Drinking beer in college usually equates drinking on a budget and prioritizing quantity over quality, and that’s understandable. We’re all trying to squeeze as much life as we can out of a twenty, but if you haven’t had a chance to try one of the Big Boss Brews yet, you are missing out on some of the best beer being brewed internationally. Lucky for you, the brewery is only a few miles down the road.

The Big Boss Brewing Company is one of the Triangle’s two local breweries and can be found on Wicker Drive, off of Atlantic Avenue right outside of downtown Raleigh.

I discovered my first pint of Big Boss Brew at Sadlack’s on Hillsborough Street a few months ago. Sadlack’s houses at least one Big Boss Brew on tap a week.

I haven’t been the same since my first sip of the Bad Penny Ale, the Big Boss Brewing Company’s signature brown ale. The rich, robust, bittersweet nuttiness evokes a thinner, smoother, less syrupy Guinness — which is, in my book, the perfect beer. The Bad Penny Ale is all flavor and no heft.

Brewing is an underappreciated art form. It’s a science of chemistry, like baking, and the gradients of temperature and spectrum of possible ingredients are boiled down, forgive the pun, to precision and accuracy.

Trust me when I say it is not easy.

Do-it-yourself brew kits can be found at Wal-Marts or Targets, or you can Google your town to see if there are any local homebrew stores. Raleigh actually has a very reputable store in American Brewmaster, off of Stonybrook Drive in Northwest Raleigh.

My roommate and I learned a lot about the brewing process from the guys who work there. Nevertheless, you learn even more when you try and fail at making your own beer.

The most important thing we learned was that beer is like any other perishable good. The further it has to travel, the more processing it has to endure for the product to maintain some resemblance of original quality and shelf life.

The commercial brands you buy at the store — Budweiser, Yeungling and Pabst Blue Ribbon — have all had to endure these preservation processes, and you can taste the stark differences by sampling keg beer as opposed to bottled beer. In bottled and canned beers, you sacrifice quality for convenience.

The Big Boss Brewing Company offers a solution to the inverse equation of distance and quality with a personal house bar.

Horniblows Tavern sits on the second floor of the brewery and is open every night of the week except for Sundays. At the bar, the beer that flows from the taps has only traveled as far as you have up the stairs. There they serve all their signature beers, the Bad Penny Ale, the Hell’s Belle (a Belgian blonde) and the Angry Angel (a Kolsch style Ale).

The Hell’s Belle is an invigorating awakening of a beer. You can taste the spice of the brew’s cloves in your skin. It’s the perfect beer to start off the night.

The Angry Angel reminds me of Miller Lite on tap, but much higher quality, and features a more complicated texture. Imagine it’s a warmer spring day, and the flowers have been sitting, baking in the sun all day. Imagine the rich, but sharp sweetness of the nectar in the air; that’s the Angry Angel. This sweetness is brewed into the beer light and dry, and its flavor makes it the ideal, easy to drink, conversational beer.

Aside from the signature brews, Horniblows usually offers up a Big Boss seasonal. Currently, the seasonal is the Surrender Monkey Farm House Ale. For a limited time, they are also offering the Tavern Ale, which was brewed from hops the brew masters grew right outside the doors of their own brewery last summer.

How rare is that? Locally grown and brewed.

The brewery has also started shipping out six packs to local grocery stores, and if you do visit Horniblows, you can purchase a jug of your favorite beer to take home.