When I was a kid, that meant something other than beer.  In the past few years, though, I've been privileged to taste several top-notch (and a handful of not-quite-ready-for-primetime) home-brewed beers.  Once in Nashville, I listened to a fellow minister describe in painstaking detail his brewing process for several of the eight or so samples he had brought for us to taste.  This guy sounded like a chemist, but his beers (all of them) were awesome.  I had been thinking...

Our parents warned us... or if they didn't, it was their secret concern, the fear that kept them up at night.  That some dark and twisted evening, we would start down a path-of-no-return by drinking one of those *shudder* "special" beers.  The ones with fancy names and even fancier labels.  A "Lowenbrau," perhaps.  Or the even more risqué St. Pauli Girl - our parents knew what kind of girls showed up on beer labels...

Fess up:  what was the first beer you ever drank...

Disclosure:  I am a Presbyterian minister.  Have been for a long time.  I am also a beer drinker/snob.  I agree with Ben Franklin's statement (apocryphal or otherwise) that "Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy."

Confession:  I am deeply jealous of a colleague whose church is across the street from the Brickskeller in Washington, DC, where he holds a weekly Bible Study/gathering for congregants and others. 

Here in Appalachia we are part of...