King of Beer

The long awaited beer night finally took place last weekend in one of Ålidhem’s local residence halls. The main purpose with the evening was (apart from having a great time) to give the guests something they hadn't experienced before, good tasting (and expensive) beer. I had, to make the experience even better, prepared something to eat to every beer. The highlight in the food department must have been the meatballs and I’m glad that they went down well considering the hard labouring hours behind the carefully handmade delicacies. It wasn’t exactly a four course meal, but there were plenty to eat so even my hungry brother could satisfy his empty stomach.

Three out of four were ale and they were really appreciated among the guest, I hade also bought a normal lager beer which has a can that titillates itself as world champion 17 years ago…anyway it was interesting to compare the different types of beer and also detect how they smelled even if it was hard to distinguish the faint and subtle smell of coffee from one of the beer’s.

This wasn’t only an opportunity to enjoy good tasting beer and food together with good friends it was also a cultural event since I had set out to cultivate my guests regarding the history of the beer and also give them interesting facts about the golden liquid that were served. It wasn’t exactly a history lesson but my enlightened guests can now impress other people when they tell them about the legend of the hobgoblin, how the prohibition in America affected the breweries and also that people has been brewing beer for more than 12 000 years.

One of my friends had prepared a quiz competition with 9 cunning questions, I teamed up with my brother and we managed to get 7 out of 9 which is quite impressive but we failed to nail the last tie-breaking question…”how many birches are there in Umeå?” his girlfriend got it perfectly right with 3 000 threes. (I’m not a big fan of conspiracy theories but is it just a coincidence that he choose a tree question when his girlfriend is…a tree expert…? I don’t know if the truth ever will be told but the candy bar that she and her competitor won looked damn tasty…)

I do think that the beer night was appreciated and that it was worth the 60 kr you had to pay for good tasting beer and food.