Bobby D'Angelo
14. The Pitcher Deal Beer: This is almost always a Tuesday/Wednesday beer. It’s a $4 (three if you live in the midwest) pitcher of a foamie PBR that makes you forget for a few brief, invaluable hours that you are so fucked on Thurdsay’s Midterm. It’s oftentimes met with sober intentions, but it’s a happy hour deal that mirrors a step-sister stuck in the washing machine. Maybe it’s a Top Golf beer, it could certainly be a bowling alley beverage, but if you’re a real one, it’s a Dave & Busters. This is a very, very sneaky beer.
13. The First Game Of Die Beer: The five minutes of preparation that turned into an hour because your one friend decided to smoke a bowl and watch three episodes of South Park has commenced, and you know you’re in for A DAY. This is a piss beer that you have been waiting to sip with the anticipation of a divorced single Mom putting the kids to sleep and having twelve minutes alone with her vibrator. This first of many, it is imperative that this beer goes down slow. If you’re accustomed to running table, you know as well as I do that beer die is a marathon, not a sprint. The team chemistry between you and your partner needs to be maintained, and you can’t fuck that up by having Ray Charles’ hand-eye coordination.
12. The Ski Lift: Full disclosure, I’ve only ever skied once (I played Hockey growing up), but I couldn’t put this higher because you motherfuckers would slaughter me (yes, high as in 14, not 1). From what I’m told, this works better as a whiskey, but for argument’s sake, let’s call it a pocket beer. I don’t see anything wrong with having a shooken up Miller Lite drizzle down your chin while you are simultaneously boiling and freezing.
11. The Porch Beer: This is an early autumn beer. In my mind, it’s an IPA hazier than a millennial leaving a Phish concert. There you are with a couple of your housemates sipping on something you know you can’t afford as you take in the changing of the seasons and debate whether or not Zeta or Phi Sig brought in the superior recruiting class. This is the lazy man’s beer, the Sunday hangover cure, and the fuse that lights incessant college football debates.
10. The First Step On The Trail Of Beers: You’re in Cabo or South Padre Island, you feel like a shell of a human being, and no amount of Pedialyte could rejuvenate you on day three of this bender. The hangover hasn’t kicked in yet, but it’s pounding on the door like Jack Nicholson in The Shining. If you still had money, you’d go for a mimosa, but the $83.17 left in your PNC account is telling you “FUCK NO.” Your only option to escape this situation is to have your boy throw you one of his tallboys of Natty Ice like he’s Soap throwing the knife at Shepherd at the end of the MW2 campaign.
9. The Golf Beer: This beer comes in all different shapes and sizes. It could be a Coors Lite from the hands of the cute cart girl billed to your buddy’s Dad, it could be one of many on a public course; hell, it could even be a Rolling Rock that you accidentally left in your golf bag. This beer is the lubricant you need to shake off the fact that you have been shanking and slicing your way through the first four holes. Think of yourself as Dwayne Wade, and this beer is your G-Fuel. Get your head back in the game, champion.
8. The One With Dad: Whether it’s around the holidays by the fire, in a tree-stand at nine in the morning, or just shooting the shit watching baseball, it’s a beer that you sip slowly as you get to pick your old man’s brain. It’ll always be his favorite beer because he “refuse[s] to drink that shit” when you offer him one of yours. It doesn’t matter where you are in life; your Dad will always give you the advice you probably needed to hear in this scenario. You may not like what he has to say, but he’s almost always been there before.
7. The Off Work: Any form of manual labor constitutes this beer, which is why there are countless empties under the foundation of your house. You mowed the lawn? Time for a beer. You helped your buddy move apartments on an August day? You deserve the bluest of mountains. Even if you finally shut off your laptop because you’ve been in and out of Zoom meetings all day with your dickhead boss that passive agressively apologizes that he “wasn’t raised around all this Zoom stuff”, even though you’ve been using Zoom for almost A FUCKING YEAR, that still constitutes a back crack and twelve fluid ounces of happiness.
6. The Catch Up: It’s Thanksgiving weekend, and you’re back in a half-finished basement with your friends, the first four stews of the night are all it takes to bring things back to the way they were before internships, girlfriends, and all the other bullshit that comes with pretending you’re an adult. Memories of you’re one boy pissing his pants on senior week come flooding back, and before you know it, you guys are recollecting all the degeneracy you took place in when you guys first got driver’s licenses. Eventually, this conversation turns into the drunk version of a white family’s Christmas card. “So are you serious about this girl?” “Being on probation fucking sucks.” “I didn’t know she was a hooker beforehand.” Ect.
5. The First Time Using A Fake: The first time going into the liquor store that high school upperclassmen have handed down for years is one of the most thrill-seeking experiences you will ever have. If I looked at the tape of my seventeen-year-old self, walking into the shittiest liquor store in my county dressed like I was in my final round of interviews for an internship on Wall Street, I would laugh my fucking ass off. My dumbass scripted such a detailed origin story about my Connecticut Identification that almost FIVE YEARS later, my guy Omar is still asking how my hypothetical Aunt in Chemotherapy is doing. Whether or not he knew it was fake all along and is just fucking with me, I don’t know. Still, at this point, whenever I’m home grabbing the same bottle of Seagram’s Whiskey for the four millionth time, we talk about my “daughter” ’s daycare, how the wife (my-ex girlfriend that would come in there to buy juul pods) is doing, and if I ever thinking about moving back up home. He has me in such a goddamn mental puzzle. Nevertheless, the pride a young man feels drinking a twenty-four pack that he risked a felony for hits different. If you were the one that purchased alcohol for your other underage friends in high school, you get to carry that badge of honor forever.
4. The Momentous Moment Beer: A couple of weeks ago, I was sitting back watching my dickhead friends argue, looking at my girlfriend play with our puppy, and recollecting. I never thought I’d be where I am. Whether it be the battles with mental health, pure idiocracy, or the other numerous twists and turns I’ve had, I sat back for just a moment drinking a beer. Don’t confuse this with a “damn, I made it,” beer, it’s anything but that. Life is going to continue to fuck you rawdog POV style, but it IS nice to sit back and drink a beer on momentous occasions. It could be your wedding day, the first day you started therapy, or even the moment your team FINALLY fired the GM that made all the wrong moves; it deserves to be celebrated. I think a man gets around 30-40 of these in his lifetime, so cherish each one.
3. The Deep Beer: This beer pulls the curtains behind the catch-up beer. This beer says, no dude, actually how are you? It’s an epilogue to a night of drinking for sport. It’s when you are ⅓ sobered up, but you have the courage to tell a closest friend something you couldn’t even say looking in the mirror. It’s where you can be most vulnerable and where true friendship shows it’s merit. This beer subconsciously ends marriages, advises your next professional move, and tells you whether or not you are ready to have kids. It’s a priceless conversation that you will never forget over something you bought at a gas station with pocket change.
2. The $10 At A Ballgame: If you aren’t a Patriots, Lakers, or Alabama football fan, you can experience this beer. It’s somehow procuring tickets to the franchise you’ve watched lose on TV for years, finally sneaking into the playoffs, and not giving a flying fuck how much a beer costs. Sitting nosebleeds and watching your underdog team stay competitive in a game is perhaps the best a man will ever feel. This beer could cost half of your mortgage, and you would still buy it every. fucking. time. I can’t portray the rollercoaster of emotions one may have when their team is going for it on fourth and two in words, but if you’ve been privileged enough to be in this situation, hairs will stick up on your neck just remembering the silver bullet in your hand.
1. The Beach Beer: The Gretzky of beers. The fuck my boss, fuck my girlfriend, fuck my priorities, fuck rent, fuck Melvin Capital, fuck my depression, fuck my bills, fuck seeing my inlaws, fuck this chafing on my ballsack, fuck politics, fuck the douchebag sixteen year old wearing a full send bathing suit next to me, fuck taxes, fuck cyclists, fuck my bank statement glorious, sandy beer in a koozie you have been waiting months to drink. Dispute me if you want, it’s all a matter of personal preference, but I will be as ignorant as a white woman on the phone with Peleton’s customer service; this is the greatest of beers.
Nice.