That Obsession with Indian Beers

'THE' Stud beer: Pride of Pune 

The first time I ever had a beer was when I was in Grade 9. The location (for pretty much everyone else who went to school in Delhi) was this place called 'Hookah' in Priya's, Vasant Vihar. That place was among the few left, where you could march in your school uniform in all your glory and still get served. It shut soon after I left school, for obvious reasons. 

I remember the first gulp. It tasted like a concoction of a stale rotten orange, strong soda and bitter gourd juice. But I religiously finished my mug, skillfully pretending that this wasn't my first tryst with alcohol and I was a regular drinker (Cool like that). Someone obliged by ashing his cigarette into everyone's mugs (this was supposed to increase the high) and being the macho men that we were, we all gulped that crap down too. Peer pressure: Level 9000. 

Fast forward to 2010, I'd been nurturing a carefully crafted beer belly. The braand-of-choice was Kingfisher Blue. One fine day the girlfriend got tandoori chicken and beer delivered to my apartment, the choice of beer left to the delivery boy of course. He brought along this beer called "STUD". It was a local Pune brew, which I blatantly refused to drink out of sheer self respect and fear of dying. 

Few pieces of Tandoori Chicken and I needed something to wash it all down and opened this beer from the dark ages. I wouldn't have been surprised if my society watchman was savoring the same brand. Self-deprecation aside, I had the beer rather quickly. The taste was rather odd (not bad per se) and I started suspecting the presence of horse urine in the brew. 

The beer hit me in 5 minutes like a Delhi Blue-line bus. And the high refused to wear off hours afterwards too. And that was it, I had become a fan. Thus the obsessions with Indian Beers started, I made a pact with a friend of mine, that we'll have a new brand of beer each time we're drinking. And so the sojourn of Canon 10,000, Khajuraho etc started. 

This blog is a jobless attempt at profiling and appreciating these gems of brewery, which often come in increasingly shameful names (Lady Killer, Bachelor's Pride) and letting them have their time under the sun. 

Swadeshi is always right