Beer and Grammar - Love and Hate

I like beer. I like the taste of it and I enjoy tasting different beers. Back in college one Christmas my mom got me a beer making kit - a really basic one and I made a brown ale that turned out ok considering it was the beer making equivalent of buying a boxed brownie mix at the supermarket. Several years later I was thinking about it and decided that I wanted to get back into making my own beer so I bought a few things to take my home brewing operation to a more "from scratch" level. Really that just amounts to buying a big pot, a couple of food quality buckets, a glass carboy, thermometer, and a couple special pieces. *If you're interested you can go Homebrewer's Outpost where you can buy or see the type of kit that I'm talking about* I made a couple different beers and always enjoyed the fruits of my labors as well as the process of making them. When I met my buddy Andy in Hatteras and found out that he also had a passion for brewing as well as some equipment he and I both started working together making and sampling beers together. There are a lot of Craft Breweries and Micro Breweries that I like but one of my favorites is Dogfish Head which is located in Southern Delaware in a town called Milton just inland from Rehoboth beach. My Dad and Step-mom have a beach house in Ocean City, MD and it's only about a 40 minute drive to the Dogfish Head brewery in Milton so this past weekend my friend Benny and I went up and took the brewery tour. It's a great tour with a cool gift shop and at the end of the tour they give you some samples to try out - sweet! A production brewery really isn't any different from what I do back in my kitchen except they are obviously a much larger scale. After the tour (and dropping a phone/sat/internet bill in the gift shop) we made our way over to Rehoboth where Dogfish Head has a brewpub restaurant. The cool thing about Dogfish Head being a small company is that they still use their Rehoboth brewpub location as their test facility. Here they brew smaller batches of beers and use their restaurant as a test facility so as a customer you get to try something that isn't available in stores (and DFH is already hard to find in stores) and it makes great sense from a business standpoint as well. Long story short we had a fun excursion - like a field trip for grown men. Come to think of it maybe DFH should consider having their waitresses in cheerleader outfits and install a pole... naaaaa that would distract from the beer.

Panoramic of the Dogfish Head Brewery

The Fermentation Tanks - where a weird tea becomes beer

Ok a major peeve here that I've got to get off my chest. I know that the English language isn't super easy and we have lots of things that are confusing - "i before e except after c", silent letters, etc. I also realize that text messaging has spawned usage of abbreviations to make composing messages easier and more efficient even if it means incorrect grammar and I use it as well in texts ("c" instead of "see", "u" instead of "you" - "c u l8tr" is much more efficient to send via text than "see you later") So please understand that's not my issue.

My issue is the rampant incorrect usage of a bunch of simple words - most commonly the "Their, There, They're" group, the "Two, To, & Too" group, and "Are, Our" (that one really gets me!) So here's a refresher course in case you're one of those using the wrong word in the wrong context and please also understand that this is a personal pet peeve not a character assassination of anyone! If you find yourself getting offended look at it this way - if you misuse these words in a job application or a proposal to a client it could cost you the job!

There: Describes Location as in: "Where is it?" "It's over THERE"

Their: Describes possession by them as in: "This is THEIR sweet car"

They're: Contraction for "They Are" as in: "THEY'RE going to the mall"

"They're driving over there in their sweet car" translates into: "Those people are driving to a location in a sweet car that they own" and makes perfect sense!

Moving on to too, to, two!

Too: Also, as well, or an expression of excess as in: "I love tacos TOO" and "Those tacos had TOO much hot sauce"

To: Indicates direction or intent as in: "I want TO give this TO you before you go TO the gym"

Two: Spelled out number 2 as in: "I want TWO tacos please"

"I'd like TO order TWO tacos TO go but not with TOO much cheese please!" "Hey I'd like TWO tacos TOO thank you!" Got it?!

"Our" and "Are" being used interchangeably if you're out of the 7th grade (in my opinion) is inexcusable and either you need to go back to 7th grade or all your teachers need a smack on the back of the head!

I think in light of all the talk about immigrants "knowing the language" it's important that we (US citizens) also know the language which, in my mind, means being able to read and write as well as speak it!

I suppose I've probably made some grammatical mistakes through this blog post and I realize that my rant about the usage of Their, They're, There & To, Too, Two will probably open myself up to scrutiny of my use of punctuation and grammar and that's fine. Like I said at the beginning - it's a major pet peeve of mine! Have a good evening!

-Drew