This series of posts is dedicated to the many, many six packs, pony kegs and pints that have sauntered into my life at one point or another.

There was a legend around Point Bock, the seasonal offering from the longtime brewery in my beloved college town. It was the common fallacy surrounding bock beers, that they were fashioned from the muck dredged up from the bottom of the regular yearly cleaning. The bock’s dark color and muddy fulsomeness — completely the opposite of Point Brewery’s usual crisp lager — fed the myth nicely, as did the constant storytelling of those who insisted the previous year’s recipe was so much thicker (“You could stand a pencil up in it!” was the usual anecdotal evidence provided). By my recollection, Point Bock usually showed up sometime in January, in between the semesters, meaning those of us who hung around during Winter Break got first crack at it. In the pre-internet days, we couldn’t count on social media scuttlebutt or promotional Tweets to alert us to its presence, nor was there any special release party. Instead, word spread from person to person with excited announcements: “I heard Ella’s just got Bock in!” There’d be a mad dash to get the first swig, followed by a few months of as much stockpiling as our meager beer budgets would allow before the supply in town receded with the melting snow. As Point Brewery has shown more interest in playing around with the constant turnover in varieties expected of a craft brewer, Bock has evidently become even more of a sometimes snack, only making an appearance every once in a while. This, of course, only adds to the local legend. When I visited Stevens Point in the spring, I found myself in a favorite pub that happened to be, so I was told, one of the last places in the area that still had Point Bock on tap. The story continued that it was the first time in many, many years that the brewery had utilized the original recipe. Just like way back when, I’d completed a hunt to claim the beer. It tasted dandy to me, though I can’t say for sure that it was as good as one of those frosty glasses I downed in my college days. You could make a pencil stand up in it back then, you know.

Previously…
—Point Special
—21st Amendment Bitter American
—Abita Restoration Pale Ale
—Rolling Rock
—Skull Splitter
—Foster’s
—Highland Thunderstruck Coffee Porter
—Red Stripe
—Rhinelander Bock
—Samuel Adams Boston Lager
—New Glarus Brewing Company Wisconsin Belgian Red
—ABA Hoppy Saison
—Hamm’s
—Abita Strawberry Harvest Lager
—Three Floyds Apocalypse Cow
—French Broad Brewing Gateway Kolsch
—Big Boss Brewing “High Monkey”
—Stevens Point Brewery Whole Hog Pumpkin Ale
—The Native Brewing Company The Eleven Brown Ale
—Labatt Blue
—Smuttynose Winter Ale
—Point Beyond the Pale IPA
—Guinness
—Capital Brewery Supper Club
—Highland Brewing 20th Anniversary Scotch Ale
—Mickey’s
—Central Waters Brewing Company Sixteen
—Blatz
—Pisgah Pale Ale
—New Glarus Brewing Company Pumpkin Pie Lust
—Asheville Brewing Company Rocket Girl
—Sierra Nevada Blindfold Black IPA
—21st Amendment Brewery Down to Earth