It didn't feel like a Friday...

I got quite a bit done on the despeckle of the 40K Job, but I wasn't exactly knocking myself out. Indeed, I spent some time setting up for some items due next week. I even took a nap.

I bought a six-pack of Schlitz during yesterday's shopping trip. I probably wouldn't have, if the store hadn't sold out of my "usual" beer, and I probably wouldn't have bought "The Beer That Made Milwaukee Famous" had it not been a vague sense of wanting to verify the claim of having been brewed according to the "Classic 60s Formula."

I mean, it's not as if we're taking about the Reinheitsgebot or anything like that.

Of course, there are a couple of things wrong with the scenario.

First, if today's Schlitz is like the beer they brewed in the 60s, then while it may not quite be the mass-produced swill so many of us have come to know and drink over the past generation, it's not exactly the product of microbrewing, either.

Second, while my first Schlitz was enjoyed "off the record, on the QT, and very hush-hush" (to steal a line from James Ellroy) in that 1960s time frame—and yes, I was under age... by quite a number of years—I'm wondering what it was I was thinking if I thought cracking open a bottle of Schlitz turn into a "madeleine episode," because as I recall those early clandestine beers, I didn't much like them.

In the end, in my opinion, today's Schlitz—even made using a 50-year-old recipe—is just another mass-produced beer. The memories that were called forth earlier today, when I opened a bottle and sipped the contents while watching the rain fall, were triggered entirely by thoughts of the era. Had I not been around in the 60s, I would not have had even those.

Cheers...

Posted via LiveJournal app for iPad.