Tee + Tee = ?

Teetotaling, if you're wondering.

We both are right now. Inki can't drink due to the pregnancy, of course, but I'm also not drinking for the duration out of marital solidarity. We both enjoy a good drink now and again, and if Inki can't have her appletini or her gin and tonic, I can't very well sit next to her on the sofa savoring two fingers of good bourbon, Scotch, or Irish. Not without getting a thumb and four fingers upside the head, at least....

In some ways I'm lucky to be here in Norway for this since they have a relatively wide selection of nonalcoholic beers. Having a BAC of 0.02 behind the wheel will get you an automatic month in jail here -- and your license revoked for at least six months -- so drivers need to have something they can drink too. Clausthaler is the usual choice, but it is pretty hoppy like most German pilseners (as a rule I prefer lagers) and when you remove the alcohol there's not much reason left to drink it. Ringnes makes a nonalcoholic brand called Munkholm which is better and less bitter, but they're also coming out with boutique beers. I've found two so far.
Münchener is a dark beer made with roasted hops, and is not bad. I've had two. They also have a label called "Munkholm Asia" which I have in the fridge but haven't gotten to yet. If you believe the label, it's supposed to be "easy drinking" and "inspired by Asiatic dry-beer" (whatever that is).

All this tasting reminds me of the scene in Fer-de-Lance where we first meet the great detective Nero Wolfe. The book is set during Prohibition and Wolfe has decided to give up his bootleg beer "if he could find a brand of the legal 3.2 that was potable." Wolfe is tasting each of these low-alcohol beers in turn. I'll let Archie tell it:

"He smacked his lips, tasting the fifth brand, and holding up the glass looked through the amber at the light. 'This is a pleasant surprise, Archie. I would not have believed it. That of course is the advantage of being a pessimist; a pessimist gets nothing but pleasant surprises, an optimist nothing but unpleasant. So far, none of this is sewage.'"