All About Beer Magazine

Being called an expert reminds me of a story.

Beer is my passion, but I am often called an “expert” in this field, a label I am very leery of accepting.

There was an American who had studied all he could find about bull fighting, he’d read everything and examined all the videos, so he wrote a book and declared himself an “expert” on bull fighting. Soon, he traveled off to Spain to reap the rewards of being an author and an expert. The Spanish bull fighting aficionados welcomed him with open arms, and took him to the great arena. The spectacle was an extraordinary one, the first he had actually witnessed, he was hooked, he was an author, he was an expert and he discussed it with his new friends, using all the right terms. They were proud of him and took him to a great restaurant catering to such people. At the dinner’s main course, the chef brought out a huge dish bearing the two monstrous tokens of the bull’s enormous power center. Our expert devoured them with great gusto.

The next day, his new friends took him to the same restaurant, where the chef again delivered his specialty, but this time the power centers were rather small and a bit insipid, and when our expert inquired as to why this was so, he was told: “Señor, the bool does not always lose.”

Beer is my passion, but I am often called an “expert” in this field, a label I am very leery of accepting. I actually am an expert in swimming (I know, for example that swimming is not swimming, but rather it is flying in the water, and only an expert in swimming could tell you that), yet I have problems with that title in the field of beer. I am not nearly as knowledgeable about beer and alcohol.

Don’t call me “connoisseur” (“common sewer”?) either, I’m a reformed photographer-cum-swim coach, connoisseur-manship is almost an oxymoron in the face of that. Connoisseurs are fussbudgets, moderate in their own way, but never satisfied, whereas I am in love with the beer in my hand, any beer. For me, moderation fades in the presence of chocolate and beer (or ice cream and beer) and I’ve never met a beer festival that I didn’t immediately fall in love with.