In all of the English language is there a more pleasantly elastic phrase than these three simple words: “a few beers”? I doubt it. Drawing on approximately sixty-five years of beer drinking experience (having recently turned seventy-eight), I have used “a few beers” to mean anything from three beers to thirty, depending on whether I was spending a truncated happy hour with a few casual colleagues or was settling into an all-day riverside picnic on a perfect summer day at the old Washington Canoe Club, with plenty of good food and good friends accompanying the beer. Whether three or thirty, the beers have generally gone down well.
