It all started this past 4th of July weekend…

Benita (aka My Better Half, aka The Mother of My Lovely Children) surveyed the beer inventory and found that I had too much beer (is that really a problem???). Apparently, there was a shortage of space for GoGurts and Oikos in our refrigerator, and there were way too many cases of beer scattered around our basement. Since she was seriously displeased with the accumulation of bottles and cans, she threw down the gauntlet:

There will be no more “Whisky Funtime!” until all that beer is knocked back and knocked down to a suitable amount!

In my defense, I wasn’t responsible for most of the beer on hand. You see, over the past twelve months, we’ve hosted several parties and family gatherings at the house, and as is often the case, someone always feels obligated to bring something. In this case, that something just happened to be cases of beer. It’s not my fault that I’m such a great guy that people willingly gift me beer! Benita obviously doesn’t know what a great guy she married. Hell, maybe I’M the better half!

In any event, on the Friday before 4th of July (July 1st for those keeping score), we had a “beer only” evening with the usual suspects (The Wookie, G-LO, and a relative newcomer to our merry band of drinkers that we’ll call Mike, mostly because that’s his actual name) and finished off 15 bottles. Needless to say, Benita wasn’t impressed and suggested that we might need to recruit another guy. While I made a call to The Amazing Yen…we enlisted the aid of The ROK for Beer Evening #2 (once again, for those keeping score, we’re talking about July 2nd) and finished off 18 bottles. As expected, Benita noted that we’d barely made a dent in the back stock, called us a few childish names (mostly insulting our already beaten down manhoods) and in light of our obvious shortcomings, offered up an alternative…

For our second beer evening, I had taken a lot of bottles out of the fridge. Since we didn’t go through it all, and since I really had nowhere to put the stuff at the end of our session (yes, there was room in the refrigerator, but given My Better Half’s sunny disposition with regards to the beer back stock, I decided against putting them back in there), G-LO, in a moment of unusual generosity, offered to lend me his brand new Igloo Maxcold Cooler which just happened to contain 20 lbs of ice. With the hopes that we would achieve her goal of thinning the beer inventory, Benita allowed me to leave the cooler on The Barthenon for the remainder of the long holiday weekend.

As a bit of backstory, the beer selection over the long holiday weekend was quite the hodgepodge:

• Parts of a Sam Adams sampler
• A 12-pack of Yuengling
• A 6-pack of Guinness
• A few stray bottles, i.e. Victory Headwaters Pale Ale, Leinenkugel’s Canoe Paddler, Duclaw’s Dirty Little Freak, and Otter Creek’s Couch Surfer
• The remnants of a Beer-Of-The-Quarter box which included Duck Rabbit’s Milk Stout and Brown Ale, plus Adirondack’s Bear Naked Amber and Beaver Tail Brown ales
• A few stray cans of Coors Lights, Leinenkugel Ginger and Summer Shandies, and Founders All Day IPA
• Parts of a Two Roads sampler, i.e. Ol’ Factory Pils, Honeyspot Road White IPA, Lil’ Heaven Session IPA)

See what I mean? When I say hodgepodge, I mean hodgepodge.

While I would love to say that we achieved our goal of clearing out the beer inventory over that sudsy 4th of July weekend, sadly, we barely made a dent in it. There is an upside though…

Now I don’t know if this is a case of Benita being extremely generous, or if this is yet another case of her speeding up my eventual demise, but she has allowed me to keep the beer cooler stocked throughout the rest of the summer. And if all that weren’t enough, she has encouraged the usual suspects to partake from the beer cooler whenever they want (she’s probably in cahoots with the other wives to take us all out ASAP. I can’t say I blame them). All of this generosity has led to random Wookie, ROK, or G-LO sightings as they wander into our backyard in search of refreshment.

As far as my partaking of the spoils goes, I’ve decided to treat my reaching in to the Hodge Podge Beer Cooler as some sort of a late night drinking game show. You see, it’s summertime in New Jersey (and the rest of the Northern Hemisphere), so at night, when it comes time for a run to the beer cooler, you need to either light a citronella candle or keep the lights off in order to keep the flying critters away. I’ve opted to go the lights out route, so when I pull a beer out from the frigid confines of the cooler, I never know what I’m going to get. Seeing as there are quite a few swilly options in there, I’ll just try to avoid the Whammies whenever I reach blindly into the cooler.

Filed under: Booze Banter, Brew Review Tagged: Beer, Beer Cooler, Cold Beer, Craft Beer, Drinking, Drinkwire, Summertime