The great thing about beer is that it is here, in the moment. The kegerator in front of you features 4 taps, which pour a carefully curated selection of craft beers. Even though it’s after hours, a carefully curated selection of staff remains, still comparing the brews to each other and to previous weeks’ kegs. Someone orders pizza from next door, all the tastes change, and the conversation starts anew.

Or you’re catching an early morning flight to an interview, but it’s the night before, and you’re dropping your dog off at your friend’s house in the suburbs before catching your favorite band in the city. You’ve brought some beer and cheese as an insufficient thank you for the dog sitting, and the beer just keeps being opened. You’re tasting and chatting and after what seems like no time you realize that you are missing your favorite band but you don’t care.

Or you’re at your favorite restaurant in Stowe, VT on your last New England night (for now) sitting alone at the bar. The guy sitting next to you overhears your beer order and offers that he’s meeting the brewer the next day to consult on a cloudy batch. For the next two hours, you discuss various New England hiking trails and the breweries at the ends of them. As he gets up to leave, he hands you his card, states that he has already paid for your meal, and requests only that you tell him the story of the random act of kindness that you perform in return. His card identifies him as a Goose Island brewer.

The other great thing about beer is that it’s out there, to be discovered. Your interview was successful, you’ve left that city and have even managed to see that favorite band in your new city, but you’re lonely and thirsty on a spring Saturday evening. You have duly noticed 2 taprooms within walking distance of the apartment for which you have a 3-month lease, and strike out on foot to the closest one. Five months later, in a city with the highest rate of breweries per capita, you still consider that first brewery the best.

Or even though everything is new, you need a break from it, so you’ve just flown in to San Francisco with a flight out of Portland in 6 days, with only 3 days on the Pacific Crest Trail in between. Your carefully curated friend drives north through the smoke of the wildfires as your Google search of breweries reveals the perfect place for dinner. On that third and last day hiking out of the woods, you think that each step brings you closer to that small-town brewery you passed on your way to the trailhead. The remainder of your route through the smoke and later the coastal fog becomes a pilgrimage in the name of beer.

Or you return with renewed resolve to your new home, to which you have graduated from that 3 month lease, and sit before the computer to conjure the next adventure. What most people would call your “heart” pulls you toward the mountains, now just outside your door and also miles beyond. You take note of the well-traveled routes, but query the map to show the breweries that have chosen the higher elevations as their home, and mountain spring water as their source. It appears that your particular route may wander more than most, and you reach for your beer to cheers to that.