Dear Kid,

Many college students think they know all there is to know about beer (drink it). Many parents of college students think they know all there is to know about the cost of beer (82% of the kid’s food budget).

While both of these may be true for actual college kids, it is far from accurate in the World of Beer as I had the great fortune to learn this past weekend.

Huge thank you to Best Friend Errand Service for inviting me to help set up for the Samuel Adams employee Oktoberfest event. And huge, HUGE thank you to the Samuel Adams folks for showing us around and letting me see things that aren’t usually on the “you’re here to get this place set up” tour.

Samuel Adams’ Utopias® is a blend of batches in which the barrels become “an integral part of the brewing and aging process.” It’s an uncarbonated dark beer (did you even know there was such a thing as uncarbonated beer? I did not) so you can drink a wee bit and close the bottle back up for another time.

Utopias is not for the poor college student as a single bottle (complete with its very own limited edition number) will run you several hundred dollars. If you can get one. Which is not at all obvious because of the “limited” part of limited edition (they made less than 15,000 bottles in the last production year).

Not only is it rare and expensive, there are 13 states where you can’t even buy Utopias because the alcohol content exceeds the legal limit for beer. Yes, Ohio is one of the states where it is verboten.

Now you know.

Love, Mom