Hey guys. I’m back!

It’s been a while, and I assume you’ve all been obsessively refreshing my blog since my last post in the spring. Have no fear, I have returned!

I must admit that the end of the semester caught up with me. Those of you who were students know how it is. As the semester draws to a close and hefty deadlines loom dangerously close, you get no sleep and WRITE ALL THE THINGS while functioning solely on coffee and pure determination. Once it’s over, you don’t feel like doing anything that even sounds a little bit like work because YOU ARE FINALLY ON VACATION AND YOU EARNED THIS, DAMMIT.

Sorry.

But now, I’m back, and ready to drink more beers! Well, I have been drinking beer all summer, but I’m ready to write about it now. There are so many things I missed out on telling you about this summer, team. Like the time Beer Nerd Boyfriend and I took an impromptu drive to Saint-Jerôme to finally sample Dieu du Ciel’s raspberry Solstice D’Été.

It was a big deal because they only brew it once per summer (although they do make various batches: last summer we managed to catch the mango one, which was quite tasty). This summer was even more exciting because it was the first time Dieu du Ciel bottled the Solstice. Of course, it sold out within two days, so we could only manage a taste at their brewpub. But oh, what a taste it was.

It was sweet and tangy with a nice, sour pucker that really did taste like raspberries in the best way possible. For two sour beer fans, this Berliner weiss was heaven. Of course, it wasn’t the only beer we tried that day, but it was my favorite. Dieu du Ciel is a marvelous brewery, and I will forever be kicking myself about the fact that I lived – quite literally – down the street from their pub in Montreal and never went.

Anyways, there may be more to come later. For now, I’ve got some exciting news. Here’s the story:

The first time I was in New York City as a legal-drinking-age grown person was February 2014 – a little less that a year before I moved there. We were a large group of friends, making a pilgrimage from Canada to see Ian McKellan and Patrick Stewart in Waiting for Godot. I also had a secret mission of sorts; I had just started hanging out with this awesome guy who brewed his own beer and he asked me to bring back some American tipples. Future Beer Nerd Boyfriend had sent me a list of beers he wanted to try. At the time, it was totally gibberish to me – this was back in my unenlightened days.

I ended up at The Beer Table in Grand Central Terminal, a teeny-tiny, impressively stocked closet-sized store. I basically read out the list to an extremely patient employee, who pulled out everything he could find. A few of those beers were from a brewery called Bell’s in Michigan. Long, winding story short: I came back, we tried them all, and I discovered quite a few good American breweries. Bell’s Two Hearted Ale would become my standard bottle a few months after moving to Brooklyn.

So earlier this summer, when I discovered that Bell’s was having a 30th anniversary celebration in the fall, I jumped at the chance to get tickets. It was all very exciting; they held a mail-in lottery, so you mailed an entry form and a check, and crossed your fingers for a month. In July, I received a small envelope containing this:

I flipped my lid and immediately started planning the journey to Michigan. So stay tuned: starting September 9th, we’ll be hitting the road to Kalamazoo, one of the most delightfully-named towns in America! We’ve already got a full itinerary, and I keep counting down the days until we can finally go. There’s so many great breweries along our way and I can’t wait to write all about them. But I’ll keep those a surprise until the fall!

It’s good to be back. Promise I’ll never abandon you this long again! Now, what have you all been drinking this summer?