A portrait of heaven: Black Butte Porter, by the Deschutes Brewing Company.

This is the beer love of my life. When I started undergrad in Portland, OR, I was the polar opposite of a beer snob, thanks to my parents’ unspeakably horrible penchant for Natural Ice and Old Milwaukee. I was raised on piss beer. Awful. I began my college drinking career by carrying on the family tradition of filthy-brew loyalty — Natty Ice, Old Milwaukee, Olde English 800 — and then I was exposed to the wonderful world of microbrews (THANK GOD).

Somewhere along the way, I discovered that I genuinely like beer. Aside from its ability to get me drunk, I like the taste. Fortunately for me, I went to college in a beer-lover’s paradise. There are a bunch of breweries in the city, brew festivals, brew festivals, and brew festivals, several versions of the movie-theater-slash-brew-pub (See a movie. Drink a beer. LOVE IT), and the beer store.

Anyway, Black Butte Porter was my perennial favorite. It isn’t available here, and that American microbrews are missing from the shelves of the Beer Store and the LCBO is probably my single greatest complaint about Canada. Say what you want about the US — and there’s a lot of bad stuff you can say — our microbrews kick ass. So, when I went to San Francisco last week, I made sure that Aundra got me a sixer of my favorite beer. (Similarly, when my friend Paula visited me in Miami (again, the lack of BBR was depressing), I made her bring me a six-pack, too.) Mmmm….delicious.