When I was growing up in England, drinking at home was largely frowned upon outside of the Christmas period when all bets were off. In fact I’d go further, and would even say that the practice was generally considered restricted to those people with either mild or severe drinking problems. Drinking came with inherently understood social elements, and therefore was done outside of the home, in pubs. It was that simple.
When I moved to the USA, pubs – at least real, proper pubs – became essentially a thing of my past, and drinking at home became a more more attractive, indeed essential, option. Don’t get me wrong, I still went out and drank in bars, but even 25 years on, the pub experience has only ever been close to replicated on a handful of occasions on these shores. God how I miss pubs.
In my experience, as one gets older, the desire to make the effort to go out recedes. As such, the desire to drink high quality beer at home also increases. In the past 10 years in the USA this has been exponentially increased as most brewery taprooms here have veered wildly away from the beer that I drink. Traditional (what I call legacy) drinkers have been shunned, and time after time I have been confronted with tap lists that contain single digit percentages of beers that I would ever consider drinking. The stranglehold that melted candy bars (pastry stouts), fake fruited ‘sours’ (kettle sours), and soft flabby orange juice (hazed beers) have had on tap lists in the USA have driven me home. There’s also de facto close to ZERO cask ale options in the USA too (notable exceptions are few and far between but Good Word and The Brick Store both in Atlanta, GA are shining lights).
I’d estimate that 95% of my beer consumption happens in the house these days and has done for a number of years, so the answer to the question, “What’s the best beer you can drink at home right now?” is simply the great beer that I drink at home! 90+% bottled (generally not cans), and mostly from Belgium, in batches that I have shipped directly to me. The shipping aspect has sadly become necessary.
Oh how my beer drinking has evolved over the years.
