Ed H.
Yelp
This is where I fell in love with beer. This isn't hyperbole. I fell in love.
I had just graduated high school and embarked on a trek through Europe. One of my earlier stops was in Hamburg. To visit friends and they took me here.
Now, having recently discovered alcohol, I was eager to flex my more grown and independent muscles and actually order beer at a bar. Something then impossible. I was 17, puny, geeky and looked like a 5th grader.
Regardless, there I was, and I learned my first lesson in drinking etiquette. "First Round, On Me." Then learning the protocol of at some point buying the next round.
We walked in to find ourselves in what I imagined a German to be, thick oak tables and benches and walls that wrapped around the room snugly.
A few tables had these mini oak kegs with the spigots hammered into them, and I dared to dream.
Of course, we were too poor would have probably gotten black out drunk, so thankfully, we just to half liter rounds. Though we fared not much better in the end.
Then the beer came out, golden, yet immaculately clear. Even through the fine bubbles emanating towards the head, and I sipped.
Now mind you, up to this point, alcohol was strictly an ends to a means, and beer had been up til then the least desirable way to get to that means. This changed everything.
I tasted chestnuts and flowers with enough touch of a bitter bite added that exclamation point of crispness rather than dully counter the initial flavors.
This was beer. Beer was good. Angels sang and I knew yearning.