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Trying new brews the cheapest way possible.

Monday Mar 06, 2006.     By Erin Brereton

Lifestyle Feed

I've come a long way with my drinking choices since college. I've embraced the vodka martini, learned a little about wine (namely that the kind in a box really isn't the deal you first think it is) and stopped buying liquors that come in a plastic bottle (it's a fine way to package chasers, but rum, not so much).

But beer...well, I'm sad to say my choices aren't so sophisticated. My friends order giant silos of beer with orange slices in them or imports I've never heard of. Problem is, I don't really like the taste of most of the richer, more expensive beers. So when I order them, I tend to look unsatisfied, uncultured and generally like I'd rather be drinking a vodka cranberry. If bars served the warm, watered-down keg beer I lived off of in college, I'd be thrilled. But I'd still wonder what I was missing.

In my constant quest to educate myself about (and ingest) alcohol, I headed to the quaint Printer's Row Wine Shop, 719 S. Dearborn St., for a Saturday afternoon beer tasting.

Printer's Row Wine sponsors weekly wine tastings on Friday evenings for those interested in beefing up their Chardonnay cleverness. Beer tasting is a less regular offering, but one manager Robert Sollors tells me they hope to hold more of in the future.

And with good reason; though the early-tasting crowd on Saturday was small (well, actually, it was just my friend Emily and I), the beer was open, free-flowing and in plentiful supply. This week's tasting featured a variety of beers from the local Goose Island Brewery, 1800 W. Fulton.

We first tried Goose Island's newish (and increasingly popular, I'm told) brew, 312, which I actually really liked. The next one I tried was the company's Pale Ale, which was a little bitter for my taste (I think a rule of thumb for a beer is if you can't make your way through a tiny shot-glass sized cup of it, you're not going to enjoy a full bottle).

But then: Behold the special reserve beer. With a whopping 9 percent alcohol content (as opposed to the 4 percent most other beers contain), it didn't take many sips to make me feel delightfully fuzzy.

The nice thing about a beer tasting is that it's a lot more relaxed than other liquor tastings. The few wine tastings I've been to (almost all of which were at wineries) just seemed a little pretentious; they watch you drink and wait for your reaction, so you always feel like you have to over emphasize how great it was, when realistically, my reaction to wine is generally just "I want more."

The whisky tasting I attended a couple of years ago was the same thing. That one actually involved a slide show presentation (no joke) so intensive I feared the evening would end with a quiz. There was a lot of smelling involved in that, too, and lots of sipping and nodding and running the whisky along the inside of your glass for reasons I still don't fully understand.

But beer? I asked Drew, the Goose Island rep on hand, what process I should be following to taste and he was cautious to give me one. He did suggest I pay attention to taste, aftertaste and smell, but never once used the word delicious or talked about anything in my little cup having legs, which was nice.

After three samples each, Emily and I felt satisfied that we had built ourselves a cumulative glass of beer, and also realized it was 5 p.m., a suitable time to have one more. We rolled off down the street to get cocktails at the new swanky restaurant I have yet to eat at. Although I enjoyed my high-end beer, I ordered a martini. Old habits die hard.

Want to attend a wine or beer tasting at Printer's Row Wine Shop? Stop by Friday evenings or check the its website for a list of upcoming events. Goose Island also frequently sponsors tastings around the city, which are listed online.

Erin Brereton is our resident urban cowgirl on a bi-weekly search for life on the cheap. If you have an on-the-cheap favorite, do clue her in.