oh alcohol! or how I miss beer.

When I was younger, I loved beer. Loved it. Like many college students, I probably drank my weight in beer over the years, and of course, traveling through Europe did nothing to stop my desire to drink beer. Beer is a wonder really, and it's no big surprise that Europeans at least have been drinking it for centuries. It tastes so good (my step-mother would disagree here, as would a few of my friends, but they're strange anyway), doesn't get you drunk quickly, but provides the proper social lubricant for nearly any situation. I love beer. But it makes me sick. I now know why after a night of drinking some beer, I was soooo sick the next morning. I just thought I had bad hangovers! And I do,but that was not the source of worshiping the porcelain throne in my 20s, nor the disconnected wobbly-head feeling that comes with my allergy reactions.

But since I've found out about my wheat allergy and gluten intolerance, I can't have beer. In fact, I can't have so many awesome lovely beverages that it kind of makes me want to cry sometimes. Thankfully, though, there are a few gluten free beers out there in the world, although only one of them is at all mainstream. Redbridge, made by Anheuser Busch, is a pretty good ale, and I do enjoy it even though it doesn't have the same taste as all those micro-brews I used to down. There are other beers for celiac sufferers out there, but they're hard to find and expensive.

Even worse though for those of us with not just celiac's but also a wheat allergy is the fact that we can't even drink most liquors. Who knew that most vodka's were made from wheat?? Urban legend says potatoes, and there are a couple made from something other than winter wheat, but few of them taste quite the same. Potato vodkas are a little "slippery" in comparison to wheat ones, but it'll do in a pinch. Tequilas are often mixed with a grain alcohol unless they say specifically 100% agave. Bourbon, the king of corn liquor, only has to be 51% made from corn and the rest is usually, you guessed it, made from wheat. Rum, made from sugar cane, is often aged in old whiskey casks, so the possibility for contamination is high.

We often think about the food we can't have when we have allergies and/or celiac's, but quite honestly, it's just as annoying that I can't have a decent drink when I go out with friends. I do know more about alcohol and how it's made than I ever wanted to know, and I know my limitations. It just sucks that this limitation is for my favorite drink of all time. OH BEER! HOW I MISS YOU! I could write a poem along the lines of "how do I love thee, let me count the ways...", but I won't because then I'd have to balance it with "how do you hate me, let me count the ways..." And that would be just depressing!