Samuel

I’m finally getting around to composing this Friday’s tasting notes. Most weeks, I write the notes as I drink the beer at my Kitchen Table, but this week I enjoyed a beer that is not (at least not yet) available to be enjoyed in Bottles. Instead, I went down to the new Cornucopia Bar and Burger (on Pearl Street just north of 5th) for their grand opening and a tasting of Oakshire’s new ESB.

I enjoyed this beer immensely, and especially so as I got to pick the brain of the brewery manager, Jeff Alhouse, about its pedigree. The thing that makes this ESB stand out from the other Oakshire brews is the yeast, a Fuller’s English ale yeast that’s incredibly dry and neutral. That keeps the beer remarkably true to style.

But to the anthropomorphization, you shout! Or maybe you don’t, but that’s what I’m going to do next anyway. I had a good time working on this, as I was brainstorming and bouncing ideas around with my friend Anthony (who turned me on to this tasting event. Hopefully beginning next month, he and I will be doing one joint tasting each month, where we give each choose for each other a beer to taste ‘blind’. We’re still working out details on that. More to come.

The Oakshire Hindsight ESB came to life as an American fan of English Football. He follows Manchester United, but is roots for anyone to beat the US team when the world cup rolls around.

For footwear he wears, fitting a European Football fan, Adidas Samba. He’s worn the same brand of shoe since high school. He likes the simplicity of not having to decide, and they’re muted enough in black and white to go with just about anything. That’s important to this beer, as it’s all about balance. Its motto is “all things in moderation, including moderation.”

The beer’s favorite musical style is Ska, but its favorite album is Rubber Soul by the Beatles. It’s definitely working class, but has dreams and aspirations of ever more. So, the beer’s actual job is as something like a parts clerk, or a factory worker. But it’s dream job is an international secret agent.

Its ideal weather is a perfect day, high summer when the world is still decked out in Erin green, but after the rains have died down. It’s a 75-80 degree day with medium/low humidity, and a few fluffy white clouds somewhere just this side of the horizon.

Its car is a beat up late model Ford Taurus that was a hand-me-down from a friend who couldn’t sell it or give it away to anyone else. But in the garage it’s restoring an Austin Healey Sprite. The car will probably never run, but the part the beer enjoys is the hard work and the hours spent in the garage working while sipping, interestingly enough, an Oakshire Hindsight ESB. Which is funny, since it isn’t in bottles. But maybe the beer has a kegerator.

This beer is bright, crisp, and fun to be around. It’s very straightforward, with almost no esters, phenols, or other off flavors. It tastes like malt at first, and like bitter hops on the finish, and that’s all. Nothing hiding, no mixed messages, it’s a purist beer. And it’s excellent. But there’s some subtle unexpected notes. Something floral. Something bready. Something characteristically English (I thought there was some Maris Otter or something in there, but Mr. Althouse told me not so). Actually I was reminded of the Bluebird Bitter I had, which is pretty much the quintessential English Bitter.

Overall, this is an imminently drinkable beer. It doesn’t have many surprises in store, and if I had to identify a weakness I’d say that it’s a little one dimensional. But that’s not really a weakness, as simplicity seems to have been the idea. So I’d call it a successful brew.

Until next week, readers, if you have any suggestions for beers you’d like me to review, please leave a comment.

PS – sorry no pictures, I’m writing this on my lunch break at work and don’t have time or wherewithal to go on an image hunt. Maybe I’ll add them in later.

Ever since I was a small child, I’ve had an aversion to sports. I don’t think I ever remember my Dad watching a sports game other than the big ones; the World Series, the Super Bowl, the big ones. I never even remember my Mom watching those. In first grade I played tee-ball. I didn’t know how to throw, didn’t know how to catch, and didn’t know how to hold a bat. A kid called me “tinky wiss” and I ran home in tears. My Dad still pokes fun at me for that. Thanks Dad.

In second grade I played soccer. My school was the Spanish Immersion school, and even then our soccer team was always among the best in the city. Maybe it was our proximity to latin culture, although I doubt it since we were 99% suburban white kids. I played goalie, which was generally pretty good for me since our team was so good and the ball rarely made it to my side of the field. My most intense memory from my two months of soccer was my Mom scolding me for making daisy chains in the grass. I guess I let several shots go right past me. I was having fun.

That was the end of my sports playing, other than some occasional dabbling. At recess I tried playing basketball a few times, but my classmates were unwilling to experiment with my ideas for rule modifications. They mostly had to do with pretending that the players were spies, dragons, devils, unicorns, and generally anything more interesting than a bunch of third graders. I also tried my hand at wall-ball, four-square, and hopscotch. Those were more my speed, not because I was any good at them, but because my play time was limited by my incompetence so I spent most of my wall-ball playing hours standing in line waiting for another turn against the big kid who never lost.

I also liked tether-ball, but only when I was playing without an opponent.

My point here is that I was never athletic, never wanted to be, and never got any real encouragement to be. It wasn’t that I was an inactive kid. In fact, the phrase “I was an inactive kid” would probably be an unwise one for me to speak when riding in a car driven by an adult who knew me as a kid, as the laughter it would be likely to elicit would potentially cause a serious motor vehicle accident. That was a sentence, I promise. It’s just that I’ve never much gone in for organized sports, or even individual athletics in any formal sense. My preference was always to just, you know, run around and pretend to be a unicorn. Or an evil devil creature. But a few of my closest friends were from conservative christian families and they wouldn’t play pretend with me if I was being a devil of any sort, or even a demon or a demon-like creature, so I usually ended up being a unicorn.

I never thought I’d be interested in sports. But then, a few years ago, I started going to the minor league baseball games at Civic Stadium in Eugene. Our home team, the Ems, aren’t great. They haven’t had a genuine winning season in a long time (although this last year they didn’t do too badly, and barely missed a shot at the regional finals). I realized that I kind of like baseball.

At first, I thought that I just liked going to the stadium, which is a beautiful historic structure, full of character and life. But the past few days, as Baseball season has started, I’ve started to wonder why it is that I’ve always been so aloof to sports. I think that it has to do with a temptation toward a certain kind of intellectual superiority that I too often succumb to. I mean, in a lot of ways, I am “that” liberal. I listen to NPR News every morning. I believe, or at least put off the impression that I believe that my political opinions are based in rational thought and scientific fact, while the opinions of those with whom I disagree are ideologically and religiously motivated. I am arrogant about who I spend my time with, and don’t easily put up with willful ignorance. I have actually referred to the midwest as “the flyover states”. I drink $10 bottles of beer. And I scoff at sports fans as uncouth midwesterners, ignorant and uncultured, worthy of disdain.

I don’t like this about myself. I try not to react in knee-jerks, and while I’m not going to change my mind about global warming without being presented with some really convincing scientific evidence, I can at least give a major form of American entertainment a second (first?) chance. So I’m going to try to follow baseball this season. I’m going to root for the Boston Red Sox, because I own a Red Sox baseball cap that I found on the street. I’m going to keep up with scores, stats, and all that. I may even watch some games.

If I hate it, at least I can say that I don’t follow sports because I know I don’t like them, not because of any cultural elitism. And I think I’ll be a better person for it.

But while I’m watching, I’m still going to pretend to be a unicorn.

Welcome to another edition of my Friday Tasting Notes, which are now being reposted in an entirely separate blog at beerispeople.blogspot.com. I may decide to stick to posting them just there at some point, but for now I’m doing double duty.

This week, I tasted (read: guzzled with relish) a beer by the Dupont brewing house in Belgium. The beer is the “Avec les Bons Voeux de la Brasserie Dupont”, which means “With the Best Wishes of the Dupont Brewery”. The Dupont website explains that beginning in the 1970s, this beer was produced in small batches annually for a select group of the brewing house’s best clients. Today, it is distributed more widely (although it is still somewhat hard to find).

When this beer was magically transformed into a human, the first thing I noticed about it was it’s jacket. It was wearing a very stylish gray jacket from the 1980s, part suede and part acrylic knit. Kind of like this;

Next, I noticed the shoes. They were very nice boat shoes, leather also. They were certainly casual, but suggested a little bit of a cosmopolitan attitude. Here’s a picture;

These things combined really started to give me an idea of the beer’s personality. As a beer, it was inviting but not overbearing. It is a Belgian Farmhouse ale in style, which suggests a rural and not at all pretentious drink. But it’s also clearly a craft beer, and it is conscious that it’s quality is appreciated far afield of it’s rural roots in the cities and the upper classes. Many things about this beer are suggestive of that same set of contradictions. The aroma, for example, is complex but not overwhelming. It carries suggestions of yeast, citrus, flowers, hops, and even some malt. But each of the scents is balanced against the others and the no part of the smell is in any way overpowering. Or the alcohol content. This is, by any account, a big beer at 9.5% ABV – but it is crisp, refreshing, and the sort of thing I could drink all day.

Let’s talk more about the Beer as a person. He drives a very sensible, very European car. Therefore, I picked a Peugeot. Also, the model year is sometime in the late 70s, early 80s. I’m not sure why it is that so many of the characteristics of this beer person are from that era, but they are. The jacket, shoes, and car are all from the same time period. It may be because that was a time when industrialization was giving way to informationalization, and the rural was giving way to the urban even further than it already had. Or maybe I’m having an 80s kick. In any event, that’s what came to me and it’s what I’ve written. Here’s the car;

As I’m thinking more about this guy, I’m realizing that he is pretty guarded. He’s complicated. The flavor has some fruity characteristics, maybe banana or even some peach, but very subtle. And combined with some sourness, some bitterness, and even a little sweetness. It’s thick, and hard to understand. But it’s still friendly. This guy doesn’t want anyone to get too close to him. In that sense, he’s not a dog person. The level of loyalty that a dog has makes him uncomfortable. He wouldn’t have a pet at all, except that a cat showed up at his house one day and being soft hearted, he fed the poor creature. And, of course, it stayed around. But it’s not a pet so much as a room mate;

I had a hard time thinking of this beer’s favorite album. It’s an unfiltered beer, and there’s a yeasty aroma and flavor to it. It’s primal, and it takes it all in. It’s not the sort of beer to have a clear favorite anything. I thought of Jazz albums, I thought of famous french singers like Jaqcues Brel, Edith Piaf, or Charles Trenet, I thought of albums that mix genre like The Art of Noise’s “The Seduction of Claude Debussy”. The truth is, this beer has a large record collection and all those things and more are in it. But the most valued record, I think, is something both classic and modern; Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are A Changin’”

The beer’s ideal weather is a fairly simple thing to talk about. It’s certainly a spring beer, and the weather in which it would be most comfortable is a wet but sunny, warm but cool, middling spring day;

Overall, I’d call this a dangerously drinkable beer. I hope that you’re able to find a bottle. The one I found was at the Willamette Street Market of Choice in Eugene. For a 750 ML Bottle, I paid $12 (steeeeep, but worth it!) It was a great beer, and it brightened an otherwise difficult evening.

Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you next week!