I drink for flavor, but am admitedly a beer elitist and also really like good bourbons and scotch. 

This was also amazing this year:  http://www.beertown.org/events/gabf/  (i'm not sure how it couldn't be amazing tho, it's sorta built for it)

So which of the RRS regulars are you not normally defensive towards?

Pineapple, your defensiveness is keeping you from realizing something that's obvious to many of us.  People like Bob and me are trying to help you.  As Bob has pointed out, your emotional reactions are just that -- emotional.  We're trying to get you out of that state by pointing out where your answers don't line up with reason.  The hope is that you will rise above your emotions and make rational arguments, primarily for your own benefit.

My question -- who you aren't defensive with -- wasn't snide.  I want you to see that  you're defensive with pretty much everybody.  Your emotional desire to react defensively keeps you from engaging in open honest rational discussions.  For whatever reason, you seem to think that we're out to get you, but I wonder if you've ever thought of what we might hope to gain from getting you, and for that matter, how we could "get you" in the first place.

For instance, you seem certain that I make fun of you behind your back.  The last time you made reference to this, I almost granted you access to the private forums just so you can see that you're wrong.  After I thought about it for a minute, I realized that would be an emotional reaction, so I didn't do it.  The fact is, I want you to trust me because I really have tried to help you, and I don't like seeing you so distrustful and cynical.  I'm a human, just like you, and I happen to want people to be happy.  Once I thought about things, I realized my feelings are consistently hurt when you think I make fun of you behind your back.  That's not the kind of person I am, but you seem intent on believing otherwise.  Once I realized that your perception of me is a problem with you, not me, I realized that becoming defensive about my motives was an emotional, not a rational, decision.  I stepped back, reconsidered, and realized that you have a right to any belief you hold, and the world won't end if one crotchety RRS member thinks I'm a douche.

You see, Pineapple?  Emotion begets emotion.  Rationality begets rationality.  We're trying very hard to get you out of your pattern of reacting emotionally, but sometimes we get emotional because of your staunch refusal to do so.

Bob has been exceedingly patient with you, but you've shown no signs of wanting to discuss the actual questions at hand.  This is your pattern.  Whenever we get you right down to brass tacks, you get emotional and change the subject.

A good psychologist would probably suggest that your subconscious is trying very hard to keep you from thinking rationally about something.  Emotional defense mechanism.  

Maybe I'm not so far off with the whole fear thing?  I dunno.  In any case, we really are trying to help.

It helps ugly people get laid:

How_Beer_Works

Hey Pinapple. It's been a long time since the two of us spoke last.

I hardly drink at all anymore. I've never been any good at it, so I've never drunk heavily, but when I was a teenager, I did try to keep up with my peers, so I would get drunk regularly back then.

But firstly, I'm rather thin, skinny even, and my constitution just doesn't support getting really "smashed", as it were; I just get tired and fall asleep before I ever reach that point, and second, I was not a complete pushover as a teenager, so I didn't jump on the peerpressure wagon of competitive drinking, regardless of what my fellow teenagers thought of me (and because I held my own like that, my real friends didn't think any less of me for it).

As I've gotten older, and my friends have too, I've almost completely given up drinking. I only drink beer, and the occational gin and tonic, and rarely more than one or two per party, and this is because I really like the taste, but I don't like getting drunk.

So I have a certain sympathy for the situation of being the only sober person in a room full of drunk people. However, I like my friends, and when they are drunk, they are still themselves, like Hamby explained, and I feel at ease around them, drunk or sober. They can control it, and most of them just become more fun, and more open-minded (and open-mouthed), something I appriciate, because I am a naturally open person, and I like to talk about the stuff some of my friends only dare open up about when they are drunk.

I suggest you don't go out of your way to spend time with people who you don't much like when they are sober, because you'll like them even less when they are drunk, and that will just perpetuate your misconception that being drunk makes people mean, stupid, obnoxious and so on.

And it really isn't the case.

Now, to the issue of why every post you make ends up being about you:

My first intention when I read this thread a while back was to reply:

"There's nothing great about being drunk, but there's nothing wrong with it either. There is, however, something wrong with being a prude, it is the single most obnoxious, anti-social, condesenting, and self-rightious attitude one can have."

Now, I bit my tongue, and didn't write that, because I thought: "she'll just get pissy with me again, and sink even further into her victim/self-rightious mentality, and she'll ignore everything I say, as always"

I know reading this must make you angry, and rightly so, but understand that I'm being honest with you in the hopes that you'll understand that this is what I thought, for better or worse. I'm not saying you deserve it, I'm saying that's how I feel about you by now.

Now, I don't much like you, because I think you are self-rightious, and the more angry I get with you, the more self-rightious you appear to me, so the more we speak the more angry well get with eachother I fear.

But you should know that I genuilly want to like you, and if I could prove it to you, difficult as that would be, because you are so suspicious and defensive, but if I could, and you and I could establish a relationship of trust and genuine affection, a true friendship, as it were, it is my distinct impression that I would like you very much indeed, because you are a witty, keanly intelligent and thoughtful person underneath all that suspicion.

That much I am sure of. I would hope you might think the same of me, and know, that on the subject at hand; alcohol, I'm pretty sure you and I would be on exactly the same page.

And I only think you are suspicous of me, and defensive towards me because we are not friends, and since that suspicion and defensiveness is the source of all my dislike for you, it does seem like really cruel irony that you and I don't like eachother.

But as it stands I am as suspicious of you as you appear to me to be of the entire human race: I expect you to be bitter, judgemental, and self-rightious, and the more you confirm those suspicions, the harder it is for me to like you.

Now, that probably be as much my fault as it is yours, but now, at least, you know how one other person perceives your personality. I hope you'll use that information in the spirit it was intended: with a genuine hope that it can help you.

My favorite beerz:

What do you guys like? Just to break up the tension here.

That Landshark beer sucks and you're a fool for buying it - it's Budweiser in a fancy bottle sold at double the price.

I grew up in the Texas boonies where you had to make your own entertainment. My middle brother and I would hop in the truck on Saturday mornings and hit the back roads with whatever beer we had left over from the night before. Drinking and cruising the dirt roads, we would catch rattlers and copperheads. Getting drunker by the mile, we would make it to the outskirts of Abilene sometime after lunch and sell the snakes to a guy that used them in his tourist trap store, buying more alcohol and tanking up on gas in the process.

Back home a couple of hours later we would round up a couple of buddies and prepare for the main event, hood hunting. Combining hood surfing with hunting, the hood object was to stand on the hood of the truck with a rifle, pistol, or shotgun in one hand and a bottle of Jack in the other, cruise down a bumpy dirt road at about 40 mph, and shoot anything on four legs that crossed our path.  I look back on those days now with awe and wonder that none of us ended up dead.

These days I am content to knock back a Guinnes or two with friends over deep conversation, or just sit back and unwind with two fingers of single malt after a particularly trying day at work.  I've seen people, including my father and brother, wreck their lives with alcohol, but I have never blamed the booze. They, not the bottle, made the choices they made in life. For me to blame alcohol would be akin to me blaming the weapon if I shot somebody.  We are responsible for our own actions, and to cast blame on a substance is a coward's way of trying to avoid responsibility.  Contrary to popular opinon, it isn't a disease. A disease is of measurable symptoms, subject to investigative pathology, and is treated with medication. A disease is not treated with group hugs, counseling, and pseudo-religious  rhectoric.

Of Czech beers I like Pilsner Urquell and the Original Budweiser (Budvar - sold in the US as Czechvar. )

If I hadn't grown up in LA (Lower Alabama, for the uninitiated) I would immediately dismiss this as a pack of lies.  I think there needs to be some sort of principle like Poe's Law for rednecks.  The fact is, no matter how dumb or far-fetched any particular redneck story is, you can't just dismiss it.  It might very well be true.

Oh... and I mean this is in the nicest sort of way.  Please don't shoot me.

But tell us how you really feel, Matt.

I think I go to RRS because you guys aggravate me and no, not in the kinky way. I guess I keep coming back for my chance to 'prove you wrong' sort of thing.

What do you mean by this?

I wonder how many Christians there would be if faith came with a hangover...

The most common (and most valid) criticism of most theists is that they make decisions based on ignorance.  

- "I don't understand evolution.  Therefore God."  

- "I don't know how to explain morality.  Therefore God."

- "What is meaning in life? Therefore God."

- "<mangles thermodynamics> Therefore God."

etc, etc.

You join along side us heathens in pointing out the ignorance from which theists postulate all manner of magic.  Then, when it comes to something which clearly does exist -- the human experience, you reject large swaths of it with little or no information.  Obviously, humans don't need to experience everything firsthand.  Psychologists can help meth addicts without ever having been addicted to meth.  However, I would simply not trust a psychologist who'd never been drunk.  Alcohol is such a huge part of human culture and history, it's unthinkable to suggest that someone could pretend to know anything about the alcohol culture without having at least experienced it a little bit.

Admittedly, you aren't a psychologist, and we aren't talking about you helping other people get over addiction.  The thing is, you're very young and you've already decided that you reject huge parts of the human experience.  The biggest two in my mind are that you don't want to have a romantic relationship and you don't want to drink.

I'm not suggesting that you rush out and bring home the first guy who talks to you, or that you spend the next five years in an alcoholic stupor, but for your own sake, I think you should keep an open mind and try both when it's comfortable.  Of course, a precursor to this would be getting out of the house and making some friends, and letting down your suspicion of everybody long enough to get close to somebody.

Angry drunk sex in a Birmingham strip club is kind of aggravating.

YOU would NEVER have to buy anything with your money around most of us.

I wouldn't even have to get drunk to hand over the billfold. I'm just sayin'.

second.

I'd have to agree with everyone here and go with the "loosening of the inhibitions" as the major positive that occurs from the consumption of alcohol. 

I've lived all my life around Glasgow, Scotland.  A comedian once said the message you should hear when a plane lands is "Welcome to Glasgow.  Please set your watch back 50 years".  When my father was growing up the city and country he lived in were largely "working-class" areas, and in some respects, that's still largely true today.  The class system might be defunct but the attitudes remain.  This is a place were men can't show emotion or speak openly about their problems.  This is a country were the sensible thing for a man to do is bottle up his issues and "deal with it".  Alcohol fixes that.  It's only when a lot of people are drunk that they open up and talk about things, and in fact it's only when they're drunk that it seems acceptable to do that.  I'm not saying it's the right way to go about things.  I for one am not my father's son when it comes to being emotional or speaking about my problems (hence familial accusations of being gay) but I do dig that it helps people to let go of their inhibitions.

I'm also with Hamby - I like the buzz.  When you and your friends are out having a good time the buzz from a few drinks can turn an average night into a storming one.  I still remember a night about 8 years ago in which a friend and I, seriously drunk, concocted "The Plan^TM".  There's no need to go into it here but suffice to say that in the cold light of day we never went through with "The Plan^TM".  That doesn't matter though.  The two of us still remember the sense of the occasion and the culmination to what had been a kick-ass night.  We'd never have gotten to "The Plan^TM", or indeed forged as close a friendship as we have, without the booze.

So yeah, booze can do all sorts of harm to people.  In my mind though, anything that helps social cohesion is a good thing.

I'd also like to make a comment here on social opinions when it comes to booze.  I will qualify by saying I know that many of you crazy 'Mericans (and others) can handle your booze very well, but it has been my general experience that people from across the pond would view the amount of drinking that gets done around my social circle and come to the conclusion that the Scottish people are "functioning alcoholics".  On the other hand we Scots might generally see the amount consumed by the average American and call him a "lightweight poof".  There's no real point to be made here other than it's always fascinated me that societies can form such differing subjective opinions around one substance.

For the record, you are all a bunch of jessies though... drink up!

*: ...and when I say "we" notherners, I'm ofcourse not really refering to myself, because as I've stated above, I don't really drink much... So I'm not only smug about us Danes and our Scottish brethen being tough drinking folk, I'm also a hypocrite

My personal vice, and unshakeble addiction, is not drink, but historical linguistics, so for Diagoras: do you know the origins of the word "Boulevard", and Michael, do you know what a church and a child is called in modern Danish?

I like booze.  As far as beer goes I tend toward paler ales, but I've recently been getting into darker stuff as well (porters and stouts).  I was a big fan of Rolling Rock back in the old days, but since they sold out to Bud it doesn't even remotely taste like rolling rock anymore.  Sierra Nevada tastes really good, but something about it makes me feel crazy after just a few.  I think it might be an allergy.

I also enjoy a good bourbon.  I got ahold of a bottle of Elijah Craig for my birthday a few weeks ago and it was great.  It makes Jack Daniels taste like water.  Gave me a hangover from hell, though. 

kentucky boy here.  elijah craig is excellent, but i generally prefer bulleit.  if you have a few more bucks, knob creek is excellent as well.  don't splurge on woodford reserve, though: very overrated.  in my opinion, not even as good as bulleit.  if you really must shell out big bucks, go for some old rip van winkle.  before i left to live in slovakia in 2004, that's what i had at my going away party.  tasted fantastic, and i ended up naked in the lake (we were on a houseboat).  also a terrible hangover though.  of course, there were also plenty of coronas, jell-o shots, smirnoff, bacardi...you gotta factor all that in too...

on the old rip van winkle label there's a line, "asleep many years in the wood."  i ended up repeating that line obsessively the whole night. 

Since we're now talking booze, I guess that my favorite has to be a single malt scotch. I fell in love with Glenmorangie the first time I tasted it. 've grown quite fond of Highland Park and Laphroaig over the years as well.

I'll drink tequila, but aren't picky. I was raised on Mexican rotgut, and have always felt that drinking the cactus juice should be like drinking a fistfight. If it doesn't hurt both then and the next day, you obviously didn't get the full experience.

I hate most  commercial beers, with Guiness, Shiner Bock, and Celis Raspberry being about all I can actually say that I like.

I am also a fan of mead, but again, the commercial stuff doesn't really do it for me. I can honestly say that the best meads I have ever tasted were home brewed, and usually my own. Without getting into the technical differences between mead, melomel,  methoglen, and ceyser, let me simply say that the honeydew melon ' mead ' I brewed 12 years ago was the best alcohol I have ever tasted, and I've tasted a lot.

I've never even seen commercially made mead. I've had a few homebrewed that were pretty good. I know the differences:

Mead = just made from honey

Melomel - honey and grape juice (kind of a combination of mead and wine)

Methoglin = mead with herbs/spices (I'd love to try the mint version)

Cyser = honey and apple juice (combination of mead and hard cider)

Plain mead tends to be pretty bland. Your melon mead sounds great - I'd love to taste! I only tried making mead once and in a pretty jank way (using just honey and dry yeast not aging more than a couple months. ) It pretty much sucked. Best I ever tried was at a homebrew tasting about 12 years ago - it was a raspberry mead (made from raspberry juice and honey. ) My neighbor made a couple plain meads, but they were bland. His beer is way better. My homemade beers were good too, but hadn't had the time (it's not dificult, just time consuming. )

Really? The carbonation is easy. If you bottle using corn sugar is easy, I usually used malt extract to make it all malt. If you keg you can easilly artificially carbonate. My neighbor was brewing well before me (I brewed from about 1996-2004) and still does. He tried making cider a few times and wound up with vinegar until he finally succeeded. Cider is hard. If you can make mead, beer is easier.

My strongest beer ever was over 10% Alcohol by volume and around 125 IBU's hop bitterness. I called it "Old Cutthroat!" I was best at very hoppy and strong beers.

I've only ever had mead once, in the last week of my first year at Uni. It was Ukranian Chilli infused mead which my friend brought to the barbecue. I don't ever want to try it again. I didn't get particularly drunk that evening, but as I was getting in the lift up to my room I suddenly felt very cold and started shaking quite violently and uncontrollably, and could hardly breathe which quite startled a couple of girls also in the lift. I got to my room, lay down on the bed and called my flatmate who took me to the campus nursing unit. I've never had anything like that happen before or since, I don't know that it was the mead, but I don't want to try it again.

Personally, I enjoy drinking, and the accompanying social settings...It's not like I pour Jack Daniels in my cornflakes or anything...but a few beers at Happy hour (along with a plate of buffalo wings) can be amusing. Certainly it makes it easier to cope with the existance of Sarah Palin. But when it all boils down...lighten the fuck up and have a drink, will ya?