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Brew Fiction: Black Friday Rules

November 29, 2013 · by Oliver Gray

Unsure of the why but well practiced in the how, Liam pulled the straps on his father’s kevlar vest tight, jostling the back plate to make sure it didn’t move and expose any vulnerable vertebrae near his neck. Reminders of past years nicked and slashed the thick canvas, letting the ballistic plastic below smile through as a dozen plaque-stained grins.

His father shrugged forward to test his gear, twisting and bouncing like a sprinter preparing for the one hundred meter. He pointed to the machete lazing on a stool next to the fire. Liam lifted the blade, watching the flipped images of the flames dance on its polished face, careful not to cut himself on the edge so recently honed to skin slitting sharpness.

It was too much ferocity for a ten-year old, too top heavy, too awkward and inelegant to be an effective weapon. But in his father’s hands, rough steelworker’s hands, it snapped through the air, a cobra striking with steel fangs. After three quick flicks he slid it into the scabbard already mounted on his hip with a satisfying shlink, like a key settling into a lock. “Dad, why do you have to go out?” Liam studied the flames, trying to scry the answer before his father responded.

“We won the tickets this year. I have to go. We’ve been waiting for this chance since your little sister was born.” He sank into the ochre couch as he bent to tie his boots, the tension in the room tightening with each pull of the black laces. Liam swallowed the mix of fear and tears that filled his little body to emotional maximum. “But…last year…”

His father didn’t look up from his boots. “Last year was different. I was just part of the mob. I thought maybe I could…but we don’t have to worry about that this year. I got tickets. I’ll be right up front. I probably won’t even have to use this.” He pet the machete like it was his loyal pet, man’s best metallic friend. The boots tied, he stood up. Where his lanky, underfed father had stood twenty minutes ago, a soldier stood now, a man made for war, ready to face or deal death, whichever came first.

From the window, Brooklyn looked split in two: slowly dying fires twinkled down the shadowy streets of the burrough, while those few who could still afford electricity blared prosperity from the top of the skyline like a decadent halo. Liam thought he could see into those impossibly high windows sometimes, catch a glimpse of the people in colorful clothes watching little men dance across digital screens, look into, however briefly, the life his father promised to bring home for them every November.

“Why can’t you just stay home? Me and Jess don’t need a TV. We’re OK, Dad.” His father stopped adjusting the filter on his gas mask and met the boy’s unblinking stare. “It’s not that easy, Liam. I want to give you the chance you deserve, and to do that, we have to fit in. One scan shows that we have no TV, no computer, and that keeps me from even interviewing for a better job.” He dashed a pile of high gloss ads off the kitchen table, casting a rainbow of sales across the sparsity of the ground-floor apartment.”We need this stuff, and today is the only day I can get it.”

A scream shattered the glass serenity of the night, the last cry of some unlucky soul falling early to the violence in the streets. His father knelt and put a hand on his shoulder. “It won’t be like last year, Liam. I promise. This time I’ll be there right when the meal ends. Right next to all the stuff. I’ve got a plan to get there, my whole route home. We’ve got the gear and I’m more prepared than ever. This year might mean we can move to the tenth floor next year.” He slung the empty sack over his shoulder, trusting the strength of his own bag more than the thin white plastic with the blue and yellow logo.

He moved towards the door, heavy boots marching out a funeral dirge on the wooden floors. “By why, Dad? Why does it have to be this way?”

His father turned around to take one last look at his son before he put his life, and his money, in the hands of the corporate machine. “Because it’s always been this way, son. There isn’t any other way to make it in this life. Those are the Black Friday rules.”

“Thousands they grieve as the Black Friday rule” – Flogging Molly

Beer Review: Sam Adams Thirteenth Hour

November 6, 2013 · by Oliver Gray

I am loathe to set my alarm. Not just because I’m a notoriously horrible person in the morning, but because it feels so mechanical, such an affront the natural cycles of the sun and my sleep. I’d honestly rather give a speech to a thousand strangers than wake up to a dissonant sound that rips me from the blissful silence of slumber.

But I punch the pre-dawn hours into my phone anyway, knowing that part of my existence right now is tied to getting to certain buildings at certain times, smiling through the fog of fatigue, mimicking professionalism as accurately as possible to fit in with the other mimes. Time is structure, structure is order, and order is peace. Or so I’ve been told.

My father used to tell me about his watch. It was shiny and expensive, probably of Swiss make; his lifeline to the corporate world, keeping him on-time and in-check no matter what country he landed in. He never talked of it fondly though. When it entered conversation, it was rusted with a bit of disdain, like he hadn’t owned the watch, but vice versa.

He told me of how one day in his late 20s, sitting on a train in Germany, he had realized he’d looked down at his watch six times in one minute. He undid the latch, stuck it in his bag, and never put it back on. In the 27 years I knew him, I never saw a watch on his wrist. He was rarely concerned with being late or being early. I think he knew how he’d grown obsessed with time – the whens, tick by tick, becoming more important than the whos and the whats – and decided that wasn’t a very fun way to live.

I’m not quite at that point, but with many stresses with just as many deadlines, I often feel my heart syncing up with the second hand. I feel guilty when I do something that isn’t productive. I am unable to relax sometimes, knowing that work needs to be done, and that time keeps going whether I do it or not.

But last Saturday night, I sat in the chilly Philadelphia air with one of the best friends I have in the world, sipping sweet stouty raisin and fig from a stemless glass, puffing creamy cherry and red wine from a fat cigar. We celebrated love, life, and love of life, while simultaneously mourning the unfairness of time.

Daylight saving crept in on us as we reclined on that stoop. The clocks lurched across the country in one disharmonious chronological displacement as humans tried their best to control Sol. Something dislodged, came free, from the cogs of our infernal machine.

An hour that didn’t exist, that floated in between the other hours like a ghostly, forgotten thing. A lost hour. A gained hour. An hour where we could just drink, talk, be, the rest of responsibility be damned.

It was the thirteenth hour. And it was so, so good.

“Who has never killed an hour? Not casually or without thought, but carefully: a premeditated murder of minutes.” -Mark Z. Danielewski

Brew Fiction: Elysian Dragonstooth Stout

July 19, 2013 · by Oliver Gray

Three boys, all dark haired and light hearted, sat cross legged in front of a dwindling fire. Their eyes reflected the glow of the embers like little paper lanterns twice tethered to the earthen floor of the cottage by their still growing bodies. On the stool, a pile of robes and wrinkles and wisdom hunched, shoulders rolled forward, leaning on a piece of gnarled ash as if trying to keep his body from tumbling into the flames.

“Kawakuchi-sensei, tell us another one! Tell us about the dragon!” The smallest boy fidgeted as the other two took turns teasing each other and trying to resurrect the fire.

With much effort, Kawakuchi no Ichiro sat up, coaxing the years out of his spine with several impressive cracks. He tapped his staff on the ground twice. The universal call for silence.

“Many years before you three were born, a dragon lived in the mountains above our village. Naka was his name. He was a runt, some say, an unwanted son of the great seadragon Watatsumi. He was reclusive and few ever saw him, to the point where most locals thought him a myth. He hid in the caves and behind the waterfalls, always fleeing deep into the serpentine caverns of the undermountain when anyone came too near.”

The little lanterns faced forward, wide open, fixated on the storyteller.

“Despite his lack of size he was kind and bold, and wanted nothing more than to make his father proud. He’d watched the great dragon, a torrent of watery power, put out massive forest fires with a flick of his tail, or change the course of rivers to save crops from withering droughts. Naka knew there was greatness in him, and he traveled the land looking to help man like his father before him. But whenever Naka saw a chance to help, witnessed the sad plight of the struggling mortals in the towns and villages, he caused more harm than good.”

Ichiro passed the staff to his other hand and leaned in closer.

“Most men began to fear Naka. He’d accidentally set houses ablaze when trying to help a blacksmith light his forge, or uproot field after field of newly sprouted rice as he beat his scaly wings trying to cool off farmers toiling in the summer sun. His shadow on the ground became a herald for destruction.”

“Eventually he just gave up. Stopped trying to help. Stopped trying to be a dragon who could bring pride to the family. He retreated to the northern mountains and most thought he had died there, forever lost to the snowcaps and drifting mists.”

With both hands on the staff, the old storyteller sighed and sagged, as if the weight of the dragon’s shame was his own.

“Many years passed and Naka faded into legend. The dragons all but disappeared from the land; their majesty forced out by metal and machines, man-made modernity. Men became drunk on their inventions, swollen with hubris, thinking they were better than nature, stronger than the land that had nourished them since the first sunrise.”

“Naka watched from his solitude, watched as the men built and bent the world to their will. A town had grown like a mushroom at the doorstep of his home, and just beyond that a great dam, a wall of stone and wood and steel, stood in the path of the river like a shield in the path of an arrow. It turned the river into a sea; a sea perched atop of mountain.”

The six lanterns bobbed up and down in agreement.

“But one day, Naka noticed commotion in his village. The men ran about and the women cried, holding their babies and praying aloud. Water had begun to spout from the river-wall, and the town was slowly filling like a freshly overturned hourglass. The sea-atop-the-mountain had sat serene long enough; it wanted to be a river again and nothing would stop it, not even the destruction of the town and death of many people.”

“Naka watched as the hole in the grey stone grew bigger. Without thinking of his past, he flew down to the dam, forcing his claws against the hole. The water rushed past his thin fingers. His feet were no better. His flames turned to mist as he tried to seal the hole with heat, drowning the valley in a dense fog.”

The lanterns were now fully alight, flames flickering, betraying their excitement.

“The water would not stop. Out of frustration, refusing to fail again, thinking of his father, Naka sunk his teeth deep into the dam. One tooth, a large curved thing much bigger than a man, slid into the hole. A perfect fit. The mountain-sea stopped its surge and was quiet again.”

“Naka could hear the people cheering below, the reverberations of their shouts an echo of his father’s spirit in the valley. But Naka could not go celebrate with the people. If he removed his tooth, the water would flow again.”

The old story teller trailed off slowly rolling his neck upwards to look at the ceiling. The lanterns blinked and turned to each other. “What happened to Naka?”

“No one really knows. Some say he stayed there, tooth stuck in the dam, until nothing was left but bones. Some say his father saw his sacrifice and turned him into the biggest mountain in the range, a testament to his bravery. Some even say that, with much effort and a roar that could be heard the world over, he sheared the tooth from his mouth and disappeared into the mountains once more.”

The lanterns dimmed, squinting looks of disbelief falling onto the old man. “Well what do you think?”

“We’ll never know.”

He smiled a perfect smile at the boys. Perfect but for the one black spot. A missing tooth.

The 10 Types of Craft Beer Drinkers

May 23, 2013 · by Oliver Gray

With an ever-increasing selection of high-quality beers available, well, pretty much everywhere, craft beer enthusiast are experiencing an age of taste enlightenment, a malt and hops renaissance clad in glass, bearing colorful, cleverly labeled heraldry. With so many options, it was inevitable that drinkers and drinking habits would naturally stratify, form groups based on behaviors and preferences and concentrations of alpha acids. I give you, distilled from the hot mash of beer culture, the ten archetypal craft beer drinkers. For the record, I’m some kind of mix between #4 and #9.

(Side note: I used the pronouns “he” and “his” for simplicity only, and am by no means suggesting this is a male-only thing. We’ll just assume that “guy” in this context is as gender malleable as “dude.” Everyone is a dude, male or female or equine or mythological.)

1. The Local

This guy drinks beer brewed in his home state, and maybe the bordering few states, exclusively. He’s a champion of the local craft scene, often espousing the local nanobrew that is climbing in popularity in a new brewpub two towns over or announcing what seasonals his favorite nearby brewery will be shipping out next. He doesn’t scoff at great beer from other places, but given the option, he’ll say “think locally, f*ck globally” every time. You can’t really be mad at him for it either; he’s a catalyst for brewing progress, keeping the smaller brew pubs alive, supporting the system at the roots, nourishing all those little guys with precious praise and dollars.

2. The Old Faithful

This guy has worked the same job for ten plus years, orders the same meal every time he goes to that same restaurant, and to absolutely no one’s surprise, always drinks the same beer every weekend from the comfort of a well-worn chair. It’s usually something pretty good: an IPA from an established brewery or a modern, well executed lager. But, like an old man stuck firmly in a rocking chair at a retirement home lamenting how the world “used to be,” he gets grumpy and dismissive if someone suggests he tries something new. He’ll likely drink that beer until he dies, or until the brewery goes under, at which point he’ll try to find a beer exactly like it which may be the only time in his life that he tries new beers.

3. The Critic

This guy is a roiling mess of negativity, who despite having downed some of the best beer in existence, cannot seem to say anything good about any beers. His rampant criticism of anything and everything beer related makes the people around him wonder if he actually likes beer at all, or if he just really likes to talk about how much he doesn’t like beer. He’s not uneducated, often correctly pointing out faults like over-hopping, high acidity, off flavors, and weak malt backbones. He’s probably tried more beers than most people who claim to “love/adore/admire” craft beer. But no one has ever seen him actually enjoying a beer. The day he does, the universe might implode.

4. The Appraiser

This guy is the antithesis of The Critic, who, despite tasting some stuff that a man stumbling through the desert dying of thirst would reject and wave off, loves pretty much everything that passes his lips. Even beers that could potentially be toxic or cause a severe allergic reaction; even bizarre beers, like that homebrewed rutabaga porter he tried last week; even beers that are stored and served in screw top two liter Mountain Dew bottles are OK in this guy’s world. If the beer really does taste awful, he’ll find something else to compliment, like the labeling or cool off-curlean blue of the bottle cap. When his drinking buddies say, “How can you drink this shit? Tastes like Scotch tape mixed with pureed owl pellets!” he’ll respond with, “Yea, a little bit I guess. But it’s definitely not the worst I’ve thing I’ve ever had!”

5. The Clueless One

This guy really wants to be part of the craft beer wave, really wants to fit in with all his friends at the bar on a Friday night as they take turns sipping from a sampler, but the combination of an unsophisticated palate and a possible learning disability keeps him from grasping the finer nuances of good beer. He’ll often ask, attempting to look beer-literate, if a lager is a pale ale, or if a stout is a hefeweizen. He means well, and seems to enjoy his beer, but can’t for the life of him keep styles or breweries straight. He once correctly identified an IPA and now that is all he will order, partly out of fear that people will realize he has no idea what he’s talking about, partly because he’s proud he finally got one right.

6. The Flavor Finder

This guy could be also be named “The Bullshitter.” His ability to identify flavors – many of which were not intentionally added to the brew – borders on paranormal. He’ll sniff at the settling head of an IPA and make verbal note of the subtle wafts of “raspberry, turmeric, and waffle batter.” He’ll take a sip and, swirling his tongue around his mouth, ask if you noticed the way the hops created “a dirty, rusty flavor” but “in a good way” then point out how the finish is like “molten cashews, cooked over a fire of pine needles and Brazilian rosewood.” The dude will claim to taste things humans can’t physically taste, like passion and eccentricity. If he is really tasting all of this stuff, there might be something really, really wrong with his tongue. Or maybe he’s about to have a stroke. No one knows.

7. The Beer Snob

Everyone knows one of these guys, the person not just happy to crack and pour and drink his beer, that guy who cannot control the urge to explain why the beers he drinks are vastly superior to the beers you drink. He’d never be caught dead with something less than 9.5% ABV, somehow equating alcohol content to quality. If it’s not a double or triple or Imperial version, he won’t even consider drinking it, as it is clearly below his refined tastes and standards. He spends his free time on BeerAdvocate and RateBeer writing short, overly-harsh and condescending reviews, always adding the note, “it’s no Old Rasputin” to the end of each. No one really likes this guy, but he thinks he’s doing the beer-drinking community a favor by ranting about the “impurity of large scale brewing” whenever he can.

8. The Beer Snob Snob

This guy has gotten all meta and is snobby about how snobby the beer snobs snob. He is the counter-culture backlash against the condescension that permeates the beer world, falling back on non-craft beers with lots of folk lore, like Pabst Blue Ribbon and National Bohemian. He wears square rimmed glasses, porkpie hats, and too-tight pants. This guy isn’t actually into beer for the sake of the beer, he just really, really likes to annoy people and say the word “irony” a lot. As soon as good beer isn’t cool anymore, it won’t be cool to like bad beer, which means it won’t be ironic to like any beer at all, and this guy will fade into mismatched, dub-step thumping obscurity.

9. The Comparer

This guy can’t help but compare the beer he’s currently drinking to every other beer he’s ever drunk. The first words out of his mouth after a virgin sip of a new (to him) brew, are always, “Hmm, this reminds me of…” It’s his mission to compile a mental database of every beer ever, to create connections between breweries, to be a walking, talking reference encyclopedia of craft beer. He’s actually great to have around if you’re trying to find new beers of a certain style to try, but otherwise his incessant obsession with categorization and beer hierarchy make him tough to hang out with. Never, ever, under any circumstance, unless you need to kill two or three hours, ask this guy what his favorite beer is. Trust me on that one.

10. The Brewbie

The new guy! The excited guy! The guy who just tried his first Stone Ruination IPA and just can’t stop talking about it! A new craft beer fan is born in the maternity wards of brewpubs every Friday night. This guy is usually overly enthusiastic, recommending every person try every beer ever, even if they’re underage, not a beer fan, or not even a human. He’ll go on about how IPAs are his favorite, no ambers, no pilsners, no stouts, no IPAs again; drunk on the new breadth of styles and flavors he’s just discovered, and also the beer itself. This guy tends to drink too much out of excitement, not realizing that his new beau is a good 2 or 3 or 5% ABV higher than the stuff he was drinking in college. No one gets mad when he gets a little out of hand though. His zeal and excitement remind us of ourselves when we first took a sip of that beer that turned casual drinker into enthusiast, and turned beer into art.

“Milk is for babies. When you grow up you have to drink beer.” -Arnold Schwarzenegger

Review: Magic Hat Heart of Darkness Stout

December 3, 2012 · by Oliver Gray

I don’t normally care about label art, as it seems superfluous to the enjoyment of the stuff inside the bottle. But those guys over at Magic Hat have their collective metaphorical shit together, it seems. All of the labels, down to the “thumb-print fly-maze” of their mainstay “#9” are really well designed, and make me stop to appreciate them, just before I appreciate the beer.

Just look at that eye. Creepy as hell, in the best kind of way.

I’m a literature guy, but I’ve never read Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. I thought it was about a tiger who ate some guy, but I think I was actually remembering that Michael Douglas movie (that also had Iceman from Top Gun in it) where he shoots some poor lions who were just trying to get some dinner because he’s a jerk. Either that, or I confused it with The Most Dangerous Game. My apologies for mixing up my turn-of-the-century post-colonial American-British-African Lit.

I discovered this little gem in the Magic Hat Winter Sampler (which also included #9 x3, Encore Wheat IPA x3, and Wooly ESB x3 – reviews coming soon!*) It was labeled as “a smooth, round palate with a dreamlike undercurrent of bittersweet chocolate.”

An undercurrent is an understatement. This thing tasted like a chocolate bock made with unsweetened baking chocolate and cocktail sours.

But if that sounds unpalatable, I apologize. My palate is quite bizarre (I like to eat raw garlic). This Joseph Conrad nod is really enjoyable, especially as a winter seasonal. It is appropriately heavy with only a mild hint of malty sugar, making for something that feels like it belongs in a snifter, in your left hand, while you read the collected works of Edgar Allan Poe with your right. And you should probably be in front of a slowly dying fire. Probably.

If you hold it up to a light and let the rays shine through just the lightly laced periphery of the beer, it almost looks purple. Purple beer is a first for me.

But unlike creamy counterparts, this stout is almost effervescent. Its finish is deceptively crisp, given the coffee black color and undeniable roasted aroma. I expected a finish like Young’s Oatmeal Stout, but I found my lips tingling a little bit the more I sipped. The texture reminds me of Sierra Nevada Stout; it’s still got all the rights ingredients, but the brewers seemed to remember that carbonation isn’t always a bad thing when it comes to dark beer.

Whether you’re hunkered down on a steamboat dodging a storm of arrows from Congo-natives, or you’re hiding from whatever lurks in the cold, dark of winter nights (it’s probably a tiger) crack open a Heart of Darkness so that the last thing on your lips can be something tasty.

8.75 out of 10.

*I have already “reviewed” #9, so Encore and Wooly are up next!