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It’s time to dust off that exercise equipment, buy a juicer, pull out your organizer, and download the latest version of Quicken so you can work on your 2014 New Year’s resolutions… at least for a few months before you get back to your “normal” self. According to Forbes, only 8% of people actually achieve their resolutions, so how about making some that you can keep in 2014? If you make them about craft beer, then we can guarantee you’ll have no problem reaching your goals by 1/1/15, and ACB has five suggestions that will help make 2014 the beeriest year ever!
Try a New Style of Beer that You Haven’t Had Before
As you dive deeper into the world of craft beer, you may discover that there are several different types and varieties. Set a goal this year to try a specific kind of beer or pick a number of different beers that you have yet to try and work throughout the year to guzzle that count down to zero. Whether it’s Sour Beers, Rauchbiers, or Double IPAs, make sure to give each beer five tries if you don’t like the craft at first to fully develop that acquired taste. Remember this mnemonic when trying new beers: Try five to let beers jive!
Brewery Resolutions
Great breweries and great craft beer are easily accessible no matter where you are in God’s great country called ‘Murica, but I don’t have to tell you that. Here are some goals to help you experience these breweries more:
Go to all the breweries in your city, county, and/or state – make it a goal to be a Beerquistador and conquer all the breweries in your area. The more ambitious your goals, the more rewarding, but try to be realistic as well. Sure it would be fun to go to every craft brewery in California, but you may have to quit your job and place your name on the liver donors list at Cedars-Sinai to do so.
Visit breweries outside of your area/state – there are few things more fun than the trans-American road trip, so grab some friends and get ready to uncomfortably hold in your farts for ten hours straight as you head out to one or several breweries in surrounding states each month.
Have a beer from all 50 states – forget taking up collecting stamps, comic books, or your roommate’s toe nails; try the 50 beers from 50 states beer challenge and collect something that you actually care about. If you want to make it even more challenging, try not to order any beers off the internet because you can order anything from the interwebs now-a-days.
Get a Beer Virgin Turned On to Craft Beer
Do you have a friend who would vote Miller Lite for president if he or she had the chance? Do you know someone that won’t drink beer because of that unspecified “beer taste” that they insist tastes bad? Make it your goal this year to turn that person into a craft beer drinker! With all the different varieties of craft, there is a beer out there for everyone’s palate. (I was going to place a joke at the end of this paragraph about “popping open a cherry barrel-aged ale,” but I omitted it because I realized that I’m not 14 years old).
Develop a Craft Beer Work-Out Regimen
Year in and year out, the number one resolution is losing weight or being healthier. You can go ahead and still make this resolution, but if you were to throw in craft beer into the mix then you may achieve better results. Try rewarding and/or limiting yourself to one beer for every hour you work out. This may seem counterproductive to some, but your typical craft brew only has 20 to 30 more calories than the average 20 oz. bottle of diabetes-producing sports drink (but without the added Glycerol Ester of Rosin).
Donate to Charity with Craft Beer
Recycle your bottles and cans at a recycling center and donate the cash to charity. If the cash collected makes you look like Ebenezer Scrooge paying Bob Cratchit, then try doubling, tripling, or even triple-dog-daring your money to stick to a frozen flag pole (I’m still stuck in Christmas movie-watching mode). You can also try and donate a dollar for every beer you drink to the community or to Kickstarter campaigns for people trying to start breweries. The beer you drink will help fund a brewery that will produce more beer for you to drink, which will then fund more breweries until our economy is solely based on beer sales. Now that’s a country I would love to live in. God bless ‘Murica!
