What was your Gatewaybeer to craft beer?

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Yooper said:
I used to drink the standard Bud Light beers, but I lived in Germany for a while and grew to love pilsners. After that, my first craft beer was Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, and that really opened my tastebuds to every type of beer. Well, almost every type. I still don't love sours, and probably never will.
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Well sour beers are something that are an acquired taste. Kinda like kraut, smelly cheese, or pickled herring. Back on topic killigans red and sam adams were the only choice in my area 12 years ago. Now there is a nice variety. But the gateway beer to craft beer was miller lite, after drinking that and then discovering something with flavor like sam or killigans it changed the whole perspective on beer.
 
Baderbrau at Laschett's Inn in chicago. The owners son was enthusiastic about it and made sure to give it the pilsnener pour. Kinda like Guinness, it took some time. Really good beer


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I was never a beer drinker. I preferred rum. One day a friend, who makes his own beer, gave me a bottle of his Porter, I thought to myself, Wow! beer can have taste and body. He showed me the process about 3 years ago. Now I make my own.
 
When i was young I drank a lot of Miller/Bud/Coors until I was introduced to Yuengling. Then that was my staple if it was available. (it was kind of hard to find down here at the time)

I had a few Sam Adams Boston Lagers and liked them ok, but they were just too expensive for me at the time. Then I got a real job and made real money, so Sam Adams started to become a regular order for me. I didn't really venture far past that for a while.

Until i tried some Sierra Nevada. I didn't know beer could taste like that!! After tasting anything Sierra Nevada I couldn't even enjoy a sip of BMC anymore. (I know, snobbery right)

I still enjoy a Yuengling occasionally if nothing else is available.
 
first craft beer ever was a founders pale ale a long while back and I hated the bitterness, then I fell in love with Bells Oberon, tried "doggystyle' (sure a joke will come of that statement) and "mad hatter" and still hated the bitterness...went back to Oberon and that led to more bells beers then I found a micro brewery in my home town and loved trying their beers and that led to other craft beers and eventually bell's two hearted ale...needless to say im in love with two hearted ale and hoppy bitterness is now delicious to me...
 
Saranac. Alumni at my school would buy it in kegs when they came back to visit. Very different than the Old Milwaukee that we always drank.
 
TxBigHops said:
My point was that you stated "great beer has been out there my whole life and I didn't know it existed until I was about 20." The humorous part was that by age 20, your "whole life" of drinking beer is not likely more than 3-4 years. You really haven't experienced that much in regards to drinking of any kind. I would expect that very few of us growing up in the US has truly experienced craft beer by age 20.
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Good point. I just assumed that since I had basically never heard of craft beer until then that I was in the minority. Still kind of surprises me how much is out there and how I missed it for so long
 
Boulevard Wheat.
Not having developed a taste for the MBC stuff, a local bar had it on tap, touting it as 'unfiltered wheat beer'.
I still enjoy it. But thats the one that started the whole thing for me.
 
I worked at a brewpub in Galveston TX (Galveston Brewery). There were three full time beers, a red ale, a blond ale, and an Oatmeal Stout. I couldn't get enough of the Oatmeal Stout, Big John's I think it was called. I think that was 1996 or 1997.
 
Arrogant Bastard. Back in '99 a friend handed me a bottle at his place. Never had anything like it before, but had to try a bottle that insults you before even popping the cap.
 
Moose Drool. I was a freshman in college in Missoula (the home of Big Sky Brewing) and my cousin, who lived in town, had a kegger for his birthday. Instead of the typical cheap BMC college kegger, though, this one had a keg of Moose Drool. I remember getting my first pour and thinking "what the hell is this, Coca Cola??" Then I took a drink and was instantly hooked. I had no clue that beer could actually taste like that. At the time, Big Sky was still a small operation and all of their brews were only available on draft at the brewery or the bars around Missoula. By the time I graduated four years later they had just started bottling and distributing in Montana. Now they're big time (craft beer-wise, at least). It's been fun to see them grow and to see Moose Drool (still one of my favorite beers) become available to the masses.
 
grizzly2378 said:
Moose Drool. I was a freshman in college in Missoula (the home of Big Sky Brewing) and my cousin, who lived in town, had a kegger for his birthday. Instead of the typical cheap BMC college kegger, though, this one had a keg of Moose Drool. I remember getting my first pour and thinking "what the hell is this, Coca Cola??" Then I took a drink and was instantly hooked. I had no clue that beer could actually taste like that. At the time, Big Sky was still a small operation and all of their brews were only available on draft at the brewery or the bars around Missoula. By the time I graduated four years later they had just started bottling and distributing in Montana. Now they're big time (craft beer-wise, at least). It's been fun to see them grow and to see Moose Drool (still one of my favorite beers) become available to the masses.
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This was the beer that my buddie and would go to the vets club and get $3 pitchers every Tuesday. Great beer. Had a sixer the other week and it is still great.
 
CB Craft Brewers English Brown Ale (Honeoye Falls, NY), a.k.a., "Frog Grog" at Jeremiah's Tavern on Monroe Ave., Roch. My go-to brew with a huge portobello sandwich and the best steak fries this side of the International Date Line.
 
I had been drinking different brands of BMC for years with Bud Light being in the forefront. I remember having Sierra Nevada Pale Ale and Sam Adams BL, Moose Drool, Rogue Dead Guy, and others - but none of them could sway me from the affordable, thin and light, Bud Light. They were good to me....but not WOW!

But the day I tried my first Belgian Trappiste ale - Chimay Blue - it was on.

Belgian style brews are by far my favorite. I have even turned some friends onto craft beers after offering them New Belgium Abbey.
 
I was a Bud Light guy. Like when I went to a party, I would take my own cooler of Bud Light because that was the only thing I would drink.

Hanging out with a buddy one day, he had brought the beer, and all he had was DFH 60. I was bummed, because I was certain I hated IPAs. But I went along. Cracked it, One taste and I was stunned. Could beer really taste like this???
 
Sierra Nevada Pale Ale here. I had my first in 1990 at the ripe age of 17. My first 'real' beer I'll say. It was in Santa Cruz, CA, and I can think of no better place to have had my eyes opened to good beer...

Back then you could not find the stuff in the SE US anywhere. Now I would challenge you to *not* to find it someplace...

What got me back into homebrewing was Fuller's ESB. It is extremely hard to find IMO. When I do find it, it is pricy and in limited quantities...
 
That's a hard question. My parents are from Germany, and my mother's father was a brewer. But my father mainly drank Lone Star in the early 90's and then Tecate later on. When we were in Germany I would be allowed to try some of the beers there, but even with that I would say it was Shiner.

Yes Shiner Bock. I remember being in High School and not liking BMC beers, but I liked Shiner. When I was 16 I got my brother's old ID so I'd be able to buy my own beer. I stuck with Shiner for a while, but then I heard that Zakk Wylde (guitar player for Black Label Society and Ozzy) liked SNPA. I started drinking it more often.
 
Attended my sister's wedding in Birmingham a few years ago. Had a cookout the next day and he broke out some Back Forty Naked Pig.
I had a much higher opinion of him from then on.
 
Fat Tire October 1999. I had gone on a weekend getaway to Denver in Oct 1999. While at a bar, I noticed this funny-named beer "Fat Tire" so I figure, why the heck not. I couldn't believe beer could taste like that.

Coincidentally, 2 months later, I got called for a job interview in Denver and was flown in for the interview. I got the job and relocated. I was in my mid-20's, young, single, in a new city filled with brewpubs and in the middle of the craft beer movement.

One night, I went to a party and noticed people were drinking out of bottles that had no labels. I was curious so I asked and they said they were drinking "homebrewed" beer. That blew my mind. I had been touring breweries, brewpubs, etc and I was under the assumption you needed massive equipment to make beer. I had no idea one could make beer at home!

The next day I told my coworker about this amazing discovery. And his response was "I'm a homebrewer too". Within a couple of weeks, I had bought the equipment and he came over to show me how to brew. I was hooked. Interestingly, I attempted a Fat Tire clone recipe my first couple of times that I brewed. It was nothing like the real thing. In 2007, I came across the "Flat Ass Tired" recipe but I never got around to making it until this past October. It came out fantastic, my wife, who I met in Denver, said it tasted just like the Fat Tire of those days. Drinking the clone, reminded me of those days.
 
While I never really drank more than a couple BMCs (preferring things like JW Honey Brown, Fat Tire, Boulevard Wheat), I didn't really get the full craft passion until I happened to order a Rogue Hazelnut Nector about 10 years ago.
 
New Belgium 1554... not a huge fan of NB anymore, but that was the beer that really did it for me. I suppose Sierra Nevada Pale Ale was my first "craft beer," but didn't stick with me like 1554 did.
 
Most of my late teens and 20's drinkin Guinness and Sam Adams Boston Lager. But, I remember going to the Gingerman and having my first Schneider Weisse. The waitress poured 3/4 of the bottle, then stopped, swirled that last bit in the bottle to warm up all the "yum-yums" at the bottom. And I thought "I have to learn how to make this beer."
 
It's definitely subjective in how we each think about craft beer. Earlier I wrote that mine was Tuppers Hop Pocket Ale in the mid-nineties. This was the first hop bomb I would try that seemed way different from the market (craft) and opened my eyes to some pretty ambitious brewers

Oddly, I'd been drinking Sam Adam's Boston Lager, Pete's Wicked Ale and Anchor Steam (and Porter) since the late 80s. I never thought about them as craft brews since they were available in most markets.

Granted, there have been imports available for a long time however, after reading all of the posts, I'd say Fritz Maytag, Pete Slosberg and Jim Koch were some of the pioneers of what I think of as craft brewing--Homebrewers that turned pro--and the ones that set the standard for me on what beer could be.
 
Oddly my gateway beer was Tyskie. It's not a craft beer but it was the first beer I had besides a BMC. And I thought wow this is pretty good and from there I went nuts. I try pretty much anything I see even if it's not my favorite style.
 
My family drinks bud light and Michelob ultra. I choked some of those down when I was younger, but when I went to visit family for Christmas when I was 19 my aunt gave me a Sierra Nevada pale ale. Loved it.

On my 21st birthday I bought Leinenkugel's cream stout, St Pauli girl dark, and a handle of Smirnoff.
 
I was drinking Sam Adams from 18ish on, first real craft was magic hat 9 then when we got fat tire in nyc it was fat tire and the occasional arrogant bastard. Even though sierra Nevada pale was always available I never really drank it
 
Anchor Steam - Mid 90's in San Fran. I thought it was the best beer I ever had on tap!!!

I currently brew a Scottish Export 80 which has been called a "gateway beer". Its a session brew with rich malty flavors and low AVB (4.2). All my Coors Light buddies are easily converted with my home-brew of similar calories and drinkability.
 

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