This Bud’s Not For You

Don’t get me wrong – the basic wheel, essential plumbing, the hammer and its step-brother the nail, the alphabet and printing press, irrigation, eyeglasses, penicillin, the spinning Jenny, the washing machine, the refrigerator (and, um, a reluctant acquiescence to the internet), all are fine inventions in their own rights, but distant seconds to beer.  Even the electric guitar plays second fiddle to a good beer.  And nowhere else is beer better appreciated than here in Wisconsin (in this country at least).  Sure, we haven’t gone “coastal” like Dogfish or Sam Adams, Redhook or Sierra Nevada, but you know you’re in good company when your biggest city’s professional sports franchise is named “Brewers.”  Furthermore,* as long as getting “Schlitz’d” still means something – and lord knows it does – you can thank Wisconsin for that too.  And while no true hipster would ever admit to being a hipster, if you’re sipping PBR, then you’d best give a quick nod and wink to Wisconsin – even if that cramps the tragically too cool façade evinced.

So it is with due confusion and frustrated “wtf” that the most recent proposed legislation in the Joint Finance Committee– slipped in all but literally at the eleventh hour – that negatively impacts microbreweries in Wisconsin makes me want to throw up my hands in the air, fearing to wonder, “Good God! what’s next?  Banning apple pie?  The Packers?  Cribbage?  Naptime?”  Indeed, it’s enough to drive one to drink.  So crack one open as we plod through this crappy batch.