Let’s start off by clarifying any suspicions of me being a connoisseur for any sort of alcoholic beverage: I’m far from it. I like to think of myself simply as an admirer. I really enjoy beverages or food that taste good and then recommend them to people. Simple.

This particular blog post though is a little ironic; I’ll explain in what sense. The first beer that I can recollect seeing as a kid is Heineken. It used to be lying right next to the cheese in the refrigerator but as far as I can recall, no one ever drank it and then I just saw the can in the trash one day. Keep in mind I was only 11 and alcohol was off limits and neither did I have any curiosity to find out what was the contents of the can tasted like. However my first impression of the Celtic green can with the black and silver logo on it was that it is definitely some pathetic tasting concoction.

Forward to present day when I’m well within the legal age to consume alcohol. I have tried a lot of different beers ranging from American classics like Budweiser and Coors, to Stella Artois from Belgium, Kingfisher from India and to the renowned Corona from Mexico. I have only tasted a handful of the brands out there globally but within whatever I have tasted, I have broadly classified them into 2 simple categories for my personal decision making process: lager and wheat beer (and then there is ‘ale’ which is dark and I’m not brave enough to try it yet). And until now, I had 2 favorites from these categories: Corona (lager), which is a very refreshing beer and Blue Moon (wheat ale) which is light and goes very well with almost any type of food and is best served with a slice of orange.

But here is the irony that I mentioned earlier; I had never tried Heineken, the first beer that I had ever seen, until 3 days ago and like one of the early iPhone ads used to say, “This changes everything”. I had one sip and then I stared at the glass with surprise. For someone who had not tasted beer in a long time, I was enchanted for that moment. It tasted perfect and when say perfect I mean it was very light and smooth, the exact opposite of what I had expected. It was poured in the glass from a bottle and for a good pale bottled beer it surprisingly had the perfect carbonation, almost as if it was a mildly pressurized draught beer. It was very smooth for a bottled carbonated beverage in general and went great with grilled fish. I am in complete awe (as evident as I have made it in this paragraph) and I’m looking forward to trying it again.

I really enjoy moments when I discover something amazing that has been around but just came to my notice. It’s probably in amazement of my lack of observation of things in plain sight and the relief that I noticed them sooner than later.

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