If I knew then, part II…

In an earlier post I mused on my early entry into the delights and wonders of good beer. The second phase occurred a few years later when I was working as a cook at Cafe Brenda in downtown Minneapolis. Saturday nights were “beer club.” We rotated whose turn it was to bring the beer and the goal was to stump the others while we worked. We played a game of 20 questions, yes or no only, to see if the others could figure out the beer. “Is it in a brown bottle?” “Is it from Europe?” “Is it a dark beer?” etc. My scope of beers at that point was still fairly limited, but it got my out looking for new, surprising beers. I spent a lot of pleasant time searching through Surdyk’s and Hennepin Liquors and France Ave Wine shop. After a long night, the usual suspects, Bo “Ramekin” Jacobs, Mike “Canola” Gintert, and I would sit back to enjoy a new beer; MB would join us after her own kind of grueling night (ah the joys of retail for her at the time) and we’d watch the Saturday Night downtown craziness go by. They were the best seats in town and some fine beer. Ahhhh…. Of course the beer we brought would disappear quickly so we would keep going with plenty of Summit from the bar, one of my standards. Beer club went for quite a few years and I sampled quite a few beers that way. Yes, Beer Club. I think it’s time for a revival.