As we close out the calendar year, Tröegs has given us one last gift for the year, the annual return of Nugget Nectar.

The once-a-year imperial amber dropped this week at the brewery and then across much of the Central PA area. Supplies will be showing up across all the rest of the Tröegs map in the coming days and weeks.

Shortly after this beer drops, we will see folks on Untappd, Twitter, and various Facebook groups say: “This beer was better last year” and “I wish they would make it like they used to make it.”

Somehow these folks think they are the arbiter of both what it “used to be” and that it was somehow “better” in years gone by.

As we turn the calendar, we often use the moment to consider the passage of time and to mark the changes in our lives. Those people and events that touched us in some profound way, those family and friends that we lost over the last year, and those moments that we will always carry with us going forward. The marking of time is important. These journeys around the sun are finite for each of us and marking the change helps to define our life in this time and space. It would be humble and reflective to consider how we changed as well.

Bringing it back to beer… that brew has changed. Beer is an agricultural product. It is of the stuff that makes it. That stuff changes. It changes based on weather and climate. It changes for reasons we do and do not fully understand. So yeah… That beer that you think you liked better last year is probably different than it was in years past but so are you. In fact, I think you are likely a whole lot different than you were that last time you had a Nugget Nectar. You and your tastes have changed.

2500 years ago, Heraclitus posed that “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for its not the same river and he’s not the same man.” When sipping your beer this too is true.

In this case, I would also add that sensory permanence is really loose. What your senses tell you changes… a lot. Even folks who use their senses for wine and food know that they experience these things in very different ways based on a lot of factors.

Therefore, let us never say: “It was better last year.” Instead… let us say, “I felt differently about this beer in the past.” For no man sips the same beer twice.

Post-Script:

Yeah… this blog still exists. Maybe 2022 will be the year I recommit to writing about beer.

The It’s Friday Somewhere Podcast is back again. Recorded last night, December 30, 2021. Will drop it in your podcast player on New Year’s Eve or this weekend.

Happy New Year Folks!