(
Spanish Version)
Our fellow beer bloggers
Boak&Bailey host this month's
The Session with a very interesting question for us How did it all start to you?
I could say that there are
five essential steps which have given way to my
beer awareness. I have always believed that smells produce a a special psychological process, printing on our mind the images of what is happening at the moment of perceiving them. The second time we noted an scent we're mentally back to the
scenario we originally smelled it. It happened to me when I lived in Edinburgh 4 years ago. My flat was a couple of minutes walking from the
McEwan's Breweries in
Fountainbridge. Once a
week the vapours from the coppers were released and a –for me- pleasant malty aroma filled the air of my adoptive city. That smell brought me back to my childhood when the same operation was held by my village’s brewery, el
Aguila Negra de Colloto(now disappeared). I strongly believe that those exhalations marked in my brain a kind of first inclination towards beer.
"Something that smells so great should taste grater” we wondered. Our curiosity was quickly satisfied by the beers we sneaked from our parent’s well stocked cellars. those were followed by others and an interest on beer started to move inside me.
The second important event that help me to develop my love for beer was a pub in my home city. I spent most of my teens and first years of my adult age by the bar of this den. It was a pub specialized in imported beers, with a dozen of different taps from almost every beer country in Europe. My first pints of Bass, Köstrizer, Spaten and Staropramen as well as my first bottles of Chimay- my father’s favourite and ever recommended beer, were drunk there in the company of a group of friends we still sharing our passion nowadays. What I lived in that bar made me want to know, read and learn as much as possible about beer culture.
My first visit to London in the mid 90’s was the third turning point. I was fascinated by all the things I was living in that incredible city. Every single thing I saw taught me something new. But the best thing was that I could enter in contact with the reality of the British beer scene: the pub culture, last orders and happy hours, guest ale and cask ale; Bitter with steak and kidney pudding, pale ale with fish and chips, no newsagent's selling beer after eleven p.m, and so on. It was a kind of love at first pint that still longs.
As I mentioned before, I had the opportunity of working and living in Edinburgh. It was a really satisfying experience who linked me even more to the British culture I adore. In that new Millenium Edinburgh, Scottish and Newcastle was a Brtitish beer giant and Fountainbridge an industrial area rather than a living room. It also was- and it is, a beautiful city from which Stevenson said "there are no stars so lovely as Edinburgh street-lamps". I could get in touch with the Scottish beer reality, tasting the differences and the similarities with the English one.Travelling throught the country steeping myself with that beer culture allowed me to grow a lot as a beer lover.
Last but not least is what i’m doing at the moment. For the last year and a half I’ve been regularly updating this blog, keeping in touch with different beer communities which have taught me a lot about the endless possiblities of our favourite drink.This activity gives me another reason to enjoy each beer as if it was the first one: That beer we stole as teenagers to try if it tasted as great as it smelled.
(AsturianVersion)
I'm off to Salamanca tomorrow. I'm spending a few days in my love's company and with her I'm going to visit two new and interesting beer- related places. In One hand there's a Restaurant, modern and dynamic enough to include a list of beers suitable to pair the food in its menu. Something that, though it may sound strange, its really innovative to our culture. On the other, there's a brand new independent beer bar in Town, which is by its own a reason of joy. The profesionals in charge of both businesses have a great command of their job as well as loads of enthusiasm what for me is essential to start such a challenge. From these lines I want to express my great expectations on them, willing to do it in person tomorrow. Let you know about it when I'm back. Take care.
