What's your favorite stout or any beer?

Love Guinness on tap...The Wine & Liquor store I frequent has an aisle 4 shelves high, 50'long of specialty/microbrewery/imported beers. I've tried quite a few with unfailingly excellent results, but I rarely buy the same thing twice except for Guinness: so many beers, so little time. Besides, I can always remember Guinness--it's in the genes, I think.My favorite drink of the entire week is the beer I crack while I cook Sunday breakfast and listen to blues and/or jazz.I'm also fond of hard ciders. I sometimes drink homemade freezer-distilled applejack, too, but the liver can only take so much of that...

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Only if I get up in time.

There are three essential questions one must answer.1. Is it the only beer?2. Can I get it open?3. Is it the last beer?Everything else is peripheral.

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How could I have forgotten that one?We moved to Connecticut from Boston 11 years ago. An Irish-American alcoholic friend, then drinking himself to perdition with great determination and even greater astonishment that it was taking so long, came to visit soon after.We drank what was in the house, and then around 9 o'clock headed out to the package store. We learned to our horror that they closed at 8 p.m. He turned to me with dismay and exclaimed, "You can't live here!"Later I came to understand that the state budget depended heavily upon DUI fines, so we were being encouraged to drive to bars. Now they have liberalized and close at 9, so the hazardous driving time starts an hour later.

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Yes, that was a strange bit of terminological debris..."liquor store" is actually the native term here, I believe. It comes from having lived in too many states and nations, a blurring of jargons and lexical sets...that, and the booze, of course.

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You mistake me utterly, schraf.I do not mix drinking and driving. I drink almost solely at home; if I drink more than a single cocktail or glass of wine outside the house, I will not drive.My remarks were intended to point out the perversity of closing liquor stores early but leaving bars open late.Over the years, I have on occasion resorted to sober friends, taxis, and walking home or back to the office (once, after an office Christmas party, I slept on an exam table) to avoid that hazard.I consider it an important ethical issue not to expose others to the consequences of my risk-taking--I claim my right to indulge as I will; I acknowledge my responsibilities as well.BTW, my rap sheet is squeaky clean.

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My sympathies, schraf: I grew up with a violent, vindictive, borderline psychotic teetotaler.Also, my older sister was a high-functioning alcoholic until she was caught drinking vodka from a water glass in her office. When she learned that the family was planning an intervention, she killed herself. She was only 38, and one of the kindest and brightest people I've ever known.I do not scoff at your concerns about the potential destruction found in the bottle. I have seen all too much of it.

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I believe it was the threatened loss of liberty that killed my sister.She admittedly drank a great deal, more than I do or did, but she also achieved much: employee of the year that very year, she had attended her first computer course at company HQ and finished tops, armed with only a GED and competing against college grads.She began to drink after her high school sweetheart, who was formerly her husband and was about to be again, was decapitated in a freak automobile accident (no drinking involved)--since she was no longer next of kin, she learned about it from the radio.They had reconciled at the hospital after my toddler nephew suffered severe burns (family curse?) in a house fire (no drinking involved). She was a devoted and capable mother of three.She sometimes stopped drinking for extended periods; those periods were lengthening, and her own sense of self-esteem and self-reliance growing. She was participating in psychological therapy and had begun to write poetry (family gift?).She was finding her own way.However suboptimal it may have been, alcohol was her form of self-medication: no DUIs, no out of control behavior, no child neglect--my parents, uncles/aunts, etc., simply felt they had the right to incarcerate her to make her stop, esp. since they were embarrassed by the phone call from her supervisor telling them about finding the glass of vodka on her desk: her drinking was not news to them, only the "public" embarrassment. Her job was in no danger. Left to her own devices, and those of her employer, she would probably have been counselled and advised to seek/continue therapy.If I had been living near there at the time, I would have put a stop to it. Although the family council of elders didn't drink, they were to a person at least deeply neurotic and emotionally destructive; not one of them was as kind and generous as the person they planned to lock up.I will always wish I had been there. I miss her.

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Brown beer bread made with a good stout...mmmm...

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A beer with bacon and eggs with a side of homemade wheat bread, or with corned beef hash, is a Sunday morning delight. Decades ago when I lived in a commune, we started Sunday with a smoke and our best records before settling down in the workshop; we called it our Sunday morning service.On Sunday I start the day with coffee, open that special Sunday breakfast beer when the meal is about 15 minutes from serving, and then switch back to a cup of coffee afterwards over the NY Times before gettin busy around the house or yard.Beer is good food.

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Perfectly understandable, and I'm in no way offended. It is a terrible problem, and I wish more drinkers (and smokers and snorters and...) took it as seriously.

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All you have to do is try--that's all the Hop asks of you.It's just that simple.**(with apologies to jar)

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Thank you, schraf, and, yes, I'm sure she was suffering from depression. It's a pity the effective medications--and the social openness about the problem--that we enjoy now were not available then.But what they were planning--and what they carelessly let leak to her through eavesdropping kids--was to have her involuntarily committed. It was a horribly inappropriate idea. They meant well, but we know what road is paved with good intentions.I'd agree that killing yourself under any circumstances is not what we would like to consider a normal thing. But as Bruce Cockburn has observed, "The trouble with normal is it always gets worse."

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I may disagree with what you drink, but I will defend to the death your right to drink it.I think Ulysses Grant said that.

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Thank you, Robin...Just don't forget that behind this funny face, I'm giggling madly.

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