summer shorts, bumping into a student to give some impromptu counselling, and arriving at home late at night with a couple of imported wheat beers from a discount shop, which, out of morbid curiosity, I tasted, and, as it turned out, liked.
No, for real. Yes, my body's chemical balances are clearly in a complete whack right now (tmi to describe how I know, but an annoyed head toss towards those pains I keep having to try to not be in), so just to keep things interesting, I also keep having urges to eat and drink irregular stuff, but still. I really enjoyed the taste of beer. Beer! Totally absurd.
As was the physical effect of the thing, because everything went noodly. So there I am, flopped on the sofa, almost unable to move a hand, but at the same time being able to keep level with, or even slightly get one up on any and all the witty remarks/puns etc coming from D (which is NOT a typical state of affairs because his ability to connect completely random things to other completely random things in the most hilariously clever manner possible for any and all purposes, is a bit out of this world... hence me keeping a file dedicated to his sayings that have provided hours of laughter cramps.)
Oh, and for reference, none of the "typical" effects of other types of alcohol like a spinning head, loss of coordination, slurring of words, slowed thinking, more talking or sleepiness showed up. So that's a box I didn't know existed ticked in the bucket list.
And then things escalated. Because the next day was a) nice (read: one of the few days of the year here, when it is not hellishly hot, too cold or too wet to get out and about), b) a weekday (read: crowds not quite dense enough to require extreme measures to survive in), and c) a rare instance when neither of us had to deal with an x amount of admin in places where we really would rather not be for reasons utterly out of the realm of logic (read: amazing.) So we went for a bike ride to the same area D had been the day before, aaaaand returned having bought the entire stock of that particular discounted beer the shop had and a couple of other types to try. (And some shorts. And a pair of shoes. Luckily, no guitars.) Still not quite certain why... However, I did get to be "the most attractive sounding girl on the street" due to the loud bottle-clinking emanating from my bike bags (which are a life-saver, by the way, and I don't mean just for carrying large quantities of bottles in). Also - see what I mean by clever sayings?
So, naturally, those new types got taste-tested that evening and [insert crying smiley face here (ha!)] I liked three of those too. For balance there were also two that I would have willingly poured down the toilet, so all is not lost, but still - there now exist four types of beer that I, apparently, drink.
Two of those are mass-produced imported (I think German and Dutch) wheat beers, and the other two are by a small hipster Japanese brewery no one has ever heard of, which I think actually deserves to be linked here for that reason alone. The fact that the brewery turned out to be located a bit upstream on the river that runs through our local park, is... hm... actually not so unexpected, as one might think, considering how strange things keep being around here recently. Anyway - their white barley beer is basically like grapefruit juice for adults and the wheat+barley one is the same with some grape juice mixed in.
So. If it's a weissbeer, preferentially made with wheat and an average hops concentration, cloudy not clear, with the least amount of carbonation you can get, and at room temperature, there is a chance it actually qualifies as drinkable. Huh, never would have guessed.
And then things escalated. Again. Because that second type of European import beer (that confusingly tasted just like caramel lemonade) was also a limited stock item, soooo... D went to the office for a bit and arrived home late at night with two boxes of that. Meaning that we now have a stockroom's worth of beer at home. (Luckily no chance of the same happening with that fancy brewery stuff since it's three times the price...)
Fun part is... Since alcohol, carbonated anything and wheat (as well as sugar) are a huge NOOOPE, until my body decides to calm the fk down again, which may or may not happen, like, ever, I can't drink ANY of it.
The slow-cooked meat mix turned out great, by the way - all of it tastes like mutton now, which I do not mind at all.
Cheers,
Hedi