What's your Story?

[Shawn, the Beer Philosopher]

If you have a proclivity for both theology and zymurgy, and find yourself a member of this group, share your story here. What is your religious background? Theological affiliation/persuasion?

[Scott E. Kingsbury]

Ahhhh. Religion. Theology. Zymurgy. Three of my all-time favorite subjects. Where to start??

I was born and raised in the City of Our Lady, Queen of the Angels, and have lived here all my life. My paternal grandparents were married at St. Mary of the Angels in L.A. (an Anglo-Catholic parish in the heart of old Hollywood)...where I was also married and Ordained a Deacon (1996) and a Priest (1998 - on the Feast of St. Joan of Arc). I am a Traditional Anglican....we're the ones attempting to "swim the Tiber" as a group (the Traditional Anglican Communion) and come home to Rome. I am very Catholic...just, at this time, I'm not "Roman" Catholic. I'm a married Priest. I like it that way! So does my wife!

After the Episcopal Church began "coming apart at the seams" in the mid-1970's (and eventually forced good Catholic people like me to leave them in 1976 when they began "ordaining priestesses" - when I was a mere lad of nineteen and a Sophomore in college)...I explored the whole gamut of Christian practice. I went to "Word" churches, charismatic churches, I even spent a goodly amount of time in Eastern Orthodox churches before God said: "It's time to go home, my son"...and I returned to the Traditional Anglican Church.

I am curretnly the Vicar of St. Barnabas the Apostle Anglican Church, and the Canon Missioner for the Diocese of the West of the Anglican Church in America. I got to celebrate the Easter Sunday Solemn High Mass at St. Mary's this year (photo below - taken by Adam Lamar, my parishioner and also a member of the Aleuminati)

Yeah...we're pretty Catholic!

As for my love for beer...it's a family affair. My maternal grandmother helped make ends meet in the 1930's by making her famous homebrew. Family gatherings were spent drinking from a communal wooden mug (of giant proportions) and - if someone refused to take a sip - my grandfather never quite trusted them after that. Beer was almost a "sacrament" in our family. (P.S. I used to help Mom (that's what we called my grandma) bottle when I was a wee lad - but I never liked her brew...too sweet. She had a batch explode in the bottles one year because of too much priming sugar...the only time I ever heard that saintly woman cuss!!)

I did the typical "beer abuse" in college as a fraternity guy (I'm a proud Sigma Chi)...drinking whatever was on sale or leftover in the keg. But I always had a geeky-side and enjoyed the rare Belgian or Watney's Red Barrel when I could find it (I played darts for years...mostly in pubs with an "English" flavor)

I love Christ, I love beer, and I think there is no contradiction there. I often think of enjoying a fine Porter with Our Lord in heaven.

I never liked the old fraternity drinking song: "In heaven there is no beer, that's why we drink it here!"

'Cause if there's no beer in heaven...I don't wanna go.

(The Rev. Canon) Fr. Scott Kingsbury
Pasadena, California

[Scott E. Kingsbury]

Oh...and to the best of my knowledge, I am of no relation to the Kingsbury Brewing Company. They were from Manitowoc, Wisconsin - and, as a matter of fact, there were no "Kingsburys" there - it was just a cool name they chose. The original owners were actually German (and probably good Lutherans) - named Kunz & Bleser ! Ja!

[Ken Howes]

To me the best beer drinking experience in the US has been at the Northampton Brewery, Northampton, MA. It's a tiny brewery--you can actually see them brewing the beer while you sit at the bar. They keep a steady stock of about four of their best-selling brews, and at any given time have about six or seven others on a rotating basis. Their amber lager and the dark "Old Brown Dog" are my favorites there. They have one called the "Redheaded Stepchild", a red ale with a bit of a bite to it. The porter is also good.

Over in Deutschland, there was nothing else quite like Urkulm, the dark beer from Kulmbacher Reichelbräu. EKU Rubin, another dark beer from Kulmbach, was also awesome. I liked the Munich beers, but you could find all sorts of good stuff all over Bavaria. The beers around Passau were unusually sweet without being heavy. The Diocese of Regensburg had two beers, a light called "DomSpatz" and a dark beer originally brewed at the monastery at Weltenburg but now brewed commercially. To the best of my knowledge, the last beer still actually brewed at a monastery in Germany is at Kloster Andechs, a little south of Munich..