Healthy Beer

German beer ruined me.

Over-indulging on the motherland's finest brew reprogrammed my mind, and there just isn't room anymore for anything that comes in 30 packs, or says "Light," or "Natural" on the label. So lacking the cash to import my choice of poison across that Big Lonely, I'm now eight years into the quest for the perfect American beer. It's been a long and trying search, fraught with microbrewery misfortune, the denigration of peers, and many heartbreaking evenings in my home-laboratory conducting taste research. Out of the darkness of a sub-par rolling blackout, a friend lauded the health food store across town. Apparently where no straight male dares to tread, is a haven of beer no man should go without sampling. I was amazed - and motivated.

So yesterday I drove to the forbidden store with a baseball cap pulled low over my face, eyes hidden behind aviators and collar popped on a pink polo shirt. I was camouflaged, and they suspected nothing when I walked through the "low-energy-use" automatic doors. A sign advertised a nickel discount for bringing your own shopping bag. Another advertised community awareness events like "Vegan Cooking Basics" and a seminar on "Living In A Global Community." Clearly these were border crossing signs, delineating reality from this warehouse of baleful counter culture.

I began a standard sweep of the store: Circle the front, hit the west wall, trace it from the deli to the dairy center to the - I hoped - beer cooler. But what should have been straightforward - it was a glorified supermarket, after all - was sinister. A teenager with so many holes in her face she should have deflated, stepped in front of me with a burlap sack on one arm and a question for the equally-pierced counter guy. "Are those catfish," she asked, "farm raised?" How should he know? Who cares? Not I.

"Yeah, and fed organic unmodified corn feed," he said...with a straight face. Most of the red meat under the glass was advertised in adjective sandwiches between "Organic!" and "Natural!" I'd hope the meat is natural. What the hell else do you make meat out of, other than animals? And what's more natural than animals? Plants, I guess, but the produce across the aisle also wore "Certified Organic!" badges like the Star of David in Poland, 1940. What makes a tomato more or less organic? And who cares, it all comes out the same. The only difference, perchance, is the velocity.

Next was the dairy aisle, which included more types of yogurt than Kirstie Allie could eat in a month. There was maple syrup flavor, and lemon, strawberry, vanilla, banana vanilla...the works. The sheer quantity of choices ground all decisions to a halt for the four-foot-nothing person (of questionable gender) standing between me and progress. She reached for one, then squeezed it - like a peach, she squeezed the container - and put it back. My camouflage worked, and when she turned my way she barely acknowledged my existence. Onwards to victory.
A young mother pushed her cart past at a terrifying rate of speed, a child sitting backwards in the seat and a payload of strange looking containers anchored by a case of Coca~Cola - so much for being healthy. All around were brands I'd never heard of, advertisements I couldn't make sense of, symbols and words in codes not meant to be broken by heathens like me. I sensed my body language was belaying my confusion, so I grabbed a random container of pureed something and studied it cynically. This appeased the crones and drones and hipsters and the other mishmash of humanity circling me like tribal guardians.

At last, I found the beer aisle, the stainless steel half-refrigerator that cradled a year's supply of foul and strange inebriants with names like "Double Bag" and "Old Crustacean." Some came from Britain and Ireland, but I passed on them for the moment: this quest is for American brew, anything red, white, and drunk like us. Rogue Smoke caught my attention, and now, after a few forgettable additions to the cart, it has moved to the front of the fridge. My venerable River Horse Summer Blonde Ale will, for the moment, take a back seat to the 22 oz beast from California with the funny name and the all-American label.

I escaped the store with my life, sprinting down the aisle between "environmentally friendly feminine hygiene products" and a wall of granola dispensers, cart veering wildly because of a bum caster. It almost mowed down an old man reading an ingredients label, but disaster was averted.

Like few things in life, the discovery at the end of the ordeal was actually worth the price. It just seems like this store belongs in some strata far, far from ours.

But they can send me beer through that portal any time.