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It’s Not Brew, It’s Me

May 16, 2013 · by Oliver Gray

(This piece was originally published by 20 Something Magazine, but I’m republishing it here in honor of ACBW)

Dearest Yuengling,

What has it been? Ten years? I remember the first time I saw you that summer, dancing in the sinking sunlight of that orange-stained evening. You were wearing nothing but your label and that brownish-gold bottle cap I adored so much. The fading rays of light refracted through the green of your glass as I held you high and to my lips. Our kisses were sweet, under-aged surrender; both of us willing, happy, just wanting to have fun.

It was love at first sip.

This last decade is a torrent of memories that I wish I could bottle and seal and store forever. You’ve done nothing but support me when life’s problems bubbled up. You were always there to comfort me during the hardest of times, pouring yourself into my soul and lifting me up like a lover and an old friend. I’ll never forget you or those tipsy Pennsylvania nights so long as I still have a thirst to quench.

And that’s what makes this so hard.

Yuengling, baby, I think it’s time I drink other beers.

I know that is hard to hear after all the pints we’ve shared, all the times we’ve stumbled drunkenly down the streets of DC towards home, but I feel it is the best thing for us both. I’ve given it a lot of thought and can’t keep seeing you, drinking you, or pretending I’m happy.

I’ve grown up so much since those millennial Julys; I’ve drunk deeply from the keg of life, smelled the intoxicating lupulin drifting from hop farms, and witnessed the beauty of beer being born in the depths of a mashtun. When I was a teenager you were new and wonderful – and you are still wonderful, in your own way – but I didn’t really know myself. I was just a kid who’d never seen the inside of a brewery, whose taste buds hadn’t matured, who was happy to be drinking any beer at all.

My adoration of beer in general has grown into a deep respect for the craft, the art, the science. I appreciate the rolling cascade of hops that are like citrus symphonies playing melody to my tongue and harmony to my nose. I’m looking for bold new conventions, and you’re the same old brown lager that your great-great-great Grandpa David Gottlob Jüngling was making back in 1829.

We’ve grown apart over the years. I changed. You didn’t.

I also have a confession to make. I haven’t been faithful. A few years ago, in a moment of weakness, I gave into my baser desires, my budding curiosity, and tasted the forbidden fruit of a Belgian lambic. As soon as those raspberry notes hit my tongue I was instantly changed. I flirted shamelessly with the blonde ales, kissed the effervescent lips of sweet browns, spent many long nights by the side of delicate reds. I felt like a beer-bachelor reborn, and filled my cup time and time again in a veritable orgy of new tastes and smells.

I didn’t mean to hurt you, smash your bottle and leave you broken on the floor. But I can’t pretend that we’re still living in those glory days of youth. I can’t untaste what has been tasted. I can’t pretend you’ll ever be so pure and delicious again.

If you see me at the liquor store, picking up a six pack of Dogfish Head 60 Minute or Troegs Hopback Amber please don’t get all weird. I expect you to find new men who love you for your sour-malt flavor and low price tag. I want that for you. I want you to be happy, not glaring at me from the cooler in the back while I walk out with some other beer on my arm. You need consistency, faithfulness, a one-beer kind of man, and I can’t give you that. My palette has been awakened to the full breadth of styles and flavors. I can never go back to only drinking brown lager. And that’s just not fair to you.

Please, don’t cry; I’ve seen how you sweat and how the tiniest bit of water ripples your label. Try to remember the good times. Like that night you and I hung out with Captain Morgan and ditched him with Jack Daniels at that terrible frat party. Remember that night? I carried you home across the girls’ soccer field because you were too drunk to walk. Or was that me? That was a night I’ll always remember, I think.

Even though I’m leaving, that’s what I want to hold on to. The love we shared and the twelve ounces of my soul you’ll always occupy. I may have grown up, but you’ll remain a part of what made me into a beer lover until some crazy brewer uses my mortal dust is used to make an especially potent batch of chocolate stout as per my last will and testament.

Anyway, Yuengs, I’ve rambled on enough. I’m going to take some time to really focus on my work and figure myself out. Maybe after we’ve spent some time apart and let the boiling wort of our feelings chill, we can get together over a drink, as friends.

Cheers,

-Oliver

Yet I should kill thee with much cherishing.
Good night, good night! parting is such
sweet sorrow,
That I shall say good night till it be morrow.

In Defense of the Alternative Beer Review

May 13, 2013 · by Oliver Gray

If you’ve been around for some of my Beer Fiction Fridays it’s not exactly breaking news worthy of auto-tune treatment that I don’t write traditional beer reviews. Sure, I’ve written quite a few nonfiction, more review-ish reviews, but even those tend to fall more on the side of narrative story than they do classic, “here’s what I think and why,” no-frills review.

An article from Focus on the Beer had me doing a Ctrl+F on my soul this weekend, delving deep in my psyche and emotional past for the reasons I write beer reviews at all. I think the obvious reasons are because I like beer and because I like to write. The rest just seems inconsequential, the unimportant details that seem to work themselves out without much extra thought.

But I’ve never been the type to actually read reviews of food and drink with an air of seriousness, never acted like the opinion of the critic or reviewer or dude in his basement somehow matters. I do often find my browser landing on Beer Advocate because, hey, checking out what the collective hive-mind thinks can be fun and a hands-on lesson in collective sociology. But I’m pretty sure I’ve never consciously recalled any of those reviews in the liquor store, saying to myself, “beerstud1991 only gave it a 2.63, no way I’m buying that junk.“ I can say with confidence that I’ve never let a beer’s “score” influence whether I’m going to purchase it or not.

Why?

Because taste is subjective. More so, I’d argue, than any other sense. We can pretty much agree (short of color interpretation) that we all see the same things. Aside from the thickness of different ear drums slightly adjusting incoming MHz, we all hear the same things. We can also agree that week-old cat litter smells bad and a freshly baked apple pie smells good. We can even agree that 300 thread count sheets are soft, 60 grit sand paper is rough, and a baby’s butt is the unequivocal standard unit of smoothness against which all other smoothness should be measured.

But taste has few standards; it is permeable, water soluble, in constant flux. Some people out there legitimately don’t like cupcakes. Others legitimately do like tripe. Every late-to-work scalding coffee burn, every jalapeno charged capsaicin rush, every chewing-too-fast-bit-the-side-of-your-tongue is part of the formula that always equals how you go about tasting, no matter what variables are added or changed. Your tongue, like a gross pink snake, sheds its skin and taste buds often, reacting to all kinds of things you put in your mouth, making it so you can’t even trust your own opinions over the course of your life.

And because taste is flawed, the classic beer review is flawed. Just because you liked a sextuple dry-hopped Imperial IPA, doesn’t mean everyone else will. Just because your palette isn’t as open to bitters and coffee malts, doesn’t mean that a coffee stout is bad. Reviews will always be biased and tainted by the reviewer’s in-born, unavoidable subjectivity and thus can’t logically be universally valid. There is no basis against which the goodness of a beer can be measured (although the BJCP is certainly trying to establish one) and as a result, what another person thinks about a beer will remain forever nebulous, floating in a foamy, lacey, off-white head of doubt.

I sound like I’m about to give up on the beer review. Far from it. Actually the opposite. The beer review is still a great thing, still has a place in our writing and beer worlds, but maybe not in the traditional Appearance+Smell+Taste+Mouthfeel form.

When you drink a beer, you’re doing a lot more than just putting some water, malt, hops, and alcohol into your body. You’re doing a lot more than just tasting a drink and reporting your findings. You’re becoming part of an ancient tradition that dates back ~10,000 years. You’re joining a enthusiastic community of like-minded brewers, maltsters, yeast-biologists, and hop-farmers who toil away to bring life to a beverage, a drink that has shaped and supported mankind’s rise to greatness like a pint glass supports an ale. You’re raising a glass to salute the infinite muse of alcohol, and sharing good times with your family and friends. Beer is more than the sum of its ingredients, it’s a glorious gateway, a cultural connection.

When you write a review, you’re telling the story of how you made that connection. You’re filling your reader’s head with the same warm, spinning buzz that filled yours, via a story or anecdote or worded snapshot of life. You’re not just telling them about the beer, you’re taking them with you on the experience you had drinking the beer. Write your reviews to show us the truth that was hard-brewed into the beer, the connection to that timeless tradition that inspired you to take bottle-opener to cap in the first place.

Don’t be so caught up in what people expect from a review. If you want to write about the hop characteristics because that’s just your thing, go for it. If you want to write about a memory that this beer brought surging back to the front of your brain, by all means. If you’re like me, and you want to write a story based on the taste and appearance of the beer, don’t let anyone stop you.

Drink what calls to you. Write what the beer inspires you to write.

“How much easier it is to be critical than to be correct.”
― Benjamin Disraeli

Pilsner Madness Round 1: Southern Tier EuroTrash Pilz (13) -VS- Great Divide Nomad Pilsner (14)

May 1, 2013 · by Oliver Gray

Today New York faces off against Colorado with Southern Tier EuroTrash Pilz versus Great Divide Nomad Pilsner!

The Contenders:

Southern Tier EuroTrash Pilz (13) – Southern Tier, an eponymous nod to the southern most counties in New York, was started using the equipment from the (sadly now defunct) Old Saddleback Brewing Co. in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Non-East Coasters might know ST for their more novelty beers, like the excellent fall seasonal Pumking or the desert-like “Blackwater” series that includes Chokolat Stout, Creme Brulee Stout, and Plum Noir Imperial Porter. Their primary line-up is nothing to shake a proverbial dead workhorse at, made up of a nicely balanced IPA (comparable to Brooklyn IPA or Harpoon IPA) and my personal favorite, 422 Wheat Ale.

As I was searching high and low for Pilsners, my wife spotted this one, tucked away as a single near the back of the seasonal shelf at Total Wine in Laurel, MD. It’s labeling makes it look sort of like an edgy unicorn who spells his name with a totally hip “z” who was playing chess fell into the label printer, but it’s appropriately refreshing garb for this crisp pilsner.

Great Divide Nomad Pilser (14) – Great Divide is particularly decorated, having won twelve Great American Beer Festival awards and four World Beer Cup awards. Their original mission was to brew “strong” beer, both in ABV and flavor. To that end, they’ve succeeded, powerfully. I’ve only had two of their other beers – Titan IPA and the Bronco’s Pride, Denver Pale Ale – but they are undeniably, unquestionably, unforgivingly, bold.

Nomad Pilsner was the last beer I found for the tournament, but certainly not the least. The mission for strong beer carried over into the body of this malt-strong and abundantly hopped pilsner. Lagered for five weeks, it has the weight of an ale, but the tickling effervescence and refreshment of a Rhineland lager.

The Fight:

We’ve got two completely different beers clinking glasses here. The EuroTrash is so light, its bubbles whispering through my tongue to my brain, telling me to go outside and drink this while playing mandolin in the Spring sun. The Nomad is the opposite, its heavy malten-spine and powerful upfront, slightly alcoholic flavor demands I sit down on the couch, put on a bad SciFi movie and just chill the eff out.

The head on the EuroTrash froths enthusiastically during the pour, but settles to just a few puddles of bubbles within minutes. The Nomad retains a meaty, creamy pure-white head until the beer is about halfway gone. Both smell delightfully hoppy; notes of citrus and grass waft from the tops of the thin glasses.

The EuroTrash is clean, but unembroidered. It makes no pretenses about who it is, or why it’s here. It wants to be consumed, probably in large amounts, probably to stymie relentless summer heat. The Nomad is full of pretenses. It’s a pilsner that seems to want to be an ale, that wants to echo its IPA and PA and Stout brethren. It don’t take no guff about being a “light” beer.

While I really appreciate the simplicity of the SouthernTier offering, I have to give this one to Great Divide. This is the first pilser I’ve had that had the audacity to try and keep up with the regime established by the ales, and I think it did a mighty fine job. It’s not quite on the level of Victory Prima or Sam Adams Noble, but it’s damn close.

Winner: Great Divide Nomad Pilsner!