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Kevin,” said Joel.
    Kevin, I learned, was an old friend of theirs whose family history has been marked by early death; he is the last one standing. Kevin is convinced that, though only fifty, he will die early, too. “That’s why he drinks hard,” said Ian. “And whenever he gets on the subject, he says, I’m gonna miss you man. But when I die, just come bring a beer to my grave and have a beer with me.’”
    Ian stopped to sip his beer, then smiled. “I dunno—I think that’s pretty cool.”
    Jade laughed. She said, “What are we supposed to do? Pour it on his grave?”
    While beer and death is an intriguing subject, we moved on, mostly to beer talk and then to small talk. Beer joints are great places to pick up on local peculiarities. The Baumanns spent some time describing the difference between Minnesota and the neighboring Wisconsin when it comes to drunk driving laws. For example, they told me people have been arrested in Wisconsin for drunk driving while operating their riding lawnmowers (but not, to their knowledge, in Minnesota).
    A while later, we heard a whistle blow. Mike, the bartender, said it was a dinner train full of tourists that made a run from Stillwater and was probably returning to town. He suggested we all march up to the nearby tracks, line up, and moon the passengers.
    This got about six seconds of gleeful consideration but the prospects of being arrested for public lewdness didn’t seem a good way to begin my beer quest. And anyway, the Baumanns and Jade were anxious to take me on a Summit run. So I followed them into Stillwater, leaving the train and its tourists un-mooned. I sipped a very nice Summit Porter—roasty and smooth!—at a place called the Mad Capper. But music crunching from the bar’s sound system was so loud that it soon pounded me out the door, and I bid the Baumanns and Jade good night, and headed back to Minneapolis.
    Back at my hotel, I took out my road map and stabbed a finger at Wisconsin. It landed close enough to La Crosse for me to figure that was my next destination.

Beer, if drunk with moderation, softens the temper, cheers the spirit and promotes health.
    â€”T HOMAS J EFFERSON
CHAPTER 3
A Diversion to Consider the Beer Cure
    New York, N.Y. —A couple of months before I began my trip down the Mississippi, an odd invitation came in the mail from the National Beer Wholesalers Association (NBWA), the powerful trade group representing the nation’s 2,300 beer wholesalers. “Intellectual Brew,” the invite proclaimed, but the subtext was more scientific than intellectual. People were coming to speak at this event from places like Harvard, and the topic was “beer and health.”
    If this sounded like an oxymoron, I was assured it wasn’t. In fact, based on a little pre-reporting, I found out that people were apparently coming to say: Beer is good for you!
    â€œEat right, exercise and drink a beer a day may be the way to keep the doctor away,” an NBWA press release exclaimed.
    Red wine, I knew about. But beer?
    Yes, beer. The thesis was that beer was slowly bubbling to the top as a beverage that not only lifts spirits but coincidentally delivers statistically relevant protection against heart attack, stroke, hypertension, diabetes, and dementia. As someone facing long months of beer research, the dementia angle particularly interested me.
    And perchance anyone might worry that the event would be one of those droning recitations of statistically significant data, the NBWA, no slouch in the PR department, had organized a fun component as an inducement. We would all show up at Manhattan’s elegant Tribeca Grand Hotel where the hotel’s executive chef, John DeLucie, and Daniel Bradford, a certified beer expert, were to run through pairings of ten elegant dishes, all cooked with beer, and the proper beers to sip while dining on these delicacies. Bradford is a founder and