(Member of Beer Advocate - Dusty278)

My name is Dusty and I just moved back to St Louis, MO, from Minneapolis, MN.  I had moved there after I graduated college (Truman State) so as to get away from Missouri and see how it was somewhere else (Minnesota has an awesome craft beer community by the way).

I've wanted to get a blog going for a while now because I love to write. The problem was... What should I write about? Me? Though I am slightly narcissistic, I couldn't keep material going for regular and interesting posts. So I began to think about my passions and hobbies, I have many. That's when beer came to mind. I mean I am a young (spry) male, fresh out of college, and very into craft beer. I figure I'll write about what's going on with me, talk about some of my favorite beers and new ones I try, and my general beer/other thing related opinions, experiences, etc.

Well you might say, "You probably just binge dank ice cold cheap beer in college, and are trying to re-live those days/don't know what you are talking about." Wow, you're kind of a jackass. I did do my share of drinking in college and some of it was admittedly beer that had to be drank ice cold to taste good. If you didn't go through this 'rite of passage,' you missed out. Anyway, you have to start somewhere and as this is my first post of many and a lot of the posts will revolve around drinking and sampling beers, I'll show you where I came from.

I like talking with people about when they started drinking and how they evolved into the what/how they drink today. My first couple months in college were typical of most college students. Outside of class, I met people, started forming circles of friends to start hanging out with, got involved in sports and other things I was interested in, and of course, went to parties. The first time ever had a drop of alcohol was during a keg stand. It was funny because I couldn't hear the person asking me if I wanted to do one so I just nodded my head and so they hoisted me up! By the second semester, I had joined a fraternity, something I didn't see myself doing until I got there and found Beta Theta Pi, the one I joined. It wasn't a typical 'frat,' but I won't get into that. As I hadn't acquired the taste for cheap beer as of yet, I would typically drink rum and coke (Now days rum is the only thing I won't touch). In time I began to drink beer as it was easier to play games with and just more covenant in general. Over the years, I did start and continue to like any beer (even natural light and other cheap beers). Still today I can't see why people do not like most cheap beers, they don't have much taste to them at all and as such, there isn't much to dislike. However, I began to get into craft beer at that time as well.

Being Irish and proud, I would drink Guinness and Killian's Irish Red, thinking at the time that my tastes were very mature because I liked Guinness and it was very dark (oh my)! The local beer stores were packed with all this other beer that I had never heard of and they had a "You pick 6" deal where you could pick 6 single beers and buy it as you would a regular 6 pack. Being a curious person, I started trying everything. Fast forward to last year when I was living in MN, I was already very into the craft beer community in Missouri and listened to all the main podcasts and all that. During my time in MN, I missed having Schlafly around but I still had Rouge and Avery and found Surly, Summit, and Lagunitas (My current favorite brewer) along with brewpubs galore and an amazing craft beer community. Now that I am back in St Louis, I really miss all of that along with the few people I hung out with there and the lacrosse team I coached.

Welp, that's what I have for you for now, I'll see ya back here next time.

(The picture is an advertisement from one of my favorite brewpubs, Flatbranch, in Columbia, Mo. If you are driving through Columbia or going to a home Mizzou game, it is definitely worth your time to stop in.) 

From a man's sweat and God's love beer came into the world. - Saint Arnou (Arnoldus)

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