Belly Up to the Bar

At our house, you have to belly up to the island.  That's where the younger daughter likes to host beer tastings for her father.  

She and her dad enjoy selecting interesting individual cans or bottles of beer at our local grocery stores.  At home, the daughter pours samples into glasses and numbers them so that it's a blind taste testing.  The husband has no clue which is which.  His personal favorite is London Pride.  It has a rather nondescript name as well as can.  See the notepad - that's for the husband to jot down his thoughts on each brew.  He obviously takes this stuff seriously.  


Below is a closer look at the latest beer tasting.

You've gotta love some of the names these Brits have given their beers... Fursty Ferrett and Bishop's Finger.  I don't see the requisite palate cleanser in these pics, but I know he had a bag of plain tortilla chips nearby so he could munch on those in-between tastings.  Here in our household we appreciate only the finer things.  


And speaking of refined tastes... here is the teen taking a swig of beer after our tour of the De Halve Maan brewery in Brugge, Belgium, this past weekend for the last hurrah of spring break.  At the end of our 45 minute tour, with the smell of hops in our noses since they were in production mode, we were given a sample of the final product.  The younger daughter opted for Coke, but the older daughter turns 17 next week and was automatically given her own glass.  Since the legal drinking age on the continent is 16, we decided to let her have a sip of the sample.  She wrinkled her nose with foam on her upper lip and pronounced that it tasted like stale saltine crackers.  

Her dad was happy to finish it off for her.  And mine since I've never been a beer drinker.  He would have also polished off a glass meant for the little one if we had consented to let her sample it instead of allowing her to substitute a soda.  After another glass of beer with lunch in the restaurant adjacent to the brewery, he was well fortified for an afternoon of touring in the intermittent rain with one child who wanted to go back to the hotel and swim (indoor pool on 8th floor was a hit) while the other one wanted to shop for an after prom dress in the local boutiques.  It was at this point when I began to wonder why I didn't get a beer IV to make it through the rest of the day.