For a annual party that I have recently been invited to my friend Bill and I always like to show up with "old man beer" and try to screw with the minds of people that are 8 years or so younger than us. It is always fun since all they know about beer is Blue and Canadian and have no memories of anyone in their family drinking Genessee or anything comparable.

So we looked for something other than Pabst Blue Ribbon. We have brought the PBR in past years but that was actually because we actually enjoy drinking it and plus it's damn cheap. There is nothing like having communion with long deceased relateives.

This year we actually had some problems. The only true old man beer that is out of the ordinary was Schmidts that we found in the downtown Niagara Falls tops. In years past they had stocked Piels, Schlitz and Schaffer but this year the only thing they had was Schmidts and Genny.

On the really pulling something off we managed to find a case of Ballentine Ale at Consumers. The "pretzel" beer as some have refered to it. Hunter S. Thompson also had mentioned the beer in many of his books.

So Yea, I do have a soft spot for "old man beer." The one thing that I love over the past 5 years has been the explosion of PBR. My friend Bill and I have this fantasy that dudes our age all over the country manifested the love of the PBR to younger college kids at the time. They took on to it because of it's affordability, and then realized that "It doesn't taste all that bad!"

Now it's the offical beer of art gallery openings, hipsters and snowborders :-)