Being the first Friday of the month means that it’s time for another round of The Session, the collaborative beer blogging exercise that brings together bloggers and writers from all over to write about a common topic. This month’s host is Steve Lamond of Beers I’ve Known (actually it was originally slated to be Pete Brown, but a stolen laptop threw a monkeywrench into plans and the hosting duties were shuffled); this month the topic he has chosen is “Beery Confessions: Guilty Secrets/Guilty Pleasure Beer”:

One of the things I most enjoy about blogs and personal writing in general is the ability to have a window into another’s life, in a semi-voyeuristic way. So I’d like to know your beery guilty secrets. Did you have a particularly embarassing first beer (in the same way that some people purchase an atrocious song as their first record) or perhaps there’s still a beer you return to even though you know you shouldn’t? Or maybe you don’t subscribe to the baloney about feeling guilty about beers and drink anything anyway?

Maybe this is weird but… I’m really not sure I have any beery guilty secrets! I’ve pretty much laid out my entire beer history on this blog and looking back, I think the only thing I really haven’t talked about (nor does almost anybody else for that matter) are the effects and aftereffects of beer… in other words, getting drunk and/or being hungover. But there’s really nothing guilty there, I just think it’s a boring topic to write about—it would be about as exciting as writing about the symptoms of the flu.

What else is there to feel guilty about? I know there are certainly beer snobs who would only ever admit to drinking a can of industrial American lager with the sort of “guilty confession” indicating acute embarrassment, but seriously? When even Sam Calagione admits to drinking the stuff:

Do you still drink cheap beer?

I do. I play on an adult hockey league team. And every week it’s one of my teammate’s job to bring a 30 pack of cheap, cold cans of lager. And whatever one it is, whatever brand it is I look forward to having it. There’s nothing like that light lager for refreshing after a hockey game. There’s really not any other occasions in my week where I’m craving that kind of beer. But I’m a beer geek, not a beer snob. And all beer is good. And there’s a time and place for any kind of beer.

…then the whole notion of “guilty” because of “cheap beer” seems silly.

So I guess I fall into Steve’s latter camp of not subscribing to feeling guilty about beer. So I don’t! And neither should you. Drink what you want, and don’t worry about what other people think!