You want to drink good beer? Fine. Time for some palate expansion.
    One of the best parts of drinking craft beer is experiencing the nigh-unlimited number of flavors that can be culled from basic beer ingredients. But some of these elements can prove overwhelming and off-putting to a recent convert from the mass-produced swill.
    After all, years of exposure to advertisements telling you beer should be “clean” and “never-filling” and “never bitter” leave you sadly misinformed as to the true soul of a good bottle of brew.
    Craft beers are filling. They often are bitter. And I have no friggin' clue how something tastes “clean.” Unless, to paraphrase Mitch Hedberg, you’re drinking cleaning fluid, which I bet tastes incredibly clean.
    You’ve got to get ready for these brews. You need to know what you’re getting yourself into as you browse the part of the beer store where the cool kids shop. So here are four beers to help prep your unproven palate:
 

   Sierra Nevada Pale Ale: Yep, ol’ Greenskin drops you right into the middle of craft central. Sierra Nevada’s flagship beer is a regular occurrence at many stores and bars, and exposes you to the ingredient that causes the most uproar amongst beer drinkers — hops.
    Sierra Nevada Pale Ale features a prolonged, dry, piney finish (fancy beer lingo for the beer’s flavor during the swallow and aftertaste.)  This bitter rear end to the brew is caused by the strong use of Cascade hops in brewing the beer, and has smashed the dreams of many a wannabe good beer drinker.
    But, in perhaps the most important rule of drinking beer, You Gotta Learn To Deal With Bitterness. Opening yourself up to the complexity of flavor means that occasionally you're required to adapt to something you’ve never liked before. And bitterness marks one of these occasions.
    A beer’s bitterness offsets the malting; it creates a balance to the sweetness brought forth from the malt.  In Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, the tongue-searing dryness comes on strong, but, as your taste buds adjust to the hop oils now invading them, the subtle caramel and biscuit flavors of the malt become apparent.
    You’re starting to like the beer, and find yourself actually pondering the beverage you’re drinking. Ahh, budding beer snobbery is a wonderful thing.

    Sweetwater IPA: IPA stands for India Pale Ale, a style of beer that revels in massive orgies of hops. The IPA has been largely responsible for the attention now given to the American craft brewing scene.
    Though it originates in England, American brewers have claimed the style as their own, turning it into a showcase of the wonders of the hop. And an Atlanta brewery makes one of the best entryways into the style.
    For me, Sweetwater IPA redefined how a beer could taste. After overcoming my initial fear of hops, I found myself entranced by the huge citrus rush that weaves throughout the taste of Sweetwater IPA.
    No, there’s no orange peel or lemon zest of grapefruit juice used in the brewing process. That delicious swath of citric goodness comes entirely from the easygoing malt and the wondrous Simcoe hop.
    Once again, you find yourself dealing with bitterness while drinking Sweetwater IPA, but you’re not noticing the dry bite quite as much. Maybe there’s something to this “hop” thing.

    The Duck-Rabbit Brown Ale: For many a year, Brown Ale meant one beer and one beer only: Newcastle, that funky, fruity, pungent dark English ale in the clear bottle. Which, of course, was kind of like judging the expansive wonder of the United States after only visiting Toledo. I was kind of missing the point.    The Duck-Rabbit Brown Ale rectified this situation. This brown ale hatchets your tongue with merciless hops, then pieces everything back together with a roasty, chocolate-and-caramel-conjuring malt backbone.
    Be warned, however. This beer is not for the squeamish;. The bitterness involved here is both assertive and prolonged. But such an assault upon your taste buds is worth enduring, just to get the sweet, warm, unmistakably Brown finish to the beer.
    Plus you’ll find yourself supporting another Southern brewery; The Duck-Rabbit calls Farmville, North Carolina home.

    Founders Porter: Oh, how I love Founders Porter, my ultimate go-to beer. This twelve-ounce bottle of black, roasty bliss may very well be my interpretation of the perfect pint. Not too potent, not too thick, and unfathomably delicious, this marvel from Michigan possesses all that is good with dark beer. Founders Porter is the one brew that always drives me to hyperbole.
     Porters make for a confusing style — they cavort intimately with the Stout, forever blurring stylistic boundaries that may or may not actually exist.
    And Founders Porter does nothing to help this confusion. Its deep, rich, chocolate-and-coffee heart would be just as welcome in a great stout. But, titles aside, Founders Porter provides the perfect solution to those whose tastes for dark beer are mired in cans of Guinness Draught. The flavors only hinted at in the world’s most popular stout are on full display in Founders Porter.
    Granted, more than two bottles at one sitting can make you feel like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, but this just serves to bring up another important beer rule: Quality Over Quantity.
    A lot of really good beer is really high in alcohol. And a lot of really good beer is really high in calories. Which means that the days of equating beer drinking with putting back a twelver in three hours flat must come to an end.
    This rule doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy the side effects of tasting good beer; it means you should know that twelve ounces of the Great American Lager is not equal to twelve ounces of a Porter, either in its effects on your waistline or your equilibrium.
    There you have it. Four beers to give you a starting point in craft beer. But know these examples are just that: a starting point.
    They represent a tiny fraction of the multitude of styles and tastes to be found in the world of good beer. Open your mind. Expand your taste buds. And ban the bomb.