Texas’ proud Spoetzl Brewery, home of Shiner Bock, celebrated 100 years in 2009. But its back story reveals a hard-wrought survival.

Beer for Chaps Episode 2 from Jennifer Litz on Vimeo.

Estrella Damm Inedit is, supposedly, the world’s first beer specifically designed to be consumed with food. That’s a lofty claim, since people have been drinking beer with food for centuries. But hey, if El Bulli’s Ferran Adria develops a beer that he says will go perfectly with your food, I’m in to at least try it. As you’ll see from our video, we find that Estrella Damm Inedit isn’t really beer at all, but more like a malt beverage that falls in the non-beer category. At least, it tastes that way–the Web site says it’s brewed with barley malt, water, hops, and yeast, so the usual suspects are all there. But I swear I tasted no hops, and I’m not the only one.

*Note: I believe in misspoke in this episode, claiming Ferran Adria to be the man behind the molecular gastronomy movement. He’s probably its most recognizable practitioner alive (though the inventor of food foam doesn’t label his food molecular gastronomy), but Herve This, a chemist, wrote the definitive book on the science of food and helped coin the phrase.

Keep in mind, many of these go for both sexes, but they’re definitely written from a woman’s perspective.

1. Don’t start out with the hoppiest, highest ABV, most flavorful beers and then peter out to lagers and cream ales. You won’t be able to taste much.

2. Try not to eat Chipotle or anything else heavy right before. There’s nothing worse than having a BM in a Port-O-Potty.

3. Please, wear lots of deodorant.

4. If you’re not going to stay the whole time, go an hour or so after the start, when all the special stuff starts to be tapped, but before people start packin’ up.

5. Don’t wear a shirt with anything that will give drunken guys even more of an excuse to talk to you.

6. Don’t wear big clunky heels, especially if it’s outside. I continue to do this.

7. If you’re at a beer fest that gives you a finite amount of tickets for tastes, you’re at a lame festival. Luckily, most pourers are beer lovers, and think that idea is dumb. Don’t give a ticket for a pour unless held at gunpoint.

8. These things are generally full of happy, new-age hippies. There won’t be a riot if you cut in line.

9. Prepare to be crop-dusted. Often.

10. Make your own damn pretzel necklace. It’s cheap and quick. (Be creative: Big nuts like pecans work nicely, too, and go well with porters and stouts)

Dark Lord 2009 Tasting from Jennifer Litz on Vimeo.

Three Floyds Dark Lord is the holy grail of Russian imperial stouts. Dark Lord Day is the holy grail of special release beer festivals.

I had the privilege of experiencing both, and without standing in line for hours like everyone else. Beer Magazine commissioned me to write an article on beers worth waiting in line for: Special releases whose commemorative events have reached cult status thanks to the breakneck speed beer news now travels on the Internet. Head brewer Nick Floyd said there were only about 50 people at the first DLD a mere four or so years ago. Now hundreds fly in from other states and countries for the privilege of standing in line for hours to buy these bottles. Check out the July/Aug Beer Mag issue for more on the day of debauchery.

I would have had to stand in line myself, but my wonderful pregnant friend Tamre had a serendipitous twist in the trajectory of hers, which delivered bottles of Dark Lord in under 15 minutes. (No, she wasn’t drinking, but she’s a big enough fan to plan ahead for non-pregnant times.) We bought ours off her so we could spend our time cavorting and bothering inebriated strangers for half-coherent quotes.

We cracked it open to taste for you here (see video). I tasted a 2008 DL on Good Beer Show back in April. That one was a lot thicker and sweeter, and truly lived up to the bottle’s promise of “motor oil consistency.” I’m not sure if it was due in part to its year of aging, but that one was much more intense than the more modern progeny. Dark Lord 2009 has licorice, chocolate and coffee flavors, but in much more muted fashion than before. I perceived a bit more carbonation on the tongue tip this time around, and a hop bitterness that shone through the quiet, still lagoon.

Note on the video: A writer and photographer I am. A videographer, I am not. Watch it if you dare. It’s a silly take on some of the stuffier, snobby beer tasting vlogs out there.

Do women just not like the taste of beer? Only about 31 to 35 percent of women drink beer in America, according to 2007 Morgan Stanley stats, and I’ve seen other unattributed numbers that skew lower.

There just isn’t a lot of evidence to answer why. Is there something inherent to a woman’s palate that makes beer taste like death on her tongue? That can’t be it, because there are plenty of female beer aficionados. In fact, brewers like Tonya Cornett of Bend Brewing Co.—who won a gold medal at the 2007 Great American Beer Festival and was the only US representative at the United Kingdom’s International Real Ale Festival—clearly appreciate the libation.

Is it possible, then, that beer is simply more palatable to men initially? That it’s an even more acquired taste for women? Consider the science: Linda Bartoshuk’s ‘90s Yale studies uncovered the phenomenon of “supertasters,” which are exactly as they sound. Many of these abnormally intense tasters are women–about 35 percent of all women compared to 15 percent of men. Though the latest research from the Human Genome Project complicated previously held ideas about taste and flavor (like that each person’s sense of taste can be radically different from another’s, due in part to how their brains interpret a transmitted taste), this idea still seems to hold true.

Ironically, since women seem to be the better tasters, they may have a harder time acclimating to strong hoppiness, an initially foreign and abrasive flavor. Maybe women seem to like maltier beers and men to like hoppy beers because women taste tend to taste (and smell) things so much more intensely [and our tongues have more bitter-interpreting receptors than sweet ones].

But many of life’s joys are acquired ones, so therein, possibly, lies the other end of the problem: beer advertising and marketing is overwhelmingly male-oriented.

And most beer bars are way more male friendly. It’s not that I necessarily consciously object to 20-year-old psychology majors in butt-skimming skirts and pigtails serving me beer. But what does their prevalence say? Boys’ club.

I don’t mind the prevelance of meatheads and beefcakes in beer–as long as they make themselves useful. Reel me in with some shorty-shorted male servers with tight-fitting jerseys—maybe throw in a brawny burlesque show whenever a girl’s birthday or wedding is announced (ring the bell!)—and you’ll have not only me at your great taps lineup, you’ll have all my non-drinking beer friends, too.

A guide to Texas brews (that sadly, you won’t find outside Texas) and what to drink them with.