By Jonathan Pattishall
|
October 1, 2010
With the autumnal equinox come and gone, and foul weather haunting Chapel Hill for half a week, we can officially say that summer is through. That means that fall is kind of here (or maybe not yet, or maybe sort of, or maybe he’s thinking about it) and it’s the time of the year that we pagan souls love most: harvest time. The harvest is a very special time all throughout the beer world, but it means different things in different places. In honor of this year’s assuredly diverse harvest, the Brew Ha Ha will be all over the place as well, trying to fight its ADD and focus on a consistent beer theme, but probably failing miserably. At the very least we will (mostly) restrict ourselves to seasonal and limited beers, so get your hands on these babies while supplies last, or prepare for a long, hard, thirsty winter.
We begin with a simple musing, a thought that occurred to me earlier today. It was half past noon and I was unashamedly pouring my “before-class beer,” a can of Guinness draught, widget clinking blissfully away. Once the pouring was finished I undertook my usual ritual of holding the full glass up to light, admiring the internal beauty of a vessel hardly worthy of its contents. It was a sight I’ve seen a million times before—the tiny, mocha-colored nitrate bubbles of Ireland’s most famous export sinking
curiously downwards, forming a liminal region between the dark black depths of its hell and the impenetrably thick cloud of its heaven. Then, as sometimes happens, a new thought sprang fully formed out of this familiar image: I was staring at a gem, a Tiger’s Eye to be exact. The transition of colors, the mesmerizing beauty, it was all there. Then I took the thought a step further. They say it takes nearly two minutes to pour the perfect pint of Guinness out of a tap, far longer than most (probably any) other beers. In tap terms this is called a “double pour,” and it takes the bartending equivalent of an epoch in geologic time. Is Guinness even a beer at all then? Or is it something more durable, forged deep underground in a crucifix of heat and pressure and time like its metamorphic twin? I don’t rightly know, but when drinking at 12:30 on a Thursday, such speculations can be pretty convincing.
Enough with the poetry, on to the beer! I picked up three different bottled
brews at the Carrboro Beverage Company on Thursday with an eye to seasonal
offerings. Here’s what I came up with.
Duck-Rabbit Märzen:
