NEWPORT, RI—Regretting that he never got a chance to sample even a single imperial stout during his years abusing alcohol, recovering alcoholic Scott Rimer expressed bitterness Monday that he had the misfortune to reach the lowest point of his life before the craft beer boom. “Goddammit. I can’t believe I hopelessly bottomed out and made the difficult decision to clean up my act just months before small, dedicated breweries started gaining real traction,” said Rimer, who confessed to feeling that his entire time as a drunk was squandered pounding Pabst Blue Ribbon and Bud Light when he could have delayed sobriety a bit longer and enjoyed a wide variety of hoppy India pale ales for a while. “I wasted years of my life drinking Schlitz in shady run-down dives. If I’d only had a little patience, I could have been in a hip brewery with dozens of different styles of beer rotating on tap. The alcohol content is high—I could have been getting fucking hammered so quickly. The bleak, gray hellscape of my addiction would have been a lot more colorful if I had known about sours, lambics, and barleywines.” Rimer was later found in his garage, relapsed and unconscious, his body curled around an empty growler of a fruity and complex Belgian tripel.

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