Often I am not the one to head to the store so I realized early in my relationship that my partner needed to understand my beer philosophy.
The finer points to buying me beer:
- Stay away from the big names
- No food. I don't typically like fruity beers or beers which are supposed to be strong in a particular flavour. I also, conveniently, am not a big fan of oatmeal stouts. Based on this the idea is "no food in beer", in other words, no raspberry, chocolate, coffee, oatmeal, apricot, etc. Don't get me wrong, I love all of these items and I love beer and never the twain shall meet.
- In general I am not a light beer fan. So nothing that is "light" anything and rarely lagers, though I make quite a few lager exceptions.
- The season rule. There are so many great beers and if you stick to the seasons you can vary your drinking throughout the year.
Summer: lagers, pale ales
Fall: porters, black and tan
Winter: Stouts
Spring: porters, strong ales