Slake-Jawed

Weather it seems, has been at some level in a good number of my posts, recently. Be it the wacky weather in New York City I got to experience first hand last week, or the triple digit temps down in South Carolina the week before. Those warm temps got me thinking. On Sunday I was, as I do every week, cutting the grass. It's been pretty warm in Albany this summer, so a jaunt around the yard with the mower can get a good sweat going, and  build up a decent thirst. Finishing up, with sweat on brow, I put the old girl back in the garage and set off inside to slake my thirst—with iced tea.

I have beer in the fridge. In fact, I have cold, lawn mower beer in my fridge—Rolling Rock, to be specific—theoretically, the perfect solution to my sun-baked dilemma. Yet, I went for the tea. For that matter, I almost always go for tea—or water—over beer in those parched moments. I just don't think beer is all that quenching. I think certain styles—like a Saison or an IPA—work well on a balmy, sunlit day, just as pint of Porter just seems right on a blustery late November evening. But, I don't think those scenarios are matter of satisfying my thirstiness. Don't get me wrong, I think a cold beer on a hot, summer afternoon is fantastic—refreshing, yes, but not quite abating when it comes to thirst. I can think of a number of times, when walking to the pub on a scorcher, that I ordered a tall glass of H2O, before my first pint. Maybe it's a science thing. Alcohol, by nature, is a diuretic. Drinking it results in a greater loss of fluids than it provides. That scenario, however, doesn't usually rear it's ugly head until three or for pints in. Alcohol—in this case beer—is technically the opposite of slaking or at least it ends up that way in the long run. Honestly, in my case, I don't think that has much to do with it.

I might be in the minority on this one, but in any case, I thought I'd share a beery quirk in my personnel file.