Westy’s & Beer
Holly & Mark - Cheers!
Before we talk about one of our favorite subjects, beer, here is a quick update from last week. The men’s and women’s lacrosse teams squashed the squids last Saturday to give Army the Star Series victory over Navy, 14-12! It was the first time Army has won the series since the 2013-14 season and how sweet it was. It made for a great weekend of celebration with some cold beers in hand! Which is a great segue to our blog topic of the week.
It has been said that beer is the nectar of the gods. You may be familiar with another famous quote about beer: “Fill it up again! Once it hits your lips, it is so good!” Frank the Tank, “Old School.” Much has been said about beer, both good and bad; but one thing is for certain, beer has been embedded in cultures around the globe for hundreds of years. That is a fact that will never change.
Holly and Mark have been beer lovers since our dads first handed a beer bottle to us as kids because we were looking at them funny and said, “do you want to take a sip?” The sip turned into a chug, and before you knew it, our dads were grabbing the bottles away from us.
Our love for beer was one of the many reasons we were attracted to each other when we started dating. Mark thought, “Awesome! I have a girlfriend who loves beer! That is cool.” Holly was like, “I can drink beer all day with this lightweight😊.” Some of our favorite dates were (and still are) going to bars and restaurants that advertise multiple beers so we can sample them.
After graduating from West Point, the beer gods smiled down on us when we found out our first duty station was Germany, the motherland of beer! For three years, we drank every kind of beer imaginable. Holly typically went with the local pilsners, while Mark favored the hefeweizens. Our favorite all-time beer was brewed by monks in a monastery known as the Kreuzberg near Wildflecken. In 1987, Playboy magazine ranked it as the 3rd best beer in the world (the monks had the framed article hanging on a wall to prove it)! It was so good that Holly and Mark brought a small keg of it back to New York for our wedding party to drink during Happy Hour prior to our rehearsal, which ended up being a lot of fun to say the least. The downside to German beer was that we returned to the states with a big, fat, beer-face, but it was worth it!
Fast-forward thirty years and you will still find Holly and Mark drinking beer on every occasion. We also happen to have four beers on tap at our house. Plus, we are extremely lucky to have friends who enjoy drinking beer with us. We drink light beer most of the time, but Mark grew fond of IPAs during COVID thanks to his sister-in-law, or should I say no thanks to her because the beer face is back! Holly’s all-time #1 beer is Coors Light, so you can bet your bottom dollar it will be on tap at Westy’s (and probably in bottles and cans, too)! In fact, our friends all know that Holly’s favorite beer is Coors Light, so that is a common birthday gift for her😊.
Hopefully, you have a better understanding of why we are opening Westy’s. Bottom Line - we love beer! That is not the only reason we are opening Westy’s BUT, when used responsibly, beer can bring people and communities together like nothing else. When you go into any bar, pub, or tavern in the world there will be one common theme – people raising a pint together to have fun, to tell stories, to cheer on their favorite teams, and to cheer one another up. THAT is why we are opening Westy’s. When Westy’s opens this summer, we want it to be that place for you. We want it to be the place where the craft known as beer – and all of the good that goes with it – meets you, the community.
It has been a wild and crazy journey so far to get to that grand opening date this summer, but, like our big, fat, beer-faces from Germany, it will be worth it! So, make plans to join us this summer at Westy’s – where craft meets community.
Cheers,
Mark & Holly
Owners | Westy’s
