The A(i)les of Being a Craft Beer Lover in College

July 15, 2013 | Mirko Kruse

How about this scene:  You swing open the back door to a house that leads into a dark basement.  A cloud of body heat, and body sweat greets you at the door.  Each step taken down the stairs (that surely don’t meet building code) enters you into another level of this nimbus dense, wet heat cluster.  Finally on the basement floor you immediately identify the source—a hundred sweat dripping college kids standing shoulder-to-shoulder yelling to one another over the boom of the music.   As thirteen dollar handles of vodka are being passed over your head you scale across the side of the basement to make your way around the crowd.  There are solo cups filled with last weekend’s beer that were placed and forgotten on the shelves beside you.  And is that something growing in the beer?   Hard to see, but you can sure smell a festering sourness woft out of the cup.  Buddy, that ain’t no lambic.  Human traffic is backed up at an unchilled keg.  Pour yourself a cup.  Oh great, a nice head to this one.  The whole cup is foam but it quickly dissipates into a lukewarm puddle.  Take a gulp.  Gotta’ love Natural Light.  Then take a look over to the beer pong table.  There’s a guy, ping-pong ball in one hand, snifter glass of Dogfish Head 90 Minute in the other.  That’s me.   I love craft beer and I’m in college.  That guy is me.

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