Little Old, Pink Notebook

I can hear my parents bickering through my window as they approach my door. I tell them this when I let them in and my dad yells, “We’re old and can’t hear a damn thing anymore!” My mother bustles through laden with bulging tote bags and tupperware. Dad says, “get the beer,” and gestures with full arms at the two six-packs on the ground. When I lock the door my mom turns around on the stairs, “We’re old and can’t hear anything anymore!”

My mother just returned from Pittsburgh where she visited a beer store whose name is now forgotten. Because she doesn’t know much about beer, she purchased a mixed sixer of IPAs whose labels she didn’t recognize and a six pack of an IPA from Pennsylvania. I only recognized one of the singles, so she did good.

While Mom gets dinner dished out, my dad says, “I say we start with one of these,” he rips off a can from the six-pack for me, “and then these,” gesturing at the mixer. I picture us both on our backs, passed out, and my mother leaning over us, irate. This is how we do tastings in my family.

Recently I’ve been looking at the technological side of beer tasting. There’s a surprising number of beer-related apps, for example. Everything from a virtual encyclopedia of beer abvs to rating “communities” to next drink recommendations. I checked out my little old, pink beer notebook that I kept pretty religiously for a few years. Most beer entries went like: Name / percentage & state of origin / bar or circumstance. Then mixed in among these are phone numbers with no name, band name ideas, email addresses for people I don’t remember. The handwriting gets more expansive as it moves down through the night. Does BeerAdvocate have a data field for bartender name and level of attractiveness?

A Nameless, Phone Numberless page

After we’ve finished the Rivertowne Brewing’s Old Wylie’s IPA — smooth and well-balanced — and our ratatouille with zucs from the garden, my mom picks up a bottle from the mixer. She says she asked a stranger standing next to her in the store what he liked best, and this was it. For reasons I don’t think I can fully articulate, this seems like a much more legitimate way to get a recommendation than through an app. (My mom would ask, “what’s an app?”) Because how does one digitally quantify a taste? It’s much like Amazon algorithm recommendations — I mean, sometimes you just liked the cover.

The Limbo IPA from Long Trail Brewing is great, indeed. It is a little spicy, a little tart, a lot strong. The insistent light on my phone keeps blinking, and I diligently ignore it, talk engagingly with my parents, try to remember what color that light indicates.

I tell them about passing along to friends a great movie they’d originally recommended to us, The Sound of Noise. They don’t remember it. I pull up IMBD on my ChromeBook and show it to them. “You told me about it,” I insist. They laugh and laugh and don’t remember, even when I describe the opening scene, in which a drum set falls out the back of a speeding cargo van. Nope. I help my mom find something she wants to order online, and I think about growing old and how strange it will be to not know how to answer all my questions.

Mostly I think all the technology is silly — a way to have endless friends and still wonder why you’re drinking alone; a way to show others how much you know, while forgetting your interpersonal skills. A good part of my reasoning behind the little old, pink beer notebook was that it was a conversation starter. We talked about my lists and tried each other’s beers and picked the next one for each other and remembered things together and forgot them too.

Later I tell Ben about my parents forgetting the movie. He just shakes his head. “They didn’t tell us about that,” he says calmly, taking another swig of IPA.