All Kinds of Beer

As an inveterate beer geek, the first thing I say to pretty much any waiter/bartender (after “hello”, of course) is “what kind of beer do you have?”  There have been a number of occasions when the response is along the lines of “we’ve got all types” or “we have everything you can think of”.  These are not beer bars, mind you.  More like… about as far from a beer bar as you can get.  I never know what to do.  The waiter is usually somebody who’s well meaning (though possibly also too lazy to memorize all six beers on the list), so I don’t want to be a spaz or an asshole about it.  I’m obviously not going to take it as a challenge and order something weird just to show off (“I’ll have the Drie Fonteinen Faro, please”), and there’s no way I can think of to say “trust me, I know about all kinds of beer you’ve never heard of” without sounding like a condescending prick.  Worse yet, my mind usually freezes and the only “common” beer I can think of is Chimay, which is still probably way further out there than I can hope to get (the first time this happened to me I was at a restaurant on the outskirts of Nowheresville, Florida).  After some nervous stuttering, I usually go with Guinness.  It seems like the only reasonable thing to do.

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