I am setting off to the States and I intend to be everywhere.

Chicago first, Friday through Sunday: West Lakeview Liquors, the Map Room, Hopleaf, Piece. Then to Munster, Indiana, via Flossmoor. After that home, or the version of home that is San Francisco, with Berkeley and Walnut Creek until the end of the month, plus Antioch for Schooners and Valley, and 21st Amendment, Russian River and Bear Republic. As one does on a simple holiday.

I will carry beer from Illinois and Indiana across to California, and I am bringing a bag of oddities from the UK and Belgium in the other direction.

I planned all of this at half past three in the morning. I left two hours later. Gatwick to Cincinnati to Chicago to San Francisco to New York and back to Gatwick. What am I doing.

The journey itself was an education in low expectations. A three-pound pint of Bishop’s Finger at Gatwick, about which I will say only that it was not as bad as it could have been. Then a cold can of Bud on the plane, purely for the sake of it, which did an excellent job of putting me to sleep. A six-dollar Sam Adams Summer in a bar in Kentucky, then back to the gate and unconscious again.

Avis made a mess of the car rental, which worked out entirely in my favour. I now have a rather nice little sports car for a few days. Expensive, but I am not going to pretend I am upset about it.

First stop was Big Rock brewing at Ramms, where the red IPA and the porter were fine without troubling anybody. The IPA was the better of the two and, at that point, the best beer of the trip, which was not a high bar.

Then the trip turned. I went to a local rib joint with eighty taps on the wall. Three Floyds Alpha King, a 60 Minute, a 90 Minute, and an older raspberry beer to finish. The ribs were good too, but the taps were the point. Eighty of them, in a rib joint, in the suburbs, treated as completely unremarkable by everyone else in the room. That is the thing that is hardest to explain to people at home. It is not that America has better beer. It is that good beer has stopped being an occasion there.

Today I am heading into town to meet Kristina and Devon at West Lakeview Liquors, then Piece for pizza, then either Goose Island or back out to the suburbs. Sunday I am aiming west toward Michigan, Three Floyds and Flossmoor, and Bell’s and New Holland if I can make the distances work.

Then O’Hare to Oakland on Tuesday afternoon via Salt Lake City. Toronado on Wednesday evening, 21st Amendment for lunch, City Beer, then out to Concord for EJ Phair and MoreBeer, and probably Antioch for Schooners. Friday is Buffalo Bill’s, the Barber Shop and Pacific Bay. Saturday, Russian River and Bear Republic. Valley later on. I want to get to the Alembic and the Trappist if there is any time left, which there will not be.

I leave the Bay Area on the thirtieth for one night in New York, where it will be Barcade and the Spuyten Duyvil, and then home to Blighty.

Matt, Dave, Mike, Steve, Steve, Rodger, Claudia, I hope to see you all somewhere in the middle of this. Insane.

yeah, that reads, well the whole piece has the energy of someone who planned a two-week beer trip at 3:30am and is writing it up from the road before the adrenaline wears off, coz it was.