Beer Heaven
There is a place where the beer flows like wine. Where beautiful women instinctively flock like the salmon of Capistrano. It is true! I have seen it with my own eyes! No, it is not Aspen, CO. It’s a little Russian liquor around the block from where my dad lives, with walls completely covered with… you guessed it, beer!
Armed with a plastic basket and the eagerness of a kid turned loose in a candy store, I worked my way through the aisles, jaw dropped to the floor and eyes fixated on the smorgasbord of colored bottles of different shapes and colors, trying to figure out the optimal battle plan.
Belgium, Germany, Czech Republic, Russia, England… The globetrotter in me had no boundaries, knew no borders, and my empty plastic basket paid the price for my curiosity and unquenchable thirst. Small and large, dark and pale, exotic and questionable(?), the bottles kept on piling and by the time I somehow arrived at the cashier, I realized I had forgotten to breath all along the way.
The "Before" shot
Once I got to my dad’s and properly recovered from the experience, we proceeded to create our beer fortress and prepare to immerse in what promised to be an amazing beer tasting adventure. Now, I’m no beer expert by any stretch of the imagination and usually gravitate to the Belgium/German and “hoppy” beers. Some of the bottles we bought were definitely outside my level of comfort and were purchased with the sole purpose of experimenting. If you’re looking for some expert advice and such, then head on down to BeerAdvocate as those guys seem to know about the topic. Me? Nah… I just enjoy a cold one every now and then. 
The "After" shot
My dad and I are slowly working our way through our loot but we decided to take the “after” picture ahead of time, just in case we’re… incapacitated after our beer tasting experiment.
Hey, some great beer you got there
I’d recommend being careful with “best drink before…” dates… I’ve seen several small shops packed with beers, but some beer like that german one on the right you can’t keep for over a year – and there is little chance for a small US shop to sell a lot of those. I remember a shop in Oxford, UK in particular where there was a lot of choice.. but as I thought, beers were largely beyond the date where they were safe to drink 
Hope you enjoyed those
I so enjoyed reading this post
Yeah, what Yann said. I have an awesome beer store like there where I live in Chicago. When the beer starts getting like 2 months before its death date, they sell it cheaper. I usually buy those up, as you still get really good beer at a really good price. Though, a lot of the times they don’t have those sales because they typically sell out of their beer all of the time.
BTW, how did you like that franziskaner brown weissbier? I bet it’s not the usual US beer
I’d be interested in your view on the beers now, which ones you liked, which ones not 
I’d have to say the Trappist is my favorite and Three Philosophers dead last, worst even than the peach flavoured lambic
I still have a few more to go though 
The headline reminds me on an ad campaign from my favored beer (the real St.Pauli beer!): http://www.astra-bier.de/wasdagegen/images/werbung/2007/zwischen-himmel-hoelle_big.jpg
Translation: “Between heaven and hell”
Greetings from Germany.