Beer Inflation

It's "Miller Time".

It's always Miller Time -- at sporting events, concerts, picnics and every around the grill on the deck.

The clock is ticking on beer, and over the last decade, especially, that clock has ticked off more and more beer consumption. True, there are ups and downs, but I'm not speaking of total consumed, but size consumed per capita.

When I go back in time to the early days of my drinking career, when Joe Z and I used to buy beer under aged at the bowling alley, we used to be served (no questions asked) little 8-oz glasses of beer. We were fifteen years old. We felt we should be allowed a beer or two. We were not quite old enough to fight for our country in Vietnam, but we were getting there quickly.

Then as I approached my apprentice years in my drinking career, I switched to mainly spirits, especially nearly 100% booze drinks like Rusty Nails. Who cared what it tasted like, right? It was the buzz we were after, cheaply -- and the quicker the better. Scotch has a way of gripping a nineteen year olds brain. We were served in small rocks glasses. The few times we tried for a pitcher of Rusty Nails, the bartender shot us down. This was pre-booze-inflation.

I remember 1988. It was a god -awful hot year, much like this year, but worse. Dust storms actually made it to Chicago. A beer now and then and now and then and now and then tasted good. I had met the love of my life and she was a beer drinker of German decent. She was also Italian, but somehow wine didn't cut it on those hot, hot days. Our typical beer glass was a ten ounce glass, or a bottle. But we liked it from the tap, so mostly it was the ten ounce glass.

Now as I am approaching my golden years of suds and drinking I am noticing that I can hardly ever get that ten ounce glass. The norm is the pint. Okay, a pint is not that much more. Or is it?

More often than not, when stopping at an Applebee's or another of the fake homey "neighborhood" places that have sprung up I will ask for a beer and be accosted by something called the Brewtus, which is only slightly smaller than a pitcher. At Granite City once I sat for a brew and was offered a pitcher for $6 and a pint for $5.45. I was all alone and working the next day. I declined, despite the hit to my wallet, and sucked up the pint.

It's all easy to understand in most cases: these places need to push the brew out --fast. It's like any other product. Sell more and you get rewarded.

My look at this is not as the beer police size-wise. It's more of a belly thing. Someone from Google could, I'm sure, put together an logarithm that would correlate the size of the beer glass to the girth of the average American guy's belly.

We are finding out much too late that the government and its food pyramid is all wrong. For years we were told to stuff grains down our throats, whole and otherwise, then eat veggies, and then at the tip of the pyramid we were to enjoy a skinless, boneless, tasteless chicken breast. Yuk.

So... it turns out that more and more studies are showing that grains of all types (including, yes, the liquid golden type) are interfering with insulin control and creating a nation of fatties.

I for one am tired of the overhang. I like my shoes and even my toes and want to see them again, so I am going back to the 10-oz glass. If the corporate cozy neighborhood place does not have one, I'll bring my own. It will BYOG -- Bring your own glass. I'm saying goodbye to the BAB -- Big Ass Beer.

It might save me from BLOB.

I'm taking my beer time back from Miller. It will be my time, my amount of beer. This time with smaller being better.