(This here is an addition to my comparison from a few months ago; I'm adding the text below to that post, as well as giving it its own fair shot at the front page. Enjoy!)
So it's now about two months after my initial Gran(d)-Off comparison of various brandy-based orange liqueurs. I concluded that Grand Marnier was the smoothest, Gran Gala was (by a nose) the best for mixing, and Torres was the most interesting for sipping and the best booze all-round. I was never fully satisfied with the results, though, for two reasons. First, those three bottles by no means exhausted the sheer mass of the liqueurs of this sort on the market. The main impetus to go back to this comparison and add some more shit was discovering two (2) new bottles - Harlequin and La Belle Orange - during my trip east for the holidays, and also buying a fifth of Tuaca in a moment of weakness. I now have six bottles of this stuff to work through (pity me); more importantly, it means I may have to reassess the standings from before. Second, I was less than satisfied with my choice of cocktail from the last time, namely, the margarita. I have since discovered, through some experimentation, that this is just not a good drink for investigating these liqueurs. A typical margarita needs something direct, highly orangey, and very sweet - it needs triple sec, in other words, not something that gives away brute strength for brandy subtlety. As far as classic cocktails go, sidecars tend to work much, much better with these liqueurs, so that's what I'm using this time around.
So, this addendum will do two things. First, I'd like to sip these three new bottles and see how they compare to the earlier ones. Second, I want to retest all the liquors' mixing potential in a simple bourbon sidecar. Everything gets a new grade at the end, and we come one step closer to knowing where we stand when it comes to orange-infused brandies.
If any one of these liquors is going to get you accused of being a horrible cheapskate, it's Harlequin. It screams "IMPORTED FROM FRANCE" just about everywhere, but looking at the label from a distance you'd think it was a $10 fifth of bottom-shelf whiskey. From the goofy jester design to the fake wax seal, it just looks kind of sad. No mention at all of who actually makes this stuff, but it's imported by something called "Premium Imports Ltd." Ringing any bells? No? How about the fact that PI is located in Bardstown, Kentucky?? You know about Bardstown, don't you? ...It's the place where certain a famous and rather huge distillery is housed?? Yup: the bunch selling Harlequin can be none other than our pals at Heaven Hill. They claim that it's "produced in France from a rich blend of the finest aged cognac and Mediterranean oranges renowned for their distinctive flavor" - and this is literally the only information I can find on the stuff. I can only presume it's sold to HH by the Illuminati or something.
La Belle Orange is also fairly obscure, albeit far less so than the Harlequin. This time it's imported by White Rock in Lewiston, Maine, which sells quite a lot of things I've never seen nor heard of. Still no telling who in France ultimately makes LBO, but at least the importers actually bothered to put up a section on their website for it this time. The bottle design itself is, overall, probably my favorite of all the liqueurs save the (much more expensive) Grand Marnier. LBO doesn't bother with a fake wax seal or a ribbon (unlike Gran Gala or Harlequin), but it's more appealing than the similarly humble Torres: just a big orange LB badge and a label on nice paper. On the other hand, it's the only thing here with a screw-off top, but I can't hold that against it too much. La Belle Orange claims to be a "marriage of sun ripened oranges and the finest cognac," and a "harmonious blend" of "rich fruity aromas and elegant cognac flavors." Hmm. Well, we shall see.
Tuaca is the odd duck here, especially among these two. Where they're more or less French attempts at a cheaper Grand Marnier, this (like the Gran Gala) is Italian. Second, at 35% ABV, it's significantly less strong than the other 80-proof bruisers I've got here. Third, and most importantly, it's not just orange we're dealing with this time. Rather, Tuaca is a brandy "artfully blended with hints of vanilla and orange flavors." The addition of vanilla already promises to make this more bizarre than my previous favorite, the Gran Torres, so I've got high hopes for this stuff. Also like the Torres, it claims to date back an absurd amount of time - like, 16th century absurd. Wikipedia, which is always right, claims that Lorenzo de Medici quaffed this stuff. That's pretty cool, and will (if nothing else) make a fine story for parties. Anyways, the bottle itself is classy but rather uneventful; it just looks like a generic brandy or something.
All right, enough cockteasing: I've now poured all three liqueurs into individual glasses for comparison, along with (smaller) samples of the original three liqueurs. First, there's the colors. Of the newcomers, Harlequin is definitely the lightest of the bunch, roughly on a par with Torres; both are a kind of gentle champagne color. The LBO is darker still, perhaps just a touch darker than the Grand Marnier. The real champion here, though, is the Tuaca, which is a thick rich gold even darker than the Gran Gala from last time.
Then there's the aromas. The most notable thing about Harlequin's smell is that it's a dead ringer for Grand Marnier. If you really try you can detect some subtle differences - the Harlequin comes across as slightly rougher, slightly hotter - but if I didn't have these two side by side I'd be completely fooled. Harlequin pulls off the cognac orange juice aroma thing almost perfectly; think of it, then, as Grand Marnier in a dirty t-shirt. La Belle Orange, again, smells most like the Marnier. It's not quite as good a copy as the Harlequin, but I think I might actually prefer it over both. If anything, though, it comes off as even sweeter and smoother, and maybe even a little lighter; you can think of it, then, as Grand Marnier in a schoolgirl uniform. The Tuaca, as expected, is totally unlike all of these other liqueurs. The aroma is - I don't know if I love it or hate it, to be honest. It's unique, to say the least. The nose is extremely rum-like; there's no hints of brandy in here at all, just a lot of wood, cola, maybe some orange at the edges, and above all, vanilla. And, despite the (relatively) low proof, this actually comes across as hotter than the others as well, about on par with the Gran Gala's heat. It's odd.
Now, though, we get into the stuff that matters: the tasting. Down the hatch. (Again.)
The Harlequin, true to its aroma, once again comes off as a cheaper, rougher twin brother to the Marnier. There's some sweet-and-sourness right up front, which then evolves into a very sweet (but hot) orange flavor that, well, doesn't really change. I get another splash of heat at the swallow, but that's really the most interesting thing it does. Like the Marnier, it's slightly cloying. Actually, it's just like the Marnier in almost all things, just less well-sorted about it. If GM were an XO version of a brandy, I would take Harlequin to be the VS. It's rougher, and it's weaker. Now, it's not bad - especially at $18 - but a copy is all it is, and a copy that's slightly worse than the original at everything.
Wow. If I thought Grand Marnier was sweet, La Belle is off the fucking charts. This stuff is really sweet: it's as if they took the sweet n low taste of Marnier and turned it up to eleven. It's so sweet, in fact, that I find it genuinely difficult to drink neat; I feel like it's going to throw me into a seizure or something. Right up front there's a familiar clovey bite, which then evolves into what can only be described as Mega-Marnier. It's sweet orange squared. It gets a little sour at the swallow, but that's the only real relief one gets. Not only that, but it's smoother and there's even less of a burn. Everything I liked (and hated) about Marnier is here, severely amplified. Sipped neat it's like being tackled by a linebacker smothered in sugar. That isn't to say it's bad - it isn't. But next time it's getting a few drops of water.
The Tuaca tastes more conventional (in many ways) than I was expecting from its aroma. It has a very minimal, very toned back orange taste remotely reminiscent of the Gran Gala, but then over that there's a strong current of vanilla. From the initial moments all the way up until the conclusion of the flavor development, it really does come across as a spiced rum of some kind. Only at the end do the flavors separate themselves, so you can tell it's a Marnieresque liqueur with a lot of vanilla rather than some kind of especially vanilla-y Sailor Jerry's. There's a little bit of a burn going down, but nothing like what I got from the nose. Here's the weird thing, though: the vanilla flavor makes it pretty heavy, but Tuaca's actually pretty pleasant to sip on its own (moreso than the other two newbies, anyways). I can't down it with anywhere near the speed of Torres, say - it's more of a savor-a-half-ounce-over-twenty-minutes kind of drink - but it definitely has an appeal. I have absolutely no clue how this'll do in a sidecar, but it definitely strikes me as something that mixing geeks would enjoy playing with.
Speaking of sidecars, I guess it's time to see what's what in the mixing realm. To repeat, I'll be making bourbon sidecars. I'll be using a a bourbon to liqueur to lemon juice ratio of 2:2:1 - that should be leaning towards the sweet side for a sidecar, but frankly I want some sweetness to shine through here. For this test I'll be using my go-to budget bourbon, the lovely (if somewhat rowdy) Evan Williams 1783, which I've been using to make sours as of late. The newbies go first, starting with the Harlequin.
Despite the already-low amount of lemon juice, the Harlecar comes out on the sour side of things. So far as I can tell, the Harlequin just folds: aside from a rather dull sweetness, it doesn't assert itself at all here. The sugar is there for the beginning of the sip and most of the middle, but by the end it goes very sour indeed. No real orange flavors are detectable, either. I found this sidecar rather lame, though it's by no means something I would turn down. All the liqueur is doing is providing a sweetener, and there are other things that do that job much better.
The Bellecar is next, and I was expecting the LBO to just give me another toothache with its sweetness. Instead this sugar-happy little liqueur surprises me: it's sweeter than the Harlequin, yes, but along with the sweetness comes a much more pronounced orange flavor and an unexpected amount of nuance. There's a kind of lemon candy opening to it, and then the orange juice tang cuts in at the end to deliver a very novel, almost bitter (but still sweet) blood orange twist. It's extremely nice, and I prefer this Bellecar to the Harlecar by leagues. Some will probably find it too sweet for a sidecar - I'm tempted to add more lemon to this next time I make it, and there will be a next time - but even with this version I find it delicious and refreshing.
And third comes the Tuacar, which is the real dice roll. Will it work? Will it be horrible? Well, it smells pretty awful. There's just a confusion of all sorts of flavors: first there's the vanilla and a bit of oak from the bourbon, and then a lot of lemon. Lemon and vanilla, just to tell you, are not good pals aroma-wise. In terms of taste, it's much the same story. The relatively subtle flavors of the Tuaca are completely covered over here, leaving only a messy and nearly-unrelieved lemon rush. Only in the aftertaste, when I start to breathe out vanilla, do I recall that I've actually been drinking a fairly nifty liqueur. As a drink, then, the Tuacar is a failure. It's the clear loser among these three, although this is reall an unfair test - a sidecar is just not the right drink for this stuff. I have some ideas about what would be, but that lies outside the scope of this test. (Since it's very rumlike, for example, could one use it like a rum? How about mixing it with cola?)
Now then, on to mixing the three from the previous test. The Marnicar is a really pleasant surprise, considering Marnier's rather lackluster showing last time. The first thing I notice is a really lovely aroma which is rather difficult to describe. Brandy suspended in a cloud of orange pulp, maybe. In terms of sweetness, it fits nicely in-between the Bellecar and the Harlecar - maybe leaning a little more on the side of the latter's subtlety. Sweetened lemonade is the first impression, but as it moves back the orange pulp starts to poke itself through so that by the swallow it's totally dominating the other flavors. It doesn't quite have the sharp fruity jab at the end like the Bellecar, but in exchange it's a little more laid back and balanced. I think I slightly - slightly - prefer the Bellecar, but which one I would choose would really depend on my mood. In any case, the Marnicar is a fine damn drink. It's reserved without being boring, it does a fine job whetting the appetite without being overly tart - it's the perfect apéritif.
Oh crap, it's the Galacar. Honestly, the more I've quaffed the Gran Gala, the less I've liked the stuff. When I initially started doing the taste test way back in November, I actually preferred its sour firey Italian personality over the rather boring Marnier. But, like hanging with a really rowdy friend, the charm ran out after awhile. Truth be told, Gala's just too damn harsh to enjoy on its own. On the other hand, it does still shine as a mixer, and it makes a fine showing here. The sour-orange-on-fire aroma is here right from the start, right out front, and that's not something I much care for. What I do like, on the other hand, is the taste. The lemon might as well not even be here - it's totally overpowered by the Gala, which immediately pushes its way to the front with (happily subdued) tangy orange tastes. It's surprisingly sweet, too, almost up there with the Bellecar, but the Galacar's finish is much more sour than the Bellecar's bittersweet blood orange. Again, it's tough to say which is best: factor in the aroma and I'd give it to the Belle by a nose, but for pure taste I honestly think that Gala might produce the best drink here.
Finally there's the Torrecar. It is, as I was expecting, a letdown. The aroma is wonderful, of course - it's got all the deep orange zestiness that I love about the stuff - but the taste just doesn't bear it out. Torres, as a sippin' liqueur, is all about little nuances and subtleties. Forced to provide the sweetener role in a classic cocktail, though - well, it does the job, but it loses everything that makes it special. All I get up front, again, is sweet lemon, which blossoms out slightly as it moves back but doesn't really do much. In a lot of ways this comes across like a better smelling, slightly sweeter, slightly tastier version of the Harlequin, and that's not quite good enough in this company. I love Torres with a burning passion, but none of what I like about it is here in this drink. Frankly, the Torrecar is a waste of the stuff.
And that's it - six liqueurs, six cocktails, and we're done. So, which is the best?
Well, as before, I think it finally depends on what you're using it for. The Gran Gala, if you can ignore the force of its aroma, remains the best mixer, followed by La Belle Orange and (maybe) the Grand Marnier. The Torres may be a mediocre mixer, but for my money it destroys everything else for sheer sipping joy (the bizarre Tuaca comes in at a very distant second). LBO and the Marnier are probably the best all-rounders. And Tuaca, well, that's something for the cocktail scientists among us. And, while we may not have a clear winner, we at least have a clear loser in the Harlequin. Harlequin isn't horrible, it's just weak and comparatively rough, and there's very little it does that the others can't do better. Its only significant plus is that it mimics the classic Grand Marnier flavor and aroma better than anything else here. If you're a cheapskate, you could presumably use it to fake out your foodie friends.
And that leads the final point to be made: Grand Marnier is pretty good, but it's fuckin' expensive. Even the Harlequin, as weak as it is, is (I think) a better value for the money than Grand Marnier. And if that's the case even for the worst stuff here, it's doubly true for everything else. So, then, let the conclusions stand thusly: Harlequin is the clear loser, Grand Marnier is overpriced, and for everything else, go by your own needs and preferences.
Grand Marnier
Grade: A-
Summary: Smooth, sweet. It's good stuff, neither too strong nor too laid back, and it's relaxing to sip (if a little one-dimensional). And it works well in a drink, used properly. But at $32 a pop, it isn't really worth it.
Gran Gala
Grade: B+
Summary: Vile but interesting. The aroma's way too pungent and it's hard to sip neat, but it mixes like a champ.
Gran Torres
Grade: A
Summary: Smells and sips the best of anything here. Incredibly nuanced stuff on its own. But if it's a mixer you want, well, subtlety isn't really the way to go.
Harlequin
Grade: B-
Summary: It's a cheap knockoff of Grand Marnier. Period. Pour it into an old GM bottle and pretend not to be the shallow cheapskate that you are. I won't tell if you don't.
La Belle Orange
Grade: A-
Summary: Grand Marnier Xtreme. Even smoother and sweeter, and that can be good or bad depending on taste. It does cost about 40% less, though, and that's a lot.
Tuaca
Grade: B
Summary: Odd, vanilla-y orange liqueur. Nice enough for sipping neat (slowly), but I suspect its real brilliance lies in finding the right cocktails for it.
Monday, January 18, 2010
Monday, January 11, 2010
Vacation Roundup: Asheville Ninja Porter, Olde Hickory Hickory Stick Stout, and Pisgah Porter
I watched Stalker (aka CTANKEP) for the first time a couple of months ago. I loved it. I could go into some specifics about what makes it so amazing, but suffice it to say it's just a brilliant, beautiful movie; it somehow manages to be thought-provoking without shoving things down one's throat. It's a great movie, and a thoroughly unique one.
Thing is, though, I wouldn't watch it every day. Hell, I wouldn't watch it every month.
This in itself seems to be enough to make questionable certain kinds of metaphysical assumptions; I am thinking in particular of Whitehead and process philosophy more generally. This position is generally not taken very seriously anymore, nor even particularly well understood, and I shall not try to describe it generally. One key feature to all metaphysical positions of this sort (broadly speaking), is that the work of "becoming" has to have an aim of some sort. Every entity, in the short moment of its being an entity, makes a 'decision' (in a very broad sense of the term) based on the various prevailing possibilities available to it. The thought goes that this 'decision' cannot be made at random, but must have some kind of telos. Whitehead says, for example, that "'becoming' is a creative advance into novelty" - by which he means, to grossly simplify, that the the cosmos as a whole, in all its diversity, must have an increase of novelty as its final aim. The 'decisions' of all entities, although never perfect, gravitate towards the novel. This must be as true of us as of anything else. Becoming, as such, is aesthetical. But why, then, should I prefer to watch something worse - Con Air, maybe - over Stalker? Surely I would say that Stalker is not only a finer film, but a more novel one. But I could watch Nicholas Cage sidekick dudes with a mullet all day, whereas Stalker is more of a once-a-year kind of thing. I spend hours watching dumb clips on Youtube, when a priori at least I should be watching City of God or something.
Now, in all fairness, I'm sure a sufficiently clever process thinker may find some way to explain away these particular examples as perfectly consistent with their position, but there's a more fundamental point that (it seems to me) still stands. Process philosophy attempts to understand every entity, every little scrap of being, as an instance of production, working, making, poiesis - in a cosmos where we ourselves are not always "at work." Hell, we aren't always even comfortable working. On the contrary, human beings have an orientation towards leisure which is at least as fundamental. I won't tease out any further what that means, at least not today, but it seems to me important to take note of. After all, as I never tire of pointing out, leisure is the first condition for philosophy.
With that in mind, then, I'd like to try out a trio of leisurely beers - two porters and a stout. These beers are all sold in deuce-deuce bottles, cost roughly the same, and are all made somewhere around Asheville. Seems like prime material for a roundup.
The first beer is the Ninja Porter from the Asheville Brewing Company. It's, well, a big bottle with a friggin' ninja on the label. It's dopey, but it's not like they were going for anything else. Maybe they were wise to do this. Really: if you passed a beer with a ninja on the label in your local shop, could you pass it up?
Out of the bottle it pours almost completely black, with just a trace of ruby at the sides if held up to a light. Not much of a head on this one either: I get a half-finger at first, which quickly dies down into a coppery froth. It does smell pretty damn good, though: milk chocolate right out front, flanked by some roasted malts and just enough fruitiness to keep things interesting. Further down in the back I also get raisins and a little bit of banana bread. No trace of hops, really, just a thick dollop of dark malty goodness.
I can report, verbatim, that my first words upon sipping this porter were "ooh, that's kind of nice." In a lot of ways this reminds me of the Bell's Special Double Cream Stout I had a few weeks ago (which was, I note again, neither creamy nor very special), except it's lighter, slightly more interesting, and a heck of a lot easier to drink. The cacao flavors from the roasted malt are dominant, but they're relieved by some honey, raisin nut bread, and sweet chocolate tastes. The word of the day here is "balanced." The taste up front features a mild coffee sting - no sweetness at all. Towards the middle the bitter coffee/cacao flavors remain in command, but at the same moment they're contested by a sugary-but-burntastic counterpart - almost a cola flavor, if you wish. By the end the cola develops into a molasses-and-chocolate kinda thing, which closes out on equal footing with the roasted malts (united in harmony to keep out the hops). The aftertaste is a bit cloying, really - imagine you've just had a not-so-great cup of sweetened black tea - but doesn't detract much from the rest of the beer. In terms of texture, it's about average for a porter. That is to say, those of us weaning ourselves off of Miller High Life are going to think they're drinking a loaf of sourdough, and those of us coming from a couple of imperial stouts are going to find it pleasantly light.
Me, I'm in the "pleasantly light" camp. I find this beer to be, as it were, not "exciting" or "interesting" (it isn't - if you've been around your English ales long enough, you know these flavors) so much as "refreshing." If I'd just crawled into the Asheville Brewing restaurant after a day climbing around the local mountains, this is the beer I'd want to have. It's not incredible - it's a bubble bath, if you like. It's just there to be kind of idly comforting. It's the When Harry Met Sally of beers, and it gets a B.
Next up on the plate is the Hickory Stick Stout from the Olde Hickory Brewery. Hickory is a city a ways east of Asheville, down in the foothills. You can think of it as Asheville's more workmanlike, less trendy, significantly less hippy big brother. I like to imagine that when they get together for holidays and such, Hickory tries to tell boring stories about the other guys working at the plant and Asheville has to spend ten minutes explaining why stuffing cooked in Hickory's turkey is no longer vegetarian.
Where was I? Oh, right. Anyways, the bottle has a reasonably pretty forest design on it.
Like the Ninja it pours real, real dark, albeit not "totally black" (as the side of the bottle would have you believe). Again, no real head to speak of - I get a little bit of tan fizz for a moment, which then settles back down again to leave a thin film. Hmm. The aroma, likewise, is pretty subdued - lots of milk chocolate in there, cut through with some coffee. None of the fruitiness from the ninja porter, but there's definitely some hops in there this time. It's a very vague aroma, really - I don't know what I'm getting with this one.
Well, now! This, too, produced an "Ooh, that's nice." The flavor development is very odd on this - it doesn't go at all how one would expect it to, but in a good way. It starts off with a tiny bit of a coffee tingle on the tongue, then develops a lovely hot cocoa kind of taste in the middle. Then, all of a sudden, WHAM. Roasted malts rush in like a flash flood, intermixed with a small measure of grapefruity west coast hops, all of it fusing with the already-established sweet malt flavors. It's rather as if your hot chocolate somehow got two shots of espresso and a lemon into it as you were drinking the stuff. The aftertaste is pretty dry, mainly carring over the roasted flavors. It's an unusual flavor line, then, but it grows on you quickly.
The Ninja Porter may be more refreshing, but this is the better beer. It's more creative, it's got more going on; it's the sort of thing you can show off to your friends (trust me, they haven't tried this one before). Hell, it would even work pretty well as a holiday beer. Actually, in some ways this is the most festive brew I've had since my buying spree - and that's with a couple of Christmas ales and winter warmers under my belt.
Unfortunately, however, it does not have a ninja on the label. No beer is perfect. But it gets a B+ anyways.
Finally there's the last of our trio of Asheville area bombers, which is another porter. This one, the Pisgah Porter, is from the Pisgah Brewing Company in Black Mountain, and it claims to be "Asheville's best selling beer." Hmm, I don't know about that, not as long as the big boys with their crap lager are still around. On the other hand, this claim is in fact the most interesting thing on the label. The rest of it is pretty nondescript. You get a kind of light brown color on most of the label, and then right in the center there's the "Pisgah" name and a shot of a river running downhill amidst a forest. It's the sort of picture one expects to find on a blue-coded Magic: The Gathering card, really. I kind of prefer the Ninja's label. Anyways, moving on...
Well, like the previous porter, this pours a nice dark ruby color (hold it up to a light and you can see hints of red at the sides). Also like the others, there's no real head here either - just a miserable half-finger that quickly disappears. The aroma is actually a bit stronger, although simpler as well: most of it, again, is chocolate milk, relieved by a little bit of earth and roastiness. No real hoppiness this time. That's really all there is to it in terms of character, but - again - it comes across as about twice as strong as the others. And now I taste it...
...Wha-a-at?
I don't want to think that I got a bad bottle somehow, but I can't imagine the beer is supposed to taste like this. If the Hickory stout takes a hard, powerslidy left turn halfway through the mouth, this one hits a tree. Hard. I mean, it starts off very nicely: there's coffee with cream and sugar on the front end, then a milky bittersweetness as it approaches the middle. And then it just kind of ends. The flavor falls off completely, leaving almost no aftertaste. It's not a dry finish or anything - there is no finish. You might be able to detect some slight sweetness and an odd, almost minty coolness, but that's it; it's like the beer just evaporates.
I simply have no idea what's going on with this beer. The flavor development is the closest any brew has ever come to coitus interruptus. I guess I can say the body is medium to thin and that it might pair well with some barbecue or something. Because it is, and it would. But saying that is just to cover how mystified I am by a beer that somehow steals itself out of my mouth the moment I swallow it. Does anyone understand this? What is happening here? What the fuck is going on?
I almost feel like I shouldn't grade this. I don't like it, but at the same time I can't get my brain around what they were doing here. If this is some kind of new self-cleaning beer, it's brilliant. If it's just an attempt at a decent porter, it's well short of the mark. I'll assume it's the latter.
Asheville Ninja Porter
Grade: B
Summary: It may have a ninja on the label, but inside it's a big teddy bear.
Olde Hickory Hickory Stick Stout
Grade: B+
Summary: A delicious and oddball surprise. Not quite world class, but different enough to chase down if you get a chance.
Pisgah Porter
Grade: D+
Summary: It's the Amazing Evaporating Porter!
Thing is, though, I wouldn't watch it every day. Hell, I wouldn't watch it every month.
This in itself seems to be enough to make questionable certain kinds of metaphysical assumptions; I am thinking in particular of Whitehead and process philosophy more generally. This position is generally not taken very seriously anymore, nor even particularly well understood, and I shall not try to describe it generally. One key feature to all metaphysical positions of this sort (broadly speaking), is that the work of "becoming" has to have an aim of some sort. Every entity, in the short moment of its being an entity, makes a 'decision' (in a very broad sense of the term) based on the various prevailing possibilities available to it. The thought goes that this 'decision' cannot be made at random, but must have some kind of telos. Whitehead says, for example, that "'becoming' is a creative advance into novelty" - by which he means, to grossly simplify, that the the cosmos as a whole, in all its diversity, must have an increase of novelty as its final aim. The 'decisions' of all entities, although never perfect, gravitate towards the novel. This must be as true of us as of anything else. Becoming, as such, is aesthetical. But why, then, should I prefer to watch something worse - Con Air, maybe - over Stalker? Surely I would say that Stalker is not only a finer film, but a more novel one. But I could watch Nicholas Cage sidekick dudes with a mullet all day, whereas Stalker is more of a once-a-year kind of thing. I spend hours watching dumb clips on Youtube, when a priori at least I should be watching City of God or something.
Now, in all fairness, I'm sure a sufficiently clever process thinker may find some way to explain away these particular examples as perfectly consistent with their position, but there's a more fundamental point that (it seems to me) still stands. Process philosophy attempts to understand every entity, every little scrap of being, as an instance of production, working, making, poiesis - in a cosmos where we ourselves are not always "at work." Hell, we aren't always even comfortable working. On the contrary, human beings have an orientation towards leisure which is at least as fundamental. I won't tease out any further what that means, at least not today, but it seems to me important to take note of. After all, as I never tire of pointing out, leisure is the first condition for philosophy.
With that in mind, then, I'd like to try out a trio of leisurely beers - two porters and a stout. These beers are all sold in deuce-deuce bottles, cost roughly the same, and are all made somewhere around Asheville. Seems like prime material for a roundup.
The first beer is the Ninja Porter from the Asheville Brewing Company. It's, well, a big bottle with a friggin' ninja on the label. It's dopey, but it's not like they were going for anything else. Maybe they were wise to do this. Really: if you passed a beer with a ninja on the label in your local shop, could you pass it up?
Out of the bottle it pours almost completely black, with just a trace of ruby at the sides if held up to a light. Not much of a head on this one either: I get a half-finger at first, which quickly dies down into a coppery froth. It does smell pretty damn good, though: milk chocolate right out front, flanked by some roasted malts and just enough fruitiness to keep things interesting. Further down in the back I also get raisins and a little bit of banana bread. No trace of hops, really, just a thick dollop of dark malty goodness.
I can report, verbatim, that my first words upon sipping this porter were "ooh, that's kind of nice." In a lot of ways this reminds me of the Bell's Special Double Cream Stout I had a few weeks ago (which was, I note again, neither creamy nor very special), except it's lighter, slightly more interesting, and a heck of a lot easier to drink. The cacao flavors from the roasted malt are dominant, but they're relieved by some honey, raisin nut bread, and sweet chocolate tastes. The word of the day here is "balanced." The taste up front features a mild coffee sting - no sweetness at all. Towards the middle the bitter coffee/cacao flavors remain in command, but at the same moment they're contested by a sugary-but-burntastic counterpart - almost a cola flavor, if you wish. By the end the cola develops into a molasses-and-chocolate kinda thing, which closes out on equal footing with the roasted malts (united in harmony to keep out the hops). The aftertaste is a bit cloying, really - imagine you've just had a not-so-great cup of sweetened black tea - but doesn't detract much from the rest of the beer. In terms of texture, it's about average for a porter. That is to say, those of us weaning ourselves off of Miller High Life are going to think they're drinking a loaf of sourdough, and those of us coming from a couple of imperial stouts are going to find it pleasantly light.
Me, I'm in the "pleasantly light" camp. I find this beer to be, as it were, not "exciting" or "interesting" (it isn't - if you've been around your English ales long enough, you know these flavors) so much as "refreshing." If I'd just crawled into the Asheville Brewing restaurant after a day climbing around the local mountains, this is the beer I'd want to have. It's not incredible - it's a bubble bath, if you like. It's just there to be kind of idly comforting. It's the When Harry Met Sally of beers, and it gets a B.
Next up on the plate is the Hickory Stick Stout from the Olde Hickory Brewery. Hickory is a city a ways east of Asheville, down in the foothills. You can think of it as Asheville's more workmanlike, less trendy, significantly less hippy big brother. I like to imagine that when they get together for holidays and such, Hickory tries to tell boring stories about the other guys working at the plant and Asheville has to spend ten minutes explaining why stuffing cooked in Hickory's turkey is no longer vegetarian.
Where was I? Oh, right. Anyways, the bottle has a reasonably pretty forest design on it.
Like the Ninja it pours real, real dark, albeit not "totally black" (as the side of the bottle would have you believe). Again, no real head to speak of - I get a little bit of tan fizz for a moment, which then settles back down again to leave a thin film. Hmm. The aroma, likewise, is pretty subdued - lots of milk chocolate in there, cut through with some coffee. None of the fruitiness from the ninja porter, but there's definitely some hops in there this time. It's a very vague aroma, really - I don't know what I'm getting with this one.
Well, now! This, too, produced an "Ooh, that's nice." The flavor development is very odd on this - it doesn't go at all how one would expect it to, but in a good way. It starts off with a tiny bit of a coffee tingle on the tongue, then develops a lovely hot cocoa kind of taste in the middle. Then, all of a sudden, WHAM. Roasted malts rush in like a flash flood, intermixed with a small measure of grapefruity west coast hops, all of it fusing with the already-established sweet malt flavors. It's rather as if your hot chocolate somehow got two shots of espresso and a lemon into it as you were drinking the stuff. The aftertaste is pretty dry, mainly carring over the roasted flavors. It's an unusual flavor line, then, but it grows on you quickly.
The Ninja Porter may be more refreshing, but this is the better beer. It's more creative, it's got more going on; it's the sort of thing you can show off to your friends (trust me, they haven't tried this one before). Hell, it would even work pretty well as a holiday beer. Actually, in some ways this is the most festive brew I've had since my buying spree - and that's with a couple of Christmas ales and winter warmers under my belt.
Unfortunately, however, it does not have a ninja on the label. No beer is perfect. But it gets a B+ anyways.
Finally there's the last of our trio of Asheville area bombers, which is another porter. This one, the Pisgah Porter, is from the Pisgah Brewing Company in Black Mountain, and it claims to be "Asheville's best selling beer." Hmm, I don't know about that, not as long as the big boys with their crap lager are still around. On the other hand, this claim is in fact the most interesting thing on the label. The rest of it is pretty nondescript. You get a kind of light brown color on most of the label, and then right in the center there's the "Pisgah" name and a shot of a river running downhill amidst a forest. It's the sort of picture one expects to find on a blue-coded Magic: The Gathering card, really. I kind of prefer the Ninja's label. Anyways, moving on...
Well, like the previous porter, this pours a nice dark ruby color (hold it up to a light and you can see hints of red at the sides). Also like the others, there's no real head here either - just a miserable half-finger that quickly disappears. The aroma is actually a bit stronger, although simpler as well: most of it, again, is chocolate milk, relieved by a little bit of earth and roastiness. No real hoppiness this time. That's really all there is to it in terms of character, but - again - it comes across as about twice as strong as the others. And now I taste it...
...Wha-a-at?
I don't want to think that I got a bad bottle somehow, but I can't imagine the beer is supposed to taste like this. If the Hickory stout takes a hard, powerslidy left turn halfway through the mouth, this one hits a tree. Hard. I mean, it starts off very nicely: there's coffee with cream and sugar on the front end, then a milky bittersweetness as it approaches the middle. And then it just kind of ends. The flavor falls off completely, leaving almost no aftertaste. It's not a dry finish or anything - there is no finish. You might be able to detect some slight sweetness and an odd, almost minty coolness, but that's it; it's like the beer just evaporates.
I simply have no idea what's going on with this beer. The flavor development is the closest any brew has ever come to coitus interruptus. I guess I can say the body is medium to thin and that it might pair well with some barbecue or something. Because it is, and it would. But saying that is just to cover how mystified I am by a beer that somehow steals itself out of my mouth the moment I swallow it. Does anyone understand this? What is happening here? What the fuck is going on?
I almost feel like I shouldn't grade this. I don't like it, but at the same time I can't get my brain around what they were doing here. If this is some kind of new self-cleaning beer, it's brilliant. If it's just an attempt at a decent porter, it's well short of the mark. I'll assume it's the latter.
Asheville Ninja Porter
Grade: B
Summary: It may have a ninja on the label, but inside it's a big teddy bear.
Olde Hickory Hickory Stick Stout
Grade: B+
Summary: A delicious and oddball surprise. Not quite world class, but different enough to chase down if you get a chance.
Pisgah Porter
Grade: D+
Summary: It's the Amazing Evaporating Porter!
Friday, January 8, 2010
Micreview: Goose Island Christmas Ale (2009)
The Christmas Ale is a Goose Island tradition, apparently. At heart it's a humble brown ale, to which the brewers add a slew of festive spices - "and with each year we change the recipe slightly so that you have something special to look forward to." This, then, is the 2009 vintage, something that's relevant for two reasons. First, this year Goose Island is giving some of their profits from this beer to the Chicago Christmas Ship (a local charity) - kudos to GI, then. Second, the bottle I'm drinking is a bit young, having only been brewed in October. Goose Island claims that the ale "develops in the bottle over 5 years" - which is a lot, considering the alcohol content is well south of what I typically think of as beers suited for storage (it's only a 5.7). Note that, seeing as this is a Christmas ale, they had to go and make the bottle design just about the most garish thing Goose Island sells. The wreath and Santa hat really look rather silly set next to the deliberate simplicity, e.g., of GI's heritage collection.
Anyways, that's enough post-holiday complaining, we have a beer to get to. This stuff pours a rather lovely amber color, with about a finger and a half of fizzy tan head. It's also quite thin-looking, but then again this is a brown ale - I'm not expecting chocolate sauce here. The aroma is the first real surprise: it actually comes off as boozy, which by all rights it shouldn't be. Aside from the very present alcohol, the main features are a mix of caramel and citrus (from the hops, I assume), undergirded by an odd earthiness and maybe a touch of yeast. It's not that great, really. More surprisingly, the spiciness I was expecting just isn't here at all.
Thankfully, the taste comes off somewhat better. "Brown ale" isn't the first style to come to mind, though - this strikes me more as an amber than anything else (and yes, I more than anyone admit that these categories are open for debate, but still). There's a bit of a bittersweet nudge up front. Towards the middle the pale malts start to come in - there's a sort of biscuit character to it all, mixed with some fruitiness (apples, maybe). The hops from the aroma are there at the end, and they've got a quite noticeable grapefruity bite, but they're not nearly as strong as I expected. Only after I swallow do I begin to notice some spices: suspended over the maltiness from before I get nutmeg, cloves, and maybe a little bit of cinnamon. Not an extraordinary aftertaste, but pleasant nevertheless. It's nice, it's festive, and it's by far the most interesting thing about this beer.
If you absolutely must have a Christmas seasonal with a Santa Goose on the label, well, this brew ain't all that bad. Beyond that, I wouldn't bother with it. If the Goose Island brown you need for your festivities can do without the holiday label, then do yourself a favor and find some Naughty Goose.
Grade: C+
Summary: A middling brown (actually amber) ale with a somewhat nifty holiday aftertaste.
Anyways, that's enough post-holiday complaining, we have a beer to get to. This stuff pours a rather lovely amber color, with about a finger and a half of fizzy tan head. It's also quite thin-looking, but then again this is a brown ale - I'm not expecting chocolate sauce here. The aroma is the first real surprise: it actually comes off as boozy, which by all rights it shouldn't be. Aside from the very present alcohol, the main features are a mix of caramel and citrus (from the hops, I assume), undergirded by an odd earthiness and maybe a touch of yeast. It's not that great, really. More surprisingly, the spiciness I was expecting just isn't here at all.
Thankfully, the taste comes off somewhat better. "Brown ale" isn't the first style to come to mind, though - this strikes me more as an amber than anything else (and yes, I more than anyone admit that these categories are open for debate, but still). There's a bit of a bittersweet nudge up front. Towards the middle the pale malts start to come in - there's a sort of biscuit character to it all, mixed with some fruitiness (apples, maybe). The hops from the aroma are there at the end, and they've got a quite noticeable grapefruity bite, but they're not nearly as strong as I expected. Only after I swallow do I begin to notice some spices: suspended over the maltiness from before I get nutmeg, cloves, and maybe a little bit of cinnamon. Not an extraordinary aftertaste, but pleasant nevertheless. It's nice, it's festive, and it's by far the most interesting thing about this beer.
If you absolutely must have a Christmas seasonal with a Santa Goose on the label, well, this brew ain't all that bad. Beyond that, I wouldn't bother with it. If the Goose Island brown you need for your festivities can do without the holiday label, then do yourself a favor and find some Naughty Goose.
Grade: C+
Summary: A middling brown (actually amber) ale with a somewhat nifty holiday aftertaste.
Monday, January 4, 2010
Vacation Roundup: Clay Pipe Pursuit of Happiness and RJ Rockers Bell Ringer
(I bought I lot of beer over my holiday vacation to the east coast, and I'll be slowly working through it all over the next few weeks. Here, then, is the first installment.)
There are a lot of folks who don't make it into the thankless world of grad school (I'm not talking about the ones who get there and have the good sense to leave, mind, just the ones who don't make it in). A few - a lot fewer than you would think, really - don't have sufficient talent or training. That leaves the vast majority, who are good enough but by some arbitrary fiat don't make it in anyways. (And if you're reading this and thinking of going for this crazy thing, there is one thing to remember at all times: grad school is, at every moment that matters, a lottery. Or rather, it's a series of lotteries. And for each gamble you must throw more and more of your time and money, your sweat and your tears, into the pot. And you've got to nail every round to win the big prize, which isn't all that impressive anyways. And like any game of chance, you can do everything right and still lose.)
Anyways, the point is: even if you're extremely qualified, there's no way to predict whether you will get in or not. If you're too sociable or not sociable enough, if you've been taking classes with too many people or with two few, if you ask too many questions or too few, if you've gone to the wrong school, if your program took in too many people the year before, if you end up on the wrong side of a territorial squabble - all of these things can be the end of a graduate career.
But I'm not going to talk about those things. Instead, today I'm going to talk about those who (put positively) have wide interests, or who (put negatively) can't settle down on some particular issue or project.
In the fourth chapter of Being and Time Heidegger (in)famously discusses social life. One finds there a rather unflattering portrayal of the human being, which - weirdly - much of contemporary Anglophone philosophy is beginning to take very seriously indeed (I think of Brandom, for example). People are described as others, and my relationship to them rests on a "being-with" (Mitsein) which is constitutive for the structure of my own existence - there is a certain sense in which I must "be with..." even if, objectively speaking, there is no other example of homo sapien around. Others are fundamentally co-existences (in the sense, for example, of "coworkers") with whom I interact in the various tasks I deal with from day to day. Their being, as such, consists in the fact that we are all in the same world together, chatting about stuff and working together (or, indeed, being in a state of conflict or mutual indifference), and in rare circumstances even doing philosophy. This means, among other things, that the philosophical problem of other minds - "how do I know that anyone else out there is a thinking being?" - is completely dissolved. It does involve biting a bullet, though: "In that with which we concern ourselves environmentally the others are encountered as what they are; they are what they do (betreiben)."
"Betreiben" should be taken in the widest possible sense. What Heidegger is getting at is that we typically encounter others by way of their roles - that one as a baker, that one as the cop who could be checking out my car, that one as "the man who wrote Waverly" (Russell). There is a certain replaceability to others as we encounter them in everyday circumstances: I do not care who my waitress is so long as she is good at her job, I do not care which cab I take so long as I get where I need to go. The primary importance lies with the doing, not (as it were) the subject of the doing - which can basically be divided out of the equation. This can be extended even to roles that we would want to consider necessary - e.g., to someone's being the child of so-and-so (Kripke). And, for the most part, we even think of ourselves in this way as well.
There is something rather grim about this picture, and it has been criticized - with some justice - by many. It cannot make much sense of love or ethical comportment, for a start. I am willing to grant those moments a great deal of weight, but for the vast majority of situations I think Heidegger must be right. The first half of Being and Time has yet to be topped as a description of how we are, initially and most of the time, and nowhere is that fact more sobering than in that chapter.
I now return to my original topic, and deploy this insight in a bit of practical philosophy.
Let us say that you are an extremely bright young scholar of religious studies. You began by working on Native American practices, and to some extent you still do, but then you began to expand to other areas - say, more on the theoretical side of things (Marx or whatever). And after taking an extra class or two, you begin to get interested in the classical world too - particularly Herodotus. And also in contemporary debates about medical ethics. And then there's your long-running fascination with German romanticism. And somehow you tie all all of this together into your application. Even if you've done everything with style and clarity, here is the problem: if the powers that be are going to intelligently decide on whether or not to let you into their clubhouse, they have to know who you are. And if Heidegger is right, that means they have to know what you do. They need some quick way to call you to mind, e.g., That Guy Who's Working on Late Plato. If you're all over the place, if you never really commit, they probably won't be able to remember you.
And that brings me to the beers I'd like to talk about. They're not bad by any stretch, but they are both curiously neutral. They try to do a lot of things, but don't bear down on any of them. And that means that, while they're not bad, they're also not anything I'm going to try a second time.
The first is Pursuit of Happiness, a winter warmer from Clay Pipe Brewing in Westminster Maryland - a brewery I've never tried before. Heck, aside from Flying Dog this is the first Maryland beer I've ever had. It's rather strong for the style - 8.25% ABV, which is enough to put some holiday cheer into anyone's vacation. The bottle, decked out in blue and red, is festive but (I would say) rather generic.
Well, the pour isn't what I expected at all. Instead of the dark ruby I tend to associate with this style, there's an almost neon orange tinge to it - not to mention a huge, HUGE head. There's easily four to five fingers' worth of orange-flaked white, and this is after pouring less than half the bottle. It's persistent and sticky stuff, too: the inside of my glass looks like it's been attacked by the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man. If only all beers this strong had such a head. And then there's the aroma, which is another pleasant surprise. Rather than festive spices, it's actually mostly hops, and leaning hard towards the citrus end of the scale at that. There's some yeast and a caramel malt aroma, but lemony hops is the star here. Here's some holiday cheer for you: it smells like a West Coast IPA, albeit a fairly laid-back one.
Well, that isn't what I expected either. It's light and not really in a good way. After the aroma I was expecting it to coat my mouth with lovely hop burning, and it's doing that some - just not to the degree I was looking for. That massive alcohol content doesn't come through at all, but I kind of wish it would: this is watery, to be honest. As for the taste specific, it starts off up front with a lite version of your standard hoppy IPA tingle. The malts come in right afterwards, all earthy and warm like an Autumn bonfire (with a bit of honey there to provide relief). It finishes dry, with the citrus hops coming in and then fading away to leave an extremely long bitter bite of an aftertaste.
It's a decent brew - I'd have it if I wanted something with a little force, but not quite up there at India pale levels. Nevertheless, I'm struck with the sense that it's not quite what it wants to be. It needs a thicker mouthfeel, certainly, but there's more to it than that. The tastes here are all over the place, with nothing much to unify them. They're just sort of there, one right after another. Hops! Malt! Now more hops!! Now some bitterness!! I have the sense that if they pushed this beer more in just one of the directions in which it's trying to go - if they committed to something - then they'd have a real winner. As it is, it's worth drinking (and it's a pleasant surprise in many ways), but it'll never be one of the greats.
Next up is Bell Ringer, an "Imperial ESB" from RJ Rockers Brewing in Spartanburg, South Carolina - another new company to me. And it's appropriate, too, since I've never had an "Imperial ESB" before. I suppose I should expect a normal Bitter on meth, then.
First of all, I have to mention the bottle. It's a real beauty. I once said about the Goose Island Oatmealer that it was the only beer that came in a tux, and I'm now going to have to take it back. Bell Ringer's bottle comes with a fantastic grey and white on black design that I absolutely love, in a sort of '50s diner logo sort of way. It's classy.
The beer itself pours a very dark rusty orange color, with a tiny half-finger head. Unlike the Clay Pipe, there's no surprise there: this is 8.5% ABV, and the lack of carbonation shows. The aroma is quite subdued; it's mostly malts (pale, especially), and caramel and honey are the central notes. On the other hand, it opens up quite a bit with a bit of agitation. Give it a shake and you get a lot more fruitiness, especially orange, and a bit of hops tingle.
The taste, as expected, is quite malty - once again, think of an IPA with about a tenth of the hop bite and you'll be close. It's a very well-balanced maltiness, never leaning too far towards sugar or bitterness. It begins sweet on the tongue, then gains a nice toasted flavor as it moves back. By the finish the toasted note takes over completely, with some orangey hops briefly stopping by to say hello. The aftertaste carries over the toasted flavor, and also comes across as strangely herbal - as if I'd just been chewing on some parsley. It's odd, but it grows on you. Like the Clay Pipe, this too is a bit watery. Unlike the Clay Pipe, you can tell right from the get-go that you're getting a boozy damn beer - that, at least, distinguishes itself right away.
So once again, it's a decent beer - there's nothing really wrong with it beyond merely what I can nitpick, but there's also nothing all that special or memorable. It's not a massive spectacle of tastes like a beer of this strength should be. That would be okay if it could be used as a workhorse, an everyday sipper, but it can't. As a session beer, it's just too lively. If this beer were a car, it'd be a Pontiac G8. It's a fine creation, almost perfect for what it is really, and it's great value for money - but no one will ever really want one. Somehow it lacks the sparkle that would make me love it, or even remember it.
I suspect that after I'm finished posting this review I shall forget about these beers altogether. And there's a certain injustice in that: they aren't bad, after all, just a little wishy-washy. I suppose, then, to remember a beer, one needs a "hook" of sorts. It needs a role; it has to do something, identifiably so. And these brews aren't quite there.
Clay Pipe Pursuit of Happiness
Grade: B
Summary: Think of it less as a winter warmer and more as a stronger-than-average pale ale. Less nutmeg, more cascade.
RJ Rockers Bell Ringer
Grade: B
Summary: Near-perfect boozy balance.
There are a lot of folks who don't make it into the thankless world of grad school (I'm not talking about the ones who get there and have the good sense to leave, mind, just the ones who don't make it in). A few - a lot fewer than you would think, really - don't have sufficient talent or training. That leaves the vast majority, who are good enough but by some arbitrary fiat don't make it in anyways. (And if you're reading this and thinking of going for this crazy thing, there is one thing to remember at all times: grad school is, at every moment that matters, a lottery. Or rather, it's a series of lotteries. And for each gamble you must throw more and more of your time and money, your sweat and your tears, into the pot. And you've got to nail every round to win the big prize, which isn't all that impressive anyways. And like any game of chance, you can do everything right and still lose.)
Anyways, the point is: even if you're extremely qualified, there's no way to predict whether you will get in or not. If you're too sociable or not sociable enough, if you've been taking classes with too many people or with two few, if you ask too many questions or too few, if you've gone to the wrong school, if your program took in too many people the year before, if you end up on the wrong side of a territorial squabble - all of these things can be the end of a graduate career.
But I'm not going to talk about those things. Instead, today I'm going to talk about those who (put positively) have wide interests, or who (put negatively) can't settle down on some particular issue or project.
In the fourth chapter of Being and Time Heidegger (in)famously discusses social life. One finds there a rather unflattering portrayal of the human being, which - weirdly - much of contemporary Anglophone philosophy is beginning to take very seriously indeed (I think of Brandom, for example). People are described as others, and my relationship to them rests on a "being-with" (Mitsein) which is constitutive for the structure of my own existence - there is a certain sense in which I must "be with..." even if, objectively speaking, there is no other example of homo sapien around. Others are fundamentally co-existences (in the sense, for example, of "coworkers") with whom I interact in the various tasks I deal with from day to day. Their being, as such, consists in the fact that we are all in the same world together, chatting about stuff and working together (or, indeed, being in a state of conflict or mutual indifference), and in rare circumstances even doing philosophy. This means, among other things, that the philosophical problem of other minds - "how do I know that anyone else out there is a thinking being?" - is completely dissolved. It does involve biting a bullet, though: "In that with which we concern ourselves environmentally the others are encountered as what they are; they are what they do (betreiben)."
"Betreiben" should be taken in the widest possible sense. What Heidegger is getting at is that we typically encounter others by way of their roles - that one as a baker, that one as the cop who could be checking out my car, that one as "the man who wrote Waverly" (Russell). There is a certain replaceability to others as we encounter them in everyday circumstances: I do not care who my waitress is so long as she is good at her job, I do not care which cab I take so long as I get where I need to go. The primary importance lies with the doing, not (as it were) the subject of the doing - which can basically be divided out of the equation. This can be extended even to roles that we would want to consider necessary - e.g., to someone's being the child of so-and-so (Kripke). And, for the most part, we even think of ourselves in this way as well.
There is something rather grim about this picture, and it has been criticized - with some justice - by many. It cannot make much sense of love or ethical comportment, for a start. I am willing to grant those moments a great deal of weight, but for the vast majority of situations I think Heidegger must be right. The first half of Being and Time has yet to be topped as a description of how we are, initially and most of the time, and nowhere is that fact more sobering than in that chapter.
I now return to my original topic, and deploy this insight in a bit of practical philosophy.
Let us say that you are an extremely bright young scholar of religious studies. You began by working on Native American practices, and to some extent you still do, but then you began to expand to other areas - say, more on the theoretical side of things (Marx or whatever). And after taking an extra class or two, you begin to get interested in the classical world too - particularly Herodotus. And also in contemporary debates about medical ethics. And then there's your long-running fascination with German romanticism. And somehow you tie all all of this together into your application. Even if you've done everything with style and clarity, here is the problem: if the powers that be are going to intelligently decide on whether or not to let you into their clubhouse, they have to know who you are. And if Heidegger is right, that means they have to know what you do. They need some quick way to call you to mind, e.g., That Guy Who's Working on Late Plato. If you're all over the place, if you never really commit, they probably won't be able to remember you.
And that brings me to the beers I'd like to talk about. They're not bad by any stretch, but they are both curiously neutral. They try to do a lot of things, but don't bear down on any of them. And that means that, while they're not bad, they're also not anything I'm going to try a second time.
The first is Pursuit of Happiness, a winter warmer from Clay Pipe Brewing in Westminster Maryland - a brewery I've never tried before. Heck, aside from Flying Dog this is the first Maryland beer I've ever had. It's rather strong for the style - 8.25% ABV, which is enough to put some holiday cheer into anyone's vacation. The bottle, decked out in blue and red, is festive but (I would say) rather generic.
Well, the pour isn't what I expected at all. Instead of the dark ruby I tend to associate with this style, there's an almost neon orange tinge to it - not to mention a huge, HUGE head. There's easily four to five fingers' worth of orange-flaked white, and this is after pouring less than half the bottle. It's persistent and sticky stuff, too: the inside of my glass looks like it's been attacked by the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man. If only all beers this strong had such a head. And then there's the aroma, which is another pleasant surprise. Rather than festive spices, it's actually mostly hops, and leaning hard towards the citrus end of the scale at that. There's some yeast and a caramel malt aroma, but lemony hops is the star here. Here's some holiday cheer for you: it smells like a West Coast IPA, albeit a fairly laid-back one.
Well, that isn't what I expected either. It's light and not really in a good way. After the aroma I was expecting it to coat my mouth with lovely hop burning, and it's doing that some - just not to the degree I was looking for. That massive alcohol content doesn't come through at all, but I kind of wish it would: this is watery, to be honest. As for the taste specific, it starts off up front with a lite version of your standard hoppy IPA tingle. The malts come in right afterwards, all earthy and warm like an Autumn bonfire (with a bit of honey there to provide relief). It finishes dry, with the citrus hops coming in and then fading away to leave an extremely long bitter bite of an aftertaste.
It's a decent brew - I'd have it if I wanted something with a little force, but not quite up there at India pale levels. Nevertheless, I'm struck with the sense that it's not quite what it wants to be. It needs a thicker mouthfeel, certainly, but there's more to it than that. The tastes here are all over the place, with nothing much to unify them. They're just sort of there, one right after another. Hops! Malt! Now more hops!! Now some bitterness!! I have the sense that if they pushed this beer more in just one of the directions in which it's trying to go - if they committed to something - then they'd have a real winner. As it is, it's worth drinking (and it's a pleasant surprise in many ways), but it'll never be one of the greats.
Next up is Bell Ringer, an "Imperial ESB" from RJ Rockers Brewing in Spartanburg, South Carolina - another new company to me. And it's appropriate, too, since I've never had an "Imperial ESB" before. I suppose I should expect a normal Bitter on meth, then.
First of all, I have to mention the bottle. It's a real beauty. I once said about the Goose Island Oatmealer that it was the only beer that came in a tux, and I'm now going to have to take it back. Bell Ringer's bottle comes with a fantastic grey and white on black design that I absolutely love, in a sort of '50s diner logo sort of way. It's classy.
The beer itself pours a very dark rusty orange color, with a tiny half-finger head. Unlike the Clay Pipe, there's no surprise there: this is 8.5% ABV, and the lack of carbonation shows. The aroma is quite subdued; it's mostly malts (pale, especially), and caramel and honey are the central notes. On the other hand, it opens up quite a bit with a bit of agitation. Give it a shake and you get a lot more fruitiness, especially orange, and a bit of hops tingle.
The taste, as expected, is quite malty - once again, think of an IPA with about a tenth of the hop bite and you'll be close. It's a very well-balanced maltiness, never leaning too far towards sugar or bitterness. It begins sweet on the tongue, then gains a nice toasted flavor as it moves back. By the finish the toasted note takes over completely, with some orangey hops briefly stopping by to say hello. The aftertaste carries over the toasted flavor, and also comes across as strangely herbal - as if I'd just been chewing on some parsley. It's odd, but it grows on you. Like the Clay Pipe, this too is a bit watery. Unlike the Clay Pipe, you can tell right from the get-go that you're getting a boozy damn beer - that, at least, distinguishes itself right away.
So once again, it's a decent beer - there's nothing really wrong with it beyond merely what I can nitpick, but there's also nothing all that special or memorable. It's not a massive spectacle of tastes like a beer of this strength should be. That would be okay if it could be used as a workhorse, an everyday sipper, but it can't. As a session beer, it's just too lively. If this beer were a car, it'd be a Pontiac G8. It's a fine creation, almost perfect for what it is really, and it's great value for money - but no one will ever really want one. Somehow it lacks the sparkle that would make me love it, or even remember it.
I suspect that after I'm finished posting this review I shall forget about these beers altogether. And there's a certain injustice in that: they aren't bad, after all, just a little wishy-washy. I suppose, then, to remember a beer, one needs a "hook" of sorts. It needs a role; it has to do something, identifiably so. And these brews aren't quite there.
Clay Pipe Pursuit of Happiness
Grade: B
Summary: Think of it less as a winter warmer and more as a stronger-than-average pale ale. Less nutmeg, more cascade.
RJ Rockers Bell Ringer
Grade: B
Summary: Near-perfect boozy balance.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)