Weyerbacher Merry Monks Bottle Becomes “Merry Me” Wedding Proposal

A great story from Weyerbacher:

A couple of years ago, my girlfriend Ashley and I went to Chatham, NJ, her hometown, to attend a wedding party for one of her friends.  We stayed with Ashley’s parents, which was significant because I had only met them once before and I wanted to make the best impression possible.  After getting in late on a Friday, Ashley and I went to the party in the middle of the day on Saturday – it was a very nice affair with a great spread and 3 kegs of high quality beer—one of those kegs was Weyerbacher Merry Monks.

At the time, I knew very little about craft beer and had never heard of Merry Monks.  In fact, I wasn’t even going to try it until one of the party organizers mentioned that they only had two taps and needed to finish off one of the kegs so they could start the third.  I decided to help out by downing a few cups of Merry Monks.

After the first sip, I remember thinking that I had never had a tastier beer.  The first cup went down so easily that I happily drank a second, and a third, and a fourth…

What nobody mentioned to me was that Merry Monks weighs-in at a solid 9.3% ABV.  After finishing off several cups in what seemed like record time, I was pretty much hammered.  In a bit of extremely unfortunate timing, it was at that point that Ashley’s mom came to give us a ride home.  Due to my cartoonish stumbling and incredibly slurred speech, it was pretty clear that I was done for the night.  So when we got home, I was plopped down on the couch, where I watched college football with Ashley’s dad and loudly predicted the results of each play until I fell asleep at around 9 PM.  

Fortunately for me, Ashley’s parents are really cool people and didn’t forbid her from seeing me again; I guess I must be a charming drunk.

Some people might have used that experience as a reason to avoid Merry Monks at all costs.  Ashley and I, on the other hand, made it our mission to frequent any place in Washington DC (where we live) that sold it.  We have made several trips to Weyerbacher’s Visitors Center, where we bought an old-school Merry Monks T-shirt, a tap handle and Ashley got the materials to construct a custom-made framed Merry Monks poster.  For Christmas last year, Ashley got me a kegerator, and there was no doubt what our first keg would be.  We even had the tap handle!  

As you may have noticed from this story, Ashley is insanely cool, and it was a no-brainer that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her.  On July 11, 2013, I proposed to Ashley in the same park where we had begun our relationship over 2 years earlier.  As luck would have it, she said yes.  When we went back to our place to celebrate, I told her that I had found a beer that both of us would really love, and asked for her to get it from the fridge.  

Earlier that day, I had attached a slightly revised label to a 750ml Merry Monks bottle.  Not noticing my revisions at first, she pulled the bottle out and said “Cool, Merry Monks!”  I told her to look closer, and she then noticed that the label actually read “Merry Me”.

She absolutely loved it.

We always keep a small arsenal of Weyerbacher beers in our fridge, and you can be sure Merry Monks will pour at our wedding – though the in-laws may keep me away from the keg this time!
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