American Craft Beer The Best Craft Beer, Breweries, Bars, Brewpubs, Beer Stores, And Restaurants Serving Serious Beer.
Like so many of you, the American Craft Beer crew has regular gatherings where we connect with like-minded souls to share beer and conversation together. One of our regular hookups started organically maybe four years ago at Magruder’s, a beer and spirits store in Washington, DC…
As part of its retail promotion Magruder’s hosts beer samplings on Friday evenings and Saturday afternoons. They’ve been doing it for years and it became a magnet where the neighborhood’s beer freaks would congregate, sample whatever was being featured that week and talk craft beer with one another.
Then one late Saturday afternoon something amazing happened as the sampling session was wrapping up and the Magruders craft beer bottle share spontaneously began.
We were all hanging out, and as unusual talking beer, when someone mentioned that Stone Russian Imperial Stout had just arrived and we should try it. At which point Big George (who’s a really big guy and one of the beer gurus at Magruder’s) walked to their retail cooler, opened the new Stout and started sharing it with all of us. Then another of the beer geek’s returned George’s favor – she purchased something special and started sharing it as well.
Over the years this late afternoon semi-private bottle sharing became a local tradition that Magruders graciously allowed us to continue. Word spread throughout the neighborhood’s craft beer community and it grew…Soon all kinds of people were bringing in unusual and hard to get beers from all over the country to share.
The mix of people who show up on a regularly is part of what this beer hookup such a blast. This is a group of people who’ve bonded over beer and whose lives would have never intersected had this beer sharing not happened.
Christine is our token Belgian but she’s been in this country so long that she’s become an unapologetic West Coast IPA hophead. Niall’s our quick-witted Irish transplant. He travels the country extensively for work and mules back rare and hard to get beers to share. “Government George” is a bowtie kind of guy who works with the Federal government we think and has been bringing in lots of new beers from down south. And no one knows exactly what Rikki does (although Niall thinks she’s a drug dealer) but she can always be counted on to bring in awesome beer stash and is so much fun to hang out with.
This is a group that has grown together over beer. We’ve celebrated our share of engagements and marriages, welcomed new additions to families and toasted friends who’ve passed. People have drifted away, sometimes for years, only to reappear when you least expect it with beer in hand and tales to tell.
And the amazing thing is that our story is not all that unusual…
Ours is but one story, about one craft beer gathering, in one city. Call them what you will, craft beer hookups, beer clubs, tasting parties or bottle shares – these kinds of events are happening all over the country nowadays and every day there are more and more of them. It’s almost as if the American craft beer community is refashioning it’s our own movable version of England and Ireland’s historic but sadly declining village pub culture – without the pubs themselves and with much better beer.
And they’re growing…
Whether they began organically, are advertised on something like Craig’s list, or are organized in beer chat rooms – these kinds of gatherings are now an intrinsic part of today’s craft beer movement, and, for many, are the truest example of what the craft beer experience is all about.
