Life Through a Sparkler January 18, 2011

House of Trembling Madness Illustration by Rebecca Wright

I’ve lived in Yorkshire now for nearly two months, living in three different cottages and one hotel room.  My nomad ways are over (for a time) and I find myself in a little cottage (“Moonlight Cottage” it’s called on the door, in that affectionate way the British have of naming their houses) in a little village a few miles outside of York.

It’s the kind of place where people win prizes for floral arrangements and making elderberry wine.

Though I may not win any awards, I have begun a little private brewery in the Moonlight Cottage– the first batch is bubbling in the fermenter as I write, an American Pale Ale brewed on the Cold Moon from partial extract, steeped with Crystal malt and Northern Brewer bittering hops and lots of Cascade for aroma.  I’ll be dry hopping this batch with more Cascade or Amarillo hops– I have yet to decide.

In the two months of Northern living I’ve drunk many a beer from a sparkler, which is a particularly Northern way of serving cask ale.  It is a method of delivery that produces a denser head and a mouth-feel that is creamier, at least initially.  I like it, or maybe I just like the beer up here that seems to echo the laid back understatement and love of place– predominant Northern qualities, if I can generalize.

I’ve had some cracking pints, which must be fuel for a future post.  The House of Trembling Madness, a medieval drinking hall specialising in Belgian beers, has become my new York local.  Oh how I love it’s cozy strangeness.  But there are no handpulls– no cask ale.  Mr. Malting made the mistake of asking the guy behind the bar if they had any “real ale” on, and he returned with a perfectly straight face, “What do you mean by real?” Which just made me like the place more.  And in the Shambles there is Pivni, which always sets my heart racing as I peer in at the taps.  It was there I tried BrewDog’s There is No Santa, the standout Christmas beer (and I tried quite a few this year)– with its velvety-nugmeg-dark-comfort– unforgettable!

The other unforgettable pint was of the omnipresent Black Sheep Bitter.  Yes, it’s everywhere here, and I was loathe to try it as the pints I’d had in London were just not that great, but I found myself snowed in in the village of Hutton-le-Hole on the moors during the beginnings of the brutal winter snows.  The Crown pub had been closed due to the snowy roads but somehow on this night the landlord made it in, and this was the beer they had.  There were just a few of us there but he’d stoked a roaring fire and if that wasn’t the most beautiful pint of bitter I’d ever had, I’d be lying.  And I had two more, something I almost never do.  I commented that the beer was so much better than the Black Sheep I’d had in London and someone called out, “It don’t travel well!”

On that night, tucked up near the fire, all the moors coated in fondant and sparkling in the moonlight, I thought, “and why should it?”

The Alembic of Destiny September 25, 2010

So, sometimes things change, just like that.

I didn’t go on the mega-North-pub-crawl, despite everyone’s wonderful suggestions (though I should say the Brewery Tap in Chester, serving Spitting Feathers beers was fantastic.).  Our visiting the North West was totally consumed with hiking.

I went on the 38 pub crawl with some great ale hounds from the Randomness Guide to London.  I took notes but have failed to write them up due to our approach which saw us visiting all pubs on the route, condemning us to endless halves of Guinness.  It just proved how many really dire pubs there are serving the same 5 generic beers.

Now, Mr. Malting and I are sitting in the chaos of our tiny London flat amidst half-filled moving boxes, opening the bottle of BrewDog Abstrakt 01 which James kindly sent to me six months ago.  I probably should have aged this for another six months but we had something to celebrate.

Mr. Malting has been offered a job in North Yorkshire and so we are moving, and not just leaving London as we have wanted to do for some time, but moving to a part of the UK that has captivated me since I first visited over a decade ago. (And the beer up there…Maud help me…!)  I’m in a dream-haze about it; I didn’t think our escape would be so soon and precisely hopeful.

So, on to the beer– the color of dark, baltic amber– I should really let mine settle a bit as the yeast is floating around but this flavour is quite mellow for a Belgian, and a quad to boot.  I’ve never had a quad so I have little to compare it to, but I have had a triple or two and this beer shares that fruit-wine character of a triple, yet it’s a bit brighter and the fruits are fresher.  There’s almost a berry jam note here and perhaps some tropical fruits as well.  This is vanilla infused but I can’t detect the vanilla, that’s probably due to my difficulty picking up that note in beers in general rather than the beer itself.  There’s a subtle honey nose.  Mr. Malting says it reminds him of a kind of liquor.  I get the faintest horse blanket finish on this– the only aspect that I could say with confidence reminds me of a Belgian ale, and is something I associate with some Belgian yeasts.

I feel a tad guilty drinking this so soon, but we had to toast our continuing adventure in this fair island, and as I look back on everything that has made me feel at home here and has fascinated me I have to say BrewDog has played a key role in all that and it’s only fitting.  Here’s to a new chapter!

Oh Yeah! March 12, 2009

The other day my friend Liza came over and rearranged the living room of my flat in hopes that some impromptu feng shui would bring back my writerly mojo.

We surveyed the new desk-by-window set up and saw that it was good.  So we rested.  And by resting I mean we cracked open the Cantillon Kriek from my stash, in partial solidarity (and a tinge of jealousy) with the Beer Nut who just returned from visiting the brewery on an open brew day there.

When I drink Cantillon I feel like I’m inside some crazy beer time machine.  Ancient fermentation!  The mysteries of wild yeast! Arcane blendings!

I will never not be in the mood for this beer which makes me feel just sophisticated enough but also earthy, like a rosy cheeked clog dancer in a Breugel painting.  We ate it with some cave-aged gruyere and too many olives, and our tasting notes consist of only Did kool aid have a red sour patch flavor? and, more tipsily, Hey Kool Aid! Bustin’ through your wattle and daub in his ceramic pitcher.  yo.

(for non-Americans or the very young/old who are unfamiliar with the wrecking ball aspect of Kool Aid, here is a video)

Wild Gift October 20, 2008

Me drinking gueuze in A la Morte Subite

Last week I went to Brussels on the Eurostar.  I stayed in a swanky five star hotel and drank myself silly.  After being unemployed for so long it’s hard for me to really take the apocalyptic money talk of the banking crisis seriously.  I have so little to lose I might as well spend it.  On beer.

Beer has become an excuse for me to have adventures.  The best beer is of a place: a way to literally drink in wherever you find yourself.

Before going to Brussels the only Belgian beers I’d tried were the kind you can get in those aspirational gastropubs in London that serve Hoegaarden, Leffe and Fruli. Based on my sampling of these I thought I wouldn’t really like Belgian beer and would have to stick with Chimay, or maybe Orval which I’d had in bottles.

Boak was good enough to share with me a last-minute list of recommendations, which I elaborate on here.  One especially became a haunt of mine.  A la Morte Subite or “Sudden Death” is a cafe with its own range of beers named after a card game that bank employees who drank there would play. I fell in love with their gueuze which was extremely tart with an almost vinegar pucker. It is the most sour beer I’ve ever had. I exclaimed to the waiter who seemed a bit worried that I had ordered the “difficult” beer, “This is amazing!” He winked, “There’s more if you want.”  I liked this place.

I also thought their lambic was impressive– it had a creamier mouthfeel with a white peach overtone.  While there were a handful of tourists here at any one time, most of the people seemed to be locals, passionately engaged in conversations I couldn’t understand.  The faro and kriek were also quite good if a bit too sweet for me.

Another stand-out beer was the Girardin Kriek which I had at a lovely cafe called Het Warm Water.  This place served creative dishes that were light and flavorful.  The kriek I later found out was made with frozen cherries but this didn’t seem to matter as it was delish. It had a buttered popcorn and myrrh nose, redolent of the decadent, foodie perfumes from Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab.  The cherry was a halo-presence with the lambic’s grain-wine flavor taking prominence. The tang was upfront, with a light butter-caramel finish above the sourness.

Vintage bottles at the Cantillon Brewery

The most remarkable beer of the trip came from the Cantillon Brewery, which is a working museum.  There is a self-paced tour which is punctuated by a sampling of the different beers made there, and a very knowledgeable woman was able to answer all our questions and suggest other places in Brussels which had stand-out beer.  I was charmed by the plentiful spiders and webs in the brewery which are a natural way for the brewery to keep the insect problem in check.  Also, the attic-like room with a large copper bath where the wild yeast innoculation takes place had the feeling of a chapel or sanctuary.

There was a small crowd in the tasting area: an American guy with an Obama hat, a French couple and group of Irishmen all sipping contempatively– this was more like a wine tasting.  Some people were wincing and frowning, and with good reason– this beer is intense. The gueuze had a musty, animal fur nose, with a hint of wood. It was extremely acidic, but unlike the other gueuzes I’d tried, I could taste the hops in this which added to its perfect dry finish.

The kriek brought back an olfactory memory– my mother giving me a permanent wave as a pre-teen.  Though this brew was candy-colored, all the sugar had been fermented out leaving only a kind of “attar of cherry”– the essence without the sweetness. A dutch couple gave us their faro to sample and we didn’t care for it.  There was a note of vegetal rot that was hard to get past. The lambic was pefectly flat and oily, like a grain wine– I said how wonderful it would be with cheese so the woman at the brewery recommended we go to Moeder Lambic.

Chez Moeder Lambic

Chez Moeder Lambic is beer heaven.  They have several interesting beers on tap in rotation and hundreds of bottled beers to try. I tried the Cervesia, which was made in the “old way” with herbs instead of hops.  It reminded me of a lighter, sweeter verson of Froach.  The friendly owner and server were happy to go out of their way and recommend beers and locally crafted cheese to go with them.

beer and cheese at Chez Moeder Lambic

Across from us, a table of guys ordered Jupiler, a beer that was as common as Stella Artois (I assumed it was lager-like and didn’t try it.) Moeder Lambic didn’t have this beer so the bartender recommended another and when one of them tried it he actually shivered and shook his head. This really isn’t the place to have, in British terminology, a “session” drinking something “quaffable.”  Though I am sure there are some easier beers at this place, I wasn’t interested in them.

If you do find yourself getting tipsy the only food you can get here is cheese.  And what amazing cheeses they had!  The cheese was served with barley and fresh bread and the one we ordered had been, in the words of the waiter, “Showered in beer”.  As we drank round after round the cheese warmed and our corner of the cafe was filled with the ripe, earthy smell.   The standout beer for me was the Oude Kriek, almost black in colour, this Lambic was blended with fresh cherries by a one-man operation– Karel Goddeau. The bottle was dusty from being aged and we laughed at how we must have looked to the locals drinking– two Americans taking notes and photos and drinking dusty beer. But it was some of the most beautiful beer I’d ever had– so far away from any modern notion of “beer” that to drink it was to feel transported to a time when beer was a miraculous gift of something wild and mysterious visiting from the air.

Detail of a Bruegel Painting

The Fish Note October 7, 2008

Mrowster drunk on Zappa.

On Saturday 4 October 2008, the founders of two world-class blogs – Pig State Recon and Impy Malting- met up to exchange thoughts, question assumptions, and simply bask in the formidable glow of Frank Zappa, his well-respected We’re Only In It For the Money LP from 1968, and a limited-edition, Belgian style triple ale (8.2% ABV) brewed by the Laginuta Brewing Co. to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the album’s release. And bask we did – after dropping the needle on the, er, illegally downloaded MP3s and capping the bottle which had been graciously smuggled from the wilds of Nerdi Gras (aka Dragon Con) by our dearest friend and kick-ass mezzo soprano, Liza. Here’s how it played out:

———-
I: So basically this record is about getting crabs? He’s mentioned them three times already. Is this Sgt. Pepper’s derivative?

M: Yeah, same year or thereabouts. It’s a satire. A lampoon. A political cartoon of a record. I never read those cartoons. I’d rather read Andy Capp. Have you ever met a funny Zappa fan?

I: They’re always overly-intellectual eggheads. Was that a Beatles’ reference? I think that one was referencing “When I’m 64”.

M: There’s like 15 people playing on this record, but it’s all about Frank. You can see him, smell him everywhere. I don’t believe people into heavy drugs were into this. Sure, maybe people smoked pot and giggled to it, but dropping acid to this? No way.

I: So all I know about Triples is the water goes through the mash tun three times, and that it’s strong. And Belgian. I have no idea if this is authentic to the style. I mean, it’s orange. Kinda sour.

photo by Dr000 on flickr, creative commons license.

M: My stomach itches. That song “Hot Poop” was more like a lifeless turd.

I: There’s a lively carbonation. Kind of a dog-food nose, but I’m not making up my mind yet. Cumquats, or apricots. Suddenly, I wish it was colder so it would taste less

M: Ooh – wow – It’s kind of like that taste in your mouth when you wake up in the morning. Zappa was always going on about how he was “influenced by Stockhausen”.

I: Who’s Stockhausen?

M: Just like this modern composition guy. This record is not beautiful or even emotionally complex.

I: It’s munchkin rock. Do you think we should have aged it?

M: The record is already 40 years old, I don’t it’s gonna ever sound any better.

I: I can’t get past the smell.

M: It’s really tough going. Is there anything about this beer that speaks of Zappa?

I: The colour – I mean, it’s bright orange. It looks like Fanta or something.

M: I don’t know if we can even get through it: 1 pt., 6 oz. and a double album.

I: Wait – it’s a double album?

M: [checks the stream] Sorry, false alarm. It’s only one album.

I: I wish we were listening Digital Underground instead. Their “No Nose Job” beats this “What’s the Ugliest Part of Your Body?” song in every way. Was that a Jesus Christ Superstar reference I just heard?

M: This predates Jesus Christ Superstar. If this is Zappa’s crowning achievement . . . my god. This is completely not what I was expecting from the beer or the man. Man.

I: Did you get the fish note just then?

M: The fish-juice note! Clearly Zappa put a lot of time into this.

I: I guess, but it seems pretty arbitrary to me.

M: I’m just saying there’s a lot going on on this record. It’s just not pleasurable to go into, nor is this beer. Oh man.

I: Did you just get the fish note again?

M: I got the fish note again. Is there anything good we can say about this? I’ve tried to say it’s complex.

I: All I can think about is how he got from this to “Valley Girl”. Should we write the post now?

M: We’ve got to finish the beer first. At least it’s getting easier because of the alcohol content.

I: The beer leaves a kind of nice flavor on my lips. Like Sweet Tarts.

M: You always hope there’s some hidden beauty in Zappa, because everyone says it’s great.

I: Dweezil is kind of cute. Zappa made him. I saw him on Letterman once. Ok, I don’t know if I can finish this.

M: We can change to another Zappa record. But wait, I don’t have another Zappa record. I have some Beefheart though . . .

1 pint, 6 oz. of 8.2%

If I could be for just one little hour… June 10, 2008

Some days I dream of escaping London for a bit. Lately I’ve been dreaming of Brussels, a place I have yet to visit. I bought a bottle of Chimay Blue weeks ago and have been saving it for a day like today. (OK, beer pedants– I know Chimay is not brewed in Brussels, but it is Belgian.)

London doesn’t do well in the summer– its broad, grey shoulders look blanched in the sun and can only really seduce when rain-wet. Air conditioning is almost non-existent here, and the city floods with tourists, making it hotter, slower, uglier. What’s a native to do but dream of invading someone else’s city?

(Not to mention I had a miserable day dealing with arrogant, Apple/Mac-cultists at the Regent Street “genius” bar– whoever thought labeling customer service reps “geniuses” was an idiot, but I find myself in one of those I need a drink moments.)

I’ve always shied away from Belgian beers– seeing them as the yuppie choice here in London. So many lovely pubs here eschew British real ale for Belgian brews for which they can charge dearly. I tried Leffe and it left me cold, and Hoegaarden couldn’t charm me either– maybe I needed to pair the right food with it? I lost patience with the precious endeavor. That is until today.

I decided today was a good day to dream with my Trappist aid. The 9% seems to say: GOD(ess) WANTS US TO BE HAPPY. I’d found a Chimay-ready chalice at a charity shop a few days before, and it looked grand in it– amber and cloudy with an optimistic, beige head. It tasted of a dark mysterious fruit, the juice of something Edenic and forbidden. The dominant flavour was alcohol, or maybe that is what I most needed to taste at that moment. Prunes with a sour taste that’s unlike citrus- it is it’s own flavour and it’s delightful. I wished I had a some frieten— comfort food! But as the heady 9% hit me I decided it was time to book that Eurostar ticket.

Eats: yeast pate on seeded bread

While listening to: Jaques Brel– Jackie