A Craft Beer Nerd and His Pregnant Wife

It’s tough being a Craft Beer enthusiast. It’s especially hard to be one while you’re expecting a kid soon. What must be even harder, is being the pregnant wife of a Craft Beer nerd. Don’t tell my wife this, but I do think about her feelings… sometimes. Here are some of the things that my wife has to deal with, almost non-stop.

New Beers. This one, in my mind, has to be the hardest thing to listen to while pregnant. My wife likes beer. While she’s not a geek like I am, she does enjoy a tasty brew. So whenever I pick up new things like Big Luscious from Founders, Velvet Evil from Straight to Ale, or French Toasted Wake-n-bake from Terrapin, it’s got to be torture. “Here babe, smell this. I know you can’t try it… but here, get the beer drinkers version of Blue Balls.” I really try hard not to do this, but I find this scenario occurring a little too often.

The Beer Fridge. This one has to be hard on her, not because she’s envious about not getting to try the awesome beers, but because of the sheer dollar amount of liquid inside the big white box. I’m a Craft Beer geek, so much that I have to be put on a beer allowance. Sometimes I find myself pushing that allowance to the limit and beyond. Every time she sees a new addition to my fridge she’s got to think, “Well, that’s $20.00 that could have went towards the nursery or a box of diapers.” Fortunately for me, she’s pretty damn awesome and keeps most of those thoughts to herself. I’m trying to find that perfect balance of new additions to the fridge, as well as new additions to the baby’s room, but it’s not easy.

Beer Events. At nine months pregnant, even accompanying me to a brewery on a quiet night is a challenge. She’s a trooper though, and wants me to enjoy the Birmingham Craft Beer scene. So when I go to cool things like the Pride of Dixie event at World of Beer, or Stout Night at Good People, it’s got to suck for her. Not just the drinking part of it, but she’d like to be able to do the socializing part of it too. We did have our baby shower at TrimTab, so maybe that’ll hold her over for a little while…

Brewery News. This one shows how good her ability to B.S. is. I know that she could care less about what lawsuit Lagunitas has against Sierra Nevada. I doesn’t spark her interest what so ever when I tell her that Elysian Brewing are a bunch of losers for selling out to Anheuser-Busch. Still though, she listens and entertains my ramblings. She wants to tell me something about a new baby stroller and I change the conversation to “have you seen Cahaba’s new cans?” I’ve got some work to do, but again, she doesn’t make a big deal about it.

There are few things in this world that I love more than Craft Beer, but the more I get to thinking about it, I guess my wife is one of them. Her and our 14 year old son, make my life good. Because of them, I can have the problems of being a Craft Beer nerd. Unfortunately for her though, she has the problems of being a pregnant Craft Beer wife. Because of that, I have some really good brews in the beer fridge, waiting for us to share.