First, a vignette.

Lucy: “What are we writing about this week? The search for meaning at the bottom of a beer glass?”

Taryn: “Can we just name it at—that—at? Ghah.”

Clearly, more beer is necessary. “Full system lubrication,” as Lucy says with one of our favorite phrases. In writing about beer, it helps to be simultaneously drinking beer.

This spring break found Lucy and Taryn in a northern Minnesota sports bar (that didn’t accept Macalester’s P-card. Must’ve been the bar part, and not the sports. Don’t worry, Business Services, we were only trying to buy french fries). Why were we in northern Minnesota on the college’s dime, you may ask? We were pondering life’s greatest questions with the Lilly Project Senior Keystone. We had the honor of spending four days with nine fellow seniors, a rabbi, and a Presbyterian minister in a 1920s English-style manor house. Spring break hath no better arrangement.

The Lilly Project, for those unfamiliar with it, encourages students to explore questions of ethics, leadership, and vocation with peers also asking resonant questions. If you’re inclined toward reflection, then look no further – the Lilly Project will help you ponder shit. It’s the best. Of course, Taryn and Lucy both think that these sorts of conversations are infinitely improved by (quality) beer, so when we found out we were destined for a bar with people searching for life’s meaning (sounds grandiose, but it is really quite humbling), we were euphoric. Ecstatic. Over the moon.

Lucy got the Lift Bridge, whatever that one is. Something with Hop in the title. Hop Dish!! Lucy just loves this beer. Classic, simple (but not unchallenging)—not boring. It’s also something you can drink multiple pints of. What a joy!

Taryn finds herself unsure. Notes were not taken this night—what a cautionary tale! She definitely didn’t get the Redd’s Cider (not even a beer; actually, apple juice), but can’t remember what she did get. Did she write it down in her Keystone acknowledgement book? Bummer, but no. She doesn’t even remember the brewery. Obviously it was an IPA, though. Give us a couple days and it might come to us, but also, it seems like it wasn’t that special. Glad we had this talk.

All of this pondering led us to ask the question: Why, really, do we love beer so much? Is it the hoppiness, or the variety? We think, respectfully to the beer connoisseurs, that it’s not that straightforward (when asking worthy questions, more questions should come instead of easy answers, fyi). The flavor, as it were, that beer brings to our lives is, like the Indeed Let it Ride, complex. We get to spend time with people we love, while slightly happy and feeling optimistic about our next beer. We always have the option to change our order, but if we find something we love, we can Let it Ride (sense a theme here? We have a new favorite beer. Stay tuned to next week). Beer can serve as a metaphor for life and, simultaneously, life can serve as a metaphor for beer.
Ta-da. How’s that for meta-hipster?