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Beer’s so much like sex, really, slippery, sticky, too much makes you crazy — waitaminute, that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about wanting beers. Let’s stick to the subject.

I talk to folks about beer a lot, it’s one of the pleasant parts of what I do. I get a chance to find out about new breweries and what the trends are, and I get a chance to do some education. One thing people are always talking about is how they can’t wait for X Beer to "make it here." Oftentimes, the beer in question is from a tiny brewery; almost always it is a beer that is strong, powerfully flavored, and expensive.

If you’re expecting me to go off on extreme beers here, sorry: I’ve done that. I like extreme beers, drink ’em myself. No, what’s putting a twist in my knickers is how people just go nuts for beers "from away."

You see it on the beer sites all the time, people stoked up about beers entering their area from far away. "The Bar With Too Many Taps is pouring [Pliny the Elder/120 Minute IPA/Furious] this weekend!" "Hey, Outrageous Beer Store just got in the state’s only 10 cases of The Stout With No Name; I bought four!" And it’s all giddy-up, run for the hills, let’s get them beers we’ve never had before!

I’m obviously not slow to try a new beer from away myself; in fact, I’m going to a Belgian draft debut tonight. But I try to keep it from being an obsession. When I’m not sampling beers "for work," I usually keep my region’s beers stocked for every day drinking. Probably you do the same, but the excitement is reserved for what you can’t always get…as Mick said.

I talked to a beer store manager I know who’s always been a voice of reason on the issue, George Bradley, at Westy’s, in Camp Hill, PA. George gets a lot of beers in, from all over. "I think it’s natural for everyone to have a bit of one-upsmanship in them," he said. "We want to have the best and most unique things. To be honest, I’m guilty as charged.

"But it’s almost as though some of the joy of drinking beer has been lost and more of thrill has shifted toward the chase of finding the next great beer that no one else knows about yet," he said. "There’s a developing thought process of, ‘If it is hard to get, it must be better.’"

Step back and take a reality check from George’s side of the equation. Here’s what getting those beers is like. "If you make 100 phone calls to perspective breweries, send out 100 e-mails, you will be lucky to hear back from two or three," George said wryly. "You will be lucky to have the liquid to do consistent, sustainable business with one."

That’s the buying end. Here’s what selling it to us is like. "Breweries that produce super-high end price point beer will have an easy time selling their beer once," he said, "but repeat business will be difficult as the attention span of the customer in that category is the shortest in the business."

"The customer in that category," of course, is you and me. We really want that beer!…until we get it, that is, and then we may want one six-pack more of it, if we actually like it. Then what we really want is the next beer!

"I believe that many drinkers in the craft category take a lot of great beers for granted simply because they’re readily available," George said, winding up.

Now, it’s true: George and I have it pretty great here in southeastern Pennsylvania. We’ve got Stoudt’s, Victory, Troegs, Weyerbacher, Dogfish Head, Clipper City, Flying Fish, Brooklyn, and a host of others right here in the region, and we’ve had a great import scene so long (I had my first Duvel here way back in 1982) that they’re practically like family.

But just about everyone has a good brewer in their region these days. The local beer scene is the one that’s going to be there for you every day. Your local/regional brewer is going to have the freshest beers for you, and be the most responsive. In these green days, "local" has a virtue all its own, too. There’s no need to belabor the whole carbon footprint/locavore issue, but as Ron Barchet at Victory once told me, "It costs a lot to ship glass and water. Just ship us the malt and hops, we’ll make the beer here."

When you see something new, okay, try it. But don’t go crazy jonesing for faraway beers. There’s a beer right next to you, just waiting to do you a powerful world of good. As another classic song from that era put it:

And if you can’t be with the one you love, honey, love the one you’re with.