Save yourself a few Hail Marys...

Last Thursday night I volunteered to help my friend Marie with a Finegans tasting at the Liquor Barrel in Golden Valley. I was a little skeptical because I hadn't done one before and Marie wasn't going to be there right away so I was on my own for the first 50 minutes or so. But Marie needed help and it was for a good cause so I decided to give it a try as long as I could get home for kickoff of the NFL season at 7:30.

If you haven't heard about Finnegans, it's a local company that contracts Summit to brew their Irish Amber and they donate 100% of their profits back into the community through charities. Irish reds aren't my favorite style of beer but it's a very drinkable beer and when you can literally drink for a good cause, that should be all you need to know. It sounds a lot better than when I decided to "drink for the kids" by donating 50 cents for every beer I drank on a camping weekend to try to make it sound better for my less-than-understanding girlfriend at the time. Check out their website at http://www.finnegans.org/ and try their beer sometime.

I'm part of the Finnegans tailgating group which whoops it up before every Vikings home game in the Star Tribune lot, otherwise known as Purple 2. Come by and see us sometime and try it and partake in the festivities.

That being said, the tasting went well. Apparently I feel pretty at home in a liquor store and even more at home talking about beer. I didn't keep a running tally but I think around six people decided to buy some Finnegans on my shift so I figured that wasn't all bad for a rookie.

An unexpected benefit of it was meeting Dylan, local beer expert at the Liquor Barrel. I spent my down time discussing beer with him and the time flew by. It turned out to be a great experience meeting everybody that I did that night and I'm glad I did it.

So once again, give Finnegans a try even if it's not your normal style of beer. It's also light and smooth enough that you could give it to normal yellow fizzy beer drinkers to get them to branch out and open their minds. If they hesitate, tell them it's for a good cause and to drink it anyway.

May you live as long as you want, and never want as long as you live