“He is the life of parties he’s never attended. His business card simply says 'I'll call you.'” The “Most Interesting Man In The World” commercials get me every time. Do you know what the two X’s in the Dos Equis name signify? Unlike the “33” on bottles from Old Latrobe, this one actually has an answer. XX was first brewed in 1900 by a German émigré to Mexico named Wilhelm Haase, and named “Siglo XX”, or “Twentieth Century” to commemorate the dawn of a new era. Concise and easily recognizable, the brand name has survived 111 years. Pacifico remains my personal favorite Mexican beer but, like the big building with patients, that’s not important right now.

Shall we? 

I was talking to a friend of mine recently, and asked him how he made his decisions on which beer to drink. “Whichever one is closest,” he said. Wit aside, there’s enlightenment to be found in those words. Most people will just drink whichever beer is available to them, so let’s take a look at some brews that are easy to find, but just far enough out of the main stream to be interesting.

Just about everyone who has ever been to an Indian restaurant has had Kingfisher beer as a choice. This and Cobra seem to be the Bud and Miller of the subcontinent, as far as I can tell.

Have you ever noticed that most people think music radio is terrible? iPods, Pandora, LastFM and SiriusXM have pretty much taken over the listening landscape. Listen to one station for more than a few hours, and you’ll start to hear the same songs over and over again. Multiply these hours by days and weeks and the audience becomes absolutely stultified. It’s the same with beer. We need variety to keep ourselves involved in what we consume, and this column is all about variety’s special spice. As such, we’re going to take a three-stop trip across the country this week to expand our horizons.

We’ll travel with the Sun and start on the East coast, specifically Ipswich, Mass., where we’ll find Mercury Brewing and Distribution Company

Here and now, in the some of the shortest days of the year, life could use a little brightening up. This is an instinctual thing with people. We light candle displays, light our homes, and celebrate the low tide of winter having passed, and the return of longer, better days ahead. But it’s still dark. So the brightness in our spirits gets helped along with stronger, winter brews. That’s our theme today.

I always look forward to the old ales, barley wines and especially porters that come out in the late fall and winter. Otter Creek Stovepipe Porter from Vermont is one of my absolute favorites, but Southampton Imperial Porter is a new one (to me) to which I'm giving pretty high marks.

Hello, and welcome to Friday Froth: the weekly beer column designed to tempt, inform, and share the joy I find in discovering great brews. A quick introduction:

There are limitless possibilities to beer. By that, I mean not just different styles like lagers, ales, stouts and barley wines (very much a winter beer, btw), but all the variations possible within those styles. Budweiser's a lager, but comparing it to Brooklyn lager is like comparing me to Lebron James because we're both human males. This column is identical in theme to the rest of CTbites, i.e., "Here are some new flavors, aromas and sensations you may like to try."