What was your Gatewaybeer to craft beer?

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Guinness Stout and Hacker Pschorr. Those were the first two non bmc beers that got me interested in other styles. The first ipa I tried was DFH 60...after that, the first "big" beer was SN Bigfoot barley wine. There was no turning back.
 
Budweiser is what turned me to craft beers. Drank it, wanted to throw up, never again. :)

I'd say Blue Moon was what got me started.
Guinness was one, but I was downing it in the form of carbombs in college so I don't think that counts. It was the only beer I could chug back then.
Coworker got me into homebrewing.
Pliny is what got me to start liking IPAs. It was like surprise party in my nostrils the first time I took a whiff.
 
A friend encouraged me to try Chimay Grande Reserve at a bar and the taste was amazing. I never looked back.
 
I was completely a Bud drinker. When I ordered beer that is...in college I drank whatever swill was in the keg! I guess the progression to craft brews started with Mich Amber Bock. That is what broke the barrier. Sam Adams boston lager became my go to after discovering that and on a trip out to Arizona I had a Fat Tire...WOW! When I realized I was a craft brew fanatic was at a local pizza joint in Lexington called Pazzo's. I ordered and fully enjoyed an Old Rasputin Imperial Russian Stout. I still enjoy Bud on occasion
 
I spent my late teens in Germany and enjoyed the beers, but slipped back into Heineken territory in college. My roommate back then was from Montreal and came back with a case of La Fin du Monde in spring of 2008. I haven't dipped below that since (outside of sports-watching, of course).

LSS, La Fin du Monde.
 
JW Dundee's Honey Brown was the first beer that got me trying different things back in the early 90's. Every week during our company meetings my business partner or I would grab a 6 pack of something we hadn't tried. During this time a place called The Upstream opened in Omaha and I tried a few of their beers. Their Scotch Ale kicked a$$. In the late 90's about the time we were selling the company a friend was having a BBQ and one of his employees brought a bunch of beer he had made. Up to this point I didn't know that it was possible to brew your own. After tasting his concoction I didn't think it was a good idea either. About 8 years later the wife gets me everything I need to brew, bottle and keg (except a kettle) for christmas. My first thought was what the hell am I going to do with this crap. I of course read the books she got for me and followed the instructions to a t for the kit she got me and I was hooked. I made that Scotch ale on the 5th of January back in 07 and have not stopped since. Except for this summer until last week when I finally got to brew again. Unfortunately I am back to brewing extract/partial mash brews for now but at least it is a fresh brew. Going to try to start another one tomorrow my kegs have been empty too long. :D
 
We have a brewery in Sussex England called darkstar
Their APA is super yummy. Csn only get it on cask. After I had it I went on a craft discovery journey.
It will never end. 😊


Primary - Mosaic pale ale
Conditioning - Wife's birthday brown porter (12 day experiment)
Drinking - APA
 
wildactbrewer said:
I was completely a Bud drinker. When I ordered beer that is...in college I drank whatever swill was in the keg! I guess the progression to craft brews started with Mich Amber Bock. That is what broke the barrier. Sam Adams boston lager became my go to after discovering that and on a trip out to Arizona I had a Fat Tire...WOW! When I realized I was a craft brew fanatic was at a local pizza joint in Lexington called Pazzo's. I ordered and fully enjoyed an Old Rasputin Imperial Russian Stout. I still enjoy Bud on occasion
Click to expand...

I also have Pazzo's to thank/blame for my craft beer obsession. I had tried a lot of the "big" craft beers like Boston Lager and SNPA, but that was where I really started branching out into different stuff. There were so many brands and styles I'd never heard of, and I had to try them all. Of course, with that big of a list you never really catch up. :mug:
 
My first memory of having a craft beer was Victory's "Hop Devil". Absolutely hated it. I was in college at this point and at the time we didn't drink much else other than Natty. Miller Lite was a luxury beer for me in those days. I couldn't believe anyone could drink something so hoppy. I remember thinking to myself "dear God, this is so bitter it burns!"

Some time later, a craft focused bar opened near where I lived. I remember getting hooked on Atwater Brewery's "Voodoo Vator" and Great Lakes "Edmund Fitzgerald" which to this day are among my favorite brews. I'm a malty beer lover by heart, but will never pass down a good, clean IPA in the summer. (I'm a big fan of Stone IPA). I continued trying new beers, visited a few breweries, the obsession grew, and now I'be been brewing religiously for over 2 years. To this day I have yet to have another Hop Devil though.... Haha.
 
Started really getting into Magic Hat number 9 and Ithaca Apricot Wheat towards end of college. One summer I went home and asked my dad, who was/is very into IPAs and Pales, to get something like 9 or AW. I had had IPAs before but thought they were terrible. He said if I wanted something else I could buy it, or just drink what he bought.

That summer I learned the magic of IPAs

The following year I found a really great beverage store in Ithaca (Finger Lakes Bev on State) and made it my mission to try as many different IPAs and Pales as possible. Since this was before the days of Untappd, I would cut off one of the 6 pack sides and tack it to my wall. That collection was my wallpaper for 4 years and as many apartments. SWMBO no longer allows that, but we did collage them in poster frames and they came out pretty sweet.
 
In the early 1980's I visited San Francisco and have great memories of Anchor Steam and warm sour dough bread. Flash forward to around 2005 and when my oldest daughter had her first job, she treated me to a brewery tour and tasting at Great Lakes, in Cleveland, Ohio. I became a Dortmunder Gold, and later Christmas Ale fan. After retirement, in 2012 the wife and I took a 10 week tour of the northern half of our great country and visited 21 micro breweries in 17 states.
At the urging of oldest daughter, I a have become a home brewer, and am attempting to recreate the memories.
 
It was a Dragon Stout at the Brickskellar in Washington, DC, sometime in the 80's that did it.

That place had a huge beer menu organized by country. Some countries had many beers, some countries had only 1 or 2. The goal was to knock off a bunch of different countries so of course you stick with the places that had 1 or two. Invariably these were always a lager. But then we got Jamaica and found the Dragon Stout.
 
Mine probably started with the "seasonal" releases from blue moon. After that, it progressed to shiner hefe, and from there I would try local beers from wherever I went, then started home brewing.
 
Back in '75 to -'77 we drank a lot of Henry Weinhard and Blitz Bavarian Dark along with Anchor Steam in high school. I brewed my first batch when I was 16 (thanks to Wine and the People on University Ave, Berkeley). When I lived in Humboldt Co a few years later, I drank Sierra Nevada and more Anchor steam, and brewed with the Humbrewers Guild (shout out to Hap, Bob, Zeke and others). 30 years later, on the yeast coast, I'm drinking mostly Sam Adams and will rehab the HB with a vengeance soon. Stay tuned.
 
Shiner Bock was the first beer I truly loved to drink. Stone IPA was the one that really challenged what I thought beer should taste like.
 
Brewdog opened the first brewery in scotland that makes craft beer that actually tastes like craft beer. Never knew what beer was supposed to taste like before then.
 
Back in '78, did a 5 mth stint in Europe. Had real Guinness and a bunch of German, Italian, Belgium beers. So I would consider those craft brews in respect....
When I got back I couldn't stand Rainier, Coors, etc. anymore. Grants and other micros had started to open up by then so we started sucking those up, and haven't stopped since...
 
In college, I was a straight Busch Light Drinker. Right after college I moved to Asheville, NC and my wife and I went to Asheville Brewing Co. Not being a fan of 'Craft Beer' I asked the bar tender what domestics they had, he replied "We brew our beer right behind that wall....I don't know how much more domestic you can get." I had a Shiva IPA and I was hooked into craft beer from that moment on.

The beers that got me started:
Yeungling, Highland Gaelic Ale, Sweetwater 420, Sweetwater IPA, Highland Cold Mountain, Bells Two Hearted, Bells Oberon, Dogfish Head 60 Minute, Stone Ruination, Schafly Pale, Lagunitas IPA, and a variety of brews from Asheville breweries.
 
"Milwaukee"s Best". When I was stationed on Guam they had Milwaukee's Best on sale for $2.00 a case. I bought 10 cases! After I drank 10 cases of that stuff I told myself I'll never drink crappy beer again!!!
 
Dad drank miller lite, so I never even tried beer until my 20's (I know. . .). Then I tried Sammy A's and Bass ale and found that beer tasted pretty good actually. Moved on to abbey style belgians and the rest was history. . .

Now - I'm almost embarrassed to admit that Sam Adams was my gateway beer. . . :ban:
 
Hardly a craft brew, but my love of Grain Belt Premium turned me on to Schell's Deer Brand (a pre-prohibition lager) which in turn pointed me towards the rest of Schell's and Summit's selection. Next thing I know I'm helping an Army buddy make an oatmeal stout.
 
I was an avid Miller Lite drinker until I tried 3 Floyd's Robert the Bruce. To this day, I can't get enough Scotch Ale!
 
Hard call but I would say Guinness on tap at Heathrow or Pecan Street (cheaper than Sam Adams and almost the same flavor). Otherwise, I would have a been a German Pilsner Fan and probably never brewed my own BUT my appreciation for beer other than the American Light Lager came from living I Germany my senior Year in high school where the local beers were Warsteiner (before they left my valley and became huge) or Valtiens.

Now, a good, basic Pilsner is third on my least interesting list after the BMC and the Mexican variation of the light lager.
 
I was at a party and someone gave me a Dos Equis Amber. This was the first time I realized that not all beer tasted the same. That beer still has a special place in my heart because of that. After that Bass became my go to for a long time.

The main switch to really good beer came when I was in college. A friend ran into my dorm room after going to a beer tasting put on by the school and was so excited we could barely understand him. He had a half bottle of Unibrou 10 in his hand and demanded that we taste it. The world was never the same after that day.
 
I think I've already posted here, but not sure.

I think, if my memory serves me correctly, that my progression went like this.

High Life - Killians - Guinness - Bells Oberon (then called Sol Sun) - Bells Two Hearted (which I did not even realize was an IPA, or what IPA meant). After that, I was pretty much game for anything.
 
Quick and easy answer would be DAB, and Hacker Pschorr Dunkel Weiss and Hacker Pschorr Dark ... when I was 18, the legal drinking age in NJ was 18 nas well, and there was (still is, actually) a German style brauhaus at the NJ shore (just off Long Beach Island, The Dutchman's Brauhaus) My older brother took me there and turned me on to better beer than Bud/Miller....great times, back in the later '70's....nice place, you could arrive by car or pull a boat up to the dock :cool:
Dang, I miss Long Beach Island NJ .... mountains/lakes/rivers of east TN are nice, but great times were had in Surf City NJ growing up - I love the ocean .... and good beer
 
For craft beer it had to be Catamount Brewery here in Vermont. Now the facility is the home of Harpoon, but at the time Catamount was one of the first microbrews in New England (1986-1998 RIP). Had a keg of Catamount Amber at my wedding reception in 1990 and still have a 12 pack full of empty bottles in the basement. Just couldn't bring myself to delabel them or throw them away. http://www.inc.com/magazine/20001001/20428.html

Prior to that a good beer was one of the big European brews like St Pauli, Spaten, Sam Smith, etc., but they don't count do they?
 
For craft beer it had to be Catamount Brewery here in Vermont. Now the facility is the home of Harpoon, but at the time Catamount was one of the first microbrews in New England (1986-1998 RIP). Had a keg of Catamount Amber at my wedding reception in 1990 and still have a 12 pack full of empty bottles in the basement. Just couldn't bring myself to delabel them or throw them away. http://www.inc.com/magazine/20001001/20428.html

Prior to that a good beer was one of the big European brews like St Pauli, Spaten, Sam Smith, etc., but they don't count do they?
 
My intro to anything other than commercial was Blue Point Brewing Company. My brother worked at a restaurant where Mark was the brewmaster about 20 years ago, so when word spread that he had his own brewery in Patchogue I became a regular at the tasting room.
 

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