“If you get careless or go romanticizing scientific information, giving it a flourish here and there, Nature will soon make a complete fool out of you. It does it often enough anyway even when you don’t give it opportunities.”
- Robert M. Pirsig
It's been awhile since my last post, and the only thing that comes to my mind as I stare at my screen is that passage from Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. It struck a chord in me when I first read it years ago, and that chord still rings clearly today. I’ll get to that shortly . . .
 |
Resetting the clock for 2011...
|
While the masses gathered this past February to watch the Super Bowl, I prepared myself for one of my favorite events of the year – the Polar Bear Plunge in Lewes Beach, Delaware. So all male readers can breathe again, yes I did still watch some of the game, but I genuinely have no interest in football. It glorifies mental regression and really, who can take a sport seriously when one of its infractions has a name like encroachment? It sounds like something one of my college roommates (use your imagination) had to get a shot for at the infirmary after a night out with a . . . welcoming female. Anyway, it was my fifth or sixth plunge, and by this time I’m proud to say that I’m a bit of a seasoned veteran. The water temperature this year was balmy at 37ºF.
I include this anecdote to eventually return to Pirsig. After the plunge, we gathered ourselves for the trek back to New York when I received a phone call from my father. One of my two fermenters containing five gallons of Bourbon Vanilla Porter sweet nectar apparently developed a small crack at its bottom that remained unnoticed for anywhere from several hours to a few days. This was a durable fermenter that had withstood a batch of a 13% ABV (alcohol by volume) Russian Imperial Stout. The drive home was interminable, most notably through the NJ Turnpike Blues (exits 1-8A). In the end, I lost roughly 2.5 gallons of the five-gallon batch, but its full effect is still uncertain. I have bottled the salvaged beer, but there is a good chance the batch will be dumped. Unfortunately, while beer science often appears magical, there are a few rules that you must follow, and one of them is never introduce large quantities of oxygen to your beer. This is why you never directly pour beer from a fermenter to a secondary tank – always (while we’re on the matter of the oxymoronic magical science) use a siphon. My beer had been exposed to oxygen for an extended period of time, and at this point I honestly do not know what effect it will have on it. Time will tell.
Brewers are bound to experience hiccups along the way; if we didn’t then it wouldn’t be much fun, would it? I was disappointed in myself, but at least I still had a full, five-gallon batch of sweet nectar porter unaffected in my absence at the plunge. As I began siphoning to my keg, gravity, that merciless bitch, kicked in. I needed a greater angle between the fermenter and the keg, so I decided to slap Nature in the face by using my auto siphon, which was downstairs in the basement. Just a thirty-second trip – what could go wrong? I’ll try to paint this as clearly as possible: imagine a large plastic container (fermenter) sitting on a glass table with a tube in it. The other end of the tube rests on the rim of a half-filled keg two feet below the table’s top. As I went to grab my auto siphon, the tube on the keg fell onto the nice area rug in the room, kick-starting the siphon’s flow. I found one way to dye a rug brown.
This past brewing experience reaffirmed a notion that had been ingrained in my mind for years, but never as sturdily as it is now. It doesn’t matter how badly you want something or how preciously you revere your craft: keep Nature’s fundamentals nestled at your side or be prepared to be embarrassed time after time.
Nature made a complete fool out of me.
Luckily, shortly after my foolish fermenting follies, I embarked on my annual trip to Stowe, Vermont, where I characteristically spent far less time on the slopes as I did slouched over a bar stool sampling outrageously unique beers. Two highly noteworthy destinations:
1) The Alchemist Brewpub – the locals recommended this little goldmine right outside of Stowe. Fresh high-gravity beers, delicious bar-food, and friendly wait-staff make this place a definite repeat-visit.
2) Rock Art Brewery – this was our second time visiting this inexplicably unknown brewery. Their beers are some of the most complex that I’ve tasted over the years, and honestly, what beats Kokopelli as a logo?
Not-so-noteworthy:
1) Trapp Family Lodge Brewery – I recognize I am a bit of a lager-hater, but I challenge anyone to go from a Heady Topper and a Magnumus Ete Tomahawkus ESB3 to a Golden Helles Lager (don’t trust those 8 reviewers – that place is a straight-up brainwashed Twilight Zone episode) without producing some vile regurgitory matter.
 |
One of the most significant events of my trip, however, came courtesy of my friend. She came up with the brilliant idea of using a program for my phone called Evernote to log all the different beers I try on my adventures and then share them with fellow friends with similar interests (Hi Karl). I then extended this idea to possibly include beer reviews on this blog. Now, I have no delusions of trumping the beauty that is Beer Advocate, but I would like to illuminate some of the more hidden treasures of the craft beer world so others may continue to expand and flex their hypoglossal nerves as they sip fine beers such as Wolaver's Alta Gracia Coffee Porter. But I’ll expound upon that in future posts.
I apologize for the unnecessary, yet unavoidable hyperlink mania.
I’d like to leave you with some of my foolish aspirations. I am currently reading Sam Calagione’s Brewing Up a Business (ugghhh . . . more hyperlinks), which, so far has been truly insightful and inspiring. I can’t help but get chills as I imagine doing what Sam did – going for broke, ghetto-rigging a brewpub, and serving “off-centered ales for off-centered people”. The more I immerse myself in this world, the more I realize this is more than just a hobby for me. Those chills are more than just the primordial teacher, Nature’s ancient lessons from the past kicking in – they are an affirmation that at some point in the future I will make brewing a part of my everyday life.
On the upside, for now my research entails seeking out and drinking damn good beer as often as possible . . .
 |
I win
|
