Sunday, June 29, 2008

1,016 words


A decadent midweek lunch at Pizzeria Delfina made even more transcendent by an extraordinary off-menu addition.

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Friday, June 27, 2008

Fermentation Friday - 99% pit-free


Admittedly, the answer to this month's homebrew carnival question didn't come quickly or easily for me, something that's difficult to admit as being quick to respond with no shortage of verbosity is the way things are expected to work around here. Digging back through the history of my more creative creations unearthed a series of recipes that revealed I wasn't quite as weird with ingredients or techniques as maybe I'd like to appear, the anarchic individualist improvising artiste to which I aspire. After looking at logs that revealed inclusions of sweet gale, an attempt at decoctions, a locally-picked fresh hop pale ale, and the odd bit of cacao nibs, it was pretty clear that whenever I'd tried to inspire a "whazzis!?" moment in my guinea pig tasters, my formidable brain trust was going to do it through more or less traditional means: extreme fermentation temperatures, oddball grain bills, and esoteric packaging matched with laser light shows synced to the music of King Crimson.

Last week, while dining with my sister-in-law, she commented out of left field, "Mom didn't really understand when you put her cherries in your beer." That's when the proverbial lightbulb went up: To this day, it's safe to say that my mother-in-law probably still doesn't comprehend why I wasted a perfectly good jar of her brandied cherries on a batch of homebrew. My contribution to Fermentation Friday (the brainchild of Beer Bits 2, this month kindly hosted by Travis at CNYBrew.com) was written before I even touched the keyboard.

Backing up... Flathead Lake hosts a local cherry appellation that's an understandable point of pride. Sweet, floral, and late in the season, they're also collected annually by the in-laws in the vicinity of their home in northern Montana and transformed, with the aid of an almost trustworthy pitter in the hands of my father-in-law and the cooking and canning guidance of my mother-in-law, into jars of maroon gold: brandied cherries. Understand, as we're talking about a process that's as involved and time-consuming as, say, homebrewing, they're quite the valued commodity, doled out sparingly to family members deemed worthy of appreciating the fine art of capturing the ephemeral essence of peak season cherries in little time capsules to be enjoyed when the shorter days of winter don't provide.

We all see where this is going, right? Here's the point at which we can divide the readers into two camps: those who see adding these cherries to a batch of homebrew as either as act of love and respect or as a reckless, wasteful sacrifice.

When Des and I discovered we'd be welcoming the arrival of a new member of the household back in 2006, it wasn't long before the brewer brain started pondering the best way to commemorate the occasion. I wanted a beer for sipping, something that could be slowly enjoyed while it aged, to be paired with long, quiet evenings in the rocking chair spent trying to figure out this whole parenting thing. But it also needed to have some soul, some deeper connection. Some heredity, as it were. One barleywine base recipe, some lightly charred oak chips, and one coveted jar of Patty's brandied cherries later, a singularly special, if not rather unconventional, beer was created in honor of this next mysterious chapter of our lives.

And it was good.

PS The recipe as I posted it two weeks before Mia was born doesn't even reference anything about the backstory here, which is interesting in retrospect. Was I so superstitious about talking about Mia before she was born that it warranted being entirely circumspect about the recipe's origin? Why all the shy roundabout "shucks golly" explanations about why I really brewed it? Nothing like discovering proof in your own writing that illustrates the levels of denial you go through in the moments leading up to an enormous, inevitable life change, eh?

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Thursday, June 26, 2008

From Pizza Port to the port of Necromanteion


Arriving in Oakland after a quick weekend visit to San Diego, we were met by a bit of a surprise upon stepping out of the airport. With something in the range of 1,000 wildfires currently burning around Northern California, the midsummer light had taken on a yellowish hue, diffuse to the point that it now has an autumnal character, the air tinted with an aroma redolent of a morning's smoldering campfire. Heading into the secluded, windless nooks of the Ross Valley, the effect was intensified into a throat-scratching, permanent dusk, creating a bit of collective tension between the knowledge that the fires were miles away and the twitchy animal instinct for flight.

Why introduce a summary of our most recent visit to Solana Beach's little slice of craft beer heaven thusly, with such unrelated pissing and moaning? To be blunt, there'd be no greater pleasure than to sit down and extol the glory and virtue that Pizza Port can provide, but a deeply unsettling cranky factor has made it impossible to share with care. Now, four days after we've returned, the smoke not only continues to linger, but is intensifying; the headache it's caused has settled into a dull drone, accompanied charmingly by a nasty case of cotton mouth and the inability to take a good, deep breath, along with necessitating a cabin-fever inducing house arrest. Put together, it's not terribly conducive to good writing. But I can't put this post forever. Ergo, we'll just forgo the usual attempts at insight and humor, and hope that the images can provide enough interesting detail on their own:


I'd be remiss, however, if I didn't at least assert to you, the potential SoCal-bound, touring beer enthusiast, the importance of making a visit to Pizza Port in Solana Beach a high priority. Between the house brews, Lost Abbey labels, and the short but stunning guest draught list (La Folie on tap, anyone?) it's a can't-miss destination. When you're done there, swing by the Whole Foods in La Jolla to stock up on bottles of all the Port and Lost Abbey creations you forgot to get at the brewery (like the bottle of Devotion that I'm saving for the day my taste buds return).

Do I even need to bother mentioning the pizza's pretty good, too? And seriously, Junk in the Trunk Dunkel?

(For a little extra interest, check out the details about the stout mentioned in prolific brewer/blogger Tomme Arthur's recent post about the San Diego county fair.)

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Monday, June 23, 2008

Who woulda ever thought?


Granted, this is as close as I got to an encounter with the newest outpost of beer ambassadorship while visiting San Diego over the weekend, but still. It's a trip.

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Friday, June 20, 2008

Friday linknibbles - Extreme summer lethargy edition


Sorry, whomever's out there waiting for this site to magically self-update, for the dearth of pfiffy entertainment of late, but there's been a whole lot of busy doing nothing goin' on around here. Sometimes, honestly, it's simply more fulfilling to kick back and enjoy life - and the beer that goes with it, like the above, quite pleasant Penneffoise - rather than talking about it. So, here's a bag of some general bits and bobs to keep you distracted until... sometime in the near future when I get my act back together:

* I'm a babbie!

* This babbie's public house is staying open!

* We're hosting the next Session!

* But first, another beer blog carnival next (Fermentation) Friday!

* And before you know it, it's International Brewers Day!

Until then!

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Sunday, June 15, 2008

The bird, at rest


Nearing the longest day of the year, despite the fringes of fog being carried into the valley by a persistent maritime breeze out of the west, bringing along with it the slightest damp hint of a chill, the light seems to carry on through the evening in a way that not only keeps the air pleasant and warm, but makes time feel frozen perpetually around 4:00 in the afternoon, like an eternal springtime happy hour.

And what better way to celebrate a happy hour at the tail end of a splendid weekend than with a nice, proper pint of ale. Or, lacking that, a mug of the bird. Sure, it's only a week old, it's dead flat, and not exactly "refreshing" at 65°. On the other hand, it's an oddly fitting complement to lounging in the post-yellowjacket, pre-mosquito, friscalating dusklight of a Sunday in Ross Valley, almost British in its green, sticky malt presence, with enough cask character and balance to withstand the less than optimal serving temperature and complete lack of carbonation.

Then again, it's early. Both the summer and the bird are very young, with the hidden side of both having yet to reveal themselves. While the days will technically start getting shorter soon, you wouldn't know it from the way the heat of the sunlit hours won't gracefully fade into a cool evening's respite, instead carrying into the night like an oppressive broken record. And as for the bird, it's an unknown. All that's certain is it won't be getting any sweeter...

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Summer recreationist experimentation - Äppelwoi



Äppelwoi.
A source of great regional pride in the drinking traditions of Hesse, apple cider as it's been made and served in Frankfurt, notably Sachsenhausen, has always held a sentimental place in my boozing heart. A colleague of mine and I have an annual habit of proposing summer resolutions which, much like similar resolutions made six months earlier, rarely come to fruition: learning to play the cello, biking up the California coast, mastering ragtime guitar, and writing a symphony are some quality examples of late. This summer, I've adding something novel to "how I didn't spend my summer vacation": I'm going to figure out how to make a true, honest to goodness Äppelwoi.

The idea for this quixotic attempt at recapturing an ephemeral gustatory imprint from visits to family in Darmstadt was seeded by a discussion on the Aleuminati board regarding the current contents of all the members' homebrew stashes, upon which one member, alongside an "American bitter" and a "standard stout", mentioned he had an "apfelwein" going, which naturally got my attention. Unfortunately, after expressing my love for the stuff and pleading for the recipe, I was presented with instructions that, while all means would make a nice glass of apple cider - looked little like the Äppelwoi I knew, and rather than answer the question, left a new void of curiosity in its stead.

How is "apple-wine" different? That's part of the reason for doing this experiment: I'm not quite sure. What I do know is that in crossroads between one of the largest brewing and one of the largest winemaking meccas in the world, it's a fermented apple juice that his its place of pride in Germany's banking center. Historically, it's not hard to imagine the practical--and very German-- shift in production and engineering in regards to making alcohol out of apples that likely experienced a major shift during the French wine blight of the mid-19th century. Skilled winemakers, armed with the talents of coopers and cellar-tenders sharing techniques with the Bavarian lager brewers, easily translated their knowhow into the making of cider. (Granted, they'd been making cider since before the blight, too, but figuring out the story of how it became established at this point as the draught beverage of Frankfurt is part of what this project is about.)

Unlike beer as we currently experience it, Äppelwoi also has a seasonal life cycle that's ingrained into the culture that surrounds it, from the pressing of the apples, to the tasting of the young cider, to the lengthy fermentation, to the tapping of the old cider, to the point where the last of the old and first of the new overlap. Along with that comes a winemaker's discipline, a character trait I'm sorely lacking and could use some training in. A promising outcome of this experiment is that I might pick up some wisdom in learning how to think seasonally, something I've wanted to incorporate into our brewing for a while now, yet have had difficulty truly investigating since the modern age of temperature control has all but eradicated truly seasonal brewing.

I'll equally admit that Ron Pattison's translation work has been a nudge of inspiration here, the strange twitches of imagination that spark up when considering the sense of time-travel or teleportation that recreating these distant styles could evoke. On top of that, there's the desire to glean a better understanding of the story that's shaped my mother's, and by proxy my own and my daughter's, existence - granted, through a perspective slightly curved around the edges and marked by crosshatches as it passes through a ribbed glassful of Stöffche.

Over the next couple of months - until the apples come in, that is - I'll provide periodic updates whenever any interesting ground is broken. Until then, though, any commentary to help me get on the right track would be quite welcome! Until October, then...
Der Äpfelwein als Kind,
süß aus der Kelter rinnt...

Mit Jünglingsmut darauf
rauscht er mächtig auf!

Den ächten Manneswert
kriegt er, wenn er gärt!

Wenn er an Kräften reich
strahlend dem Golde gleich!

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Thursday, June 12, 2008

Announcing Session #17 - Going Against the Grain Bill: Solstice Edition



Up here in the Northern hemisphere, we're fast approaching the summer solstice, when the sun opts to beat down on us for as long as possible, and the marketing eye of brewing's Sauron becomes firmly targeted on light, easily quaffable, lawnmower beers, which we're all supposedly to dumbly chug down after demonstrably wiping our brows with the brim of the sweat-beaded can (cuz it's hot!) while wearing our mothball-scented aloha shirts and comically over-sized, personalized suede bbq mitts. (I'm likewise certain the same spell is being cast on you all down in the Southern hemisphere, but I can't even begin to imagine what they're trying to sell you at the moment.)

Granted, this sounds fun for about a minute. But before too long, we all like to duck out of view and follow our true (beer-related, please) desires, despite how unconventional it may seem to the general populace. Now's your chance to enlighten the rest of the world on what they might be missing.

The subject for July's Session could be summed up thusly: Drinking anti-seasonally. Think of this as the unorthodox cousin of such topics as "beer and food" and "beer and music". Beer and weather, perhaps? More like beer despite the weather, I guess. Cracking open a Guinness on the beach, finishing a day of yardwork with a Speedway Stout, or whatever else you do that raises an eyebrow (again, beer-related, please), do us all a favor and take a few moments to share your non-conformist tale (again, you kangaroos and lemurs down there, your take on this could be even more peculiar, so do chime in, please).

To join this upcoming hullabaloo, you'll want to post your entry to your blog on Friday, July 4, and let me know either by email () or by commenting either to this post or to the inevitable follow-up reminder.

The Session is a blog carnival originated by Stan Hieronymus at Appellation Beer. For a summary of the Sessions thus far, check out Brookston's handy guide.

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Wednesday, June 11, 2008

The bird, flying in the face of common sense

Well, then. Were you, dear readers, aware of the persistent, vicious rumors that have recently been circulated by nefariously pessimistic ne'er-do-wells regarding a supposed deficit - some going as far as to use the alarmist term "shortage" - of the medicinal, antibacterial, and lusciously sticky-icky fragrant flower we all hold near and dear to our beer-loving souls, better known as hops?

Whatever. Let's brew an II2PA2 (that's a double imperial India Pale Ale. Squared.) Introducing:

THE BIRD









As in: Flip it. Flip the bird in the general direction of all the malaise surrounding the condition of our economy, and not only as it pertains to beer. Enough already with the moaning about the rising cost of ingredients, and the lack of purchasing power of our dollar at the pub or the grocery store or the homebrew supply shop. We're separating the proverbial wheat from the chaff here. All the chips are in. My metaphor engine is at full tilt: Put your money where your mouth is, literally. Are you in or are you out? Do you, or do you not, value the quality of the beer you drink, on par with the other litany of comestibles you shove down your piehole on a daily basis? If you've started scouring the liquor store shelves for sale tags, feel free to stop reading. It's time to stimulate that karmic economy with a sip of something oh so very delectably bitter:


As in: Flying in the face of all that's reasonable and decent in this world, I decided to break an unplanned and seemingly endless streak of brewing nearly hop-free beers. Between some yeast-driven Belgo-American types, tame and grainy wheat beers, a malt-dominant scotch ale, a spice-heavy holiday ale, and autumn's stable of darker, balanced, and hop-shy British impressions, we've probably earned our rations for the big hop payback I claimed last weekend at Brewcraft. (I should quickly digress to comment on the tension that seemed to creep into the normally fun process of recipe formulation once the discussion turned to how I planned on clearing the store's shelves of all available top-tier hops. Naturally, they didn't even have the ones I'd planned on using, so it turned into a strange sort of alpha acid wheeling dealing sort of thing, where I outlined the bittering units needed to complete my mad plan (90!) and then haggled with Eric to make sure they weren't comprised entirely of harsh and grapefruity garbageblossoms.)

You see, among my numerous personality quirks that would make any therapist feel like a kid in a candy store is my compulsion to act on the most illogical of ideas. While other local masters of the brewing art are happily crafting unique new beers that dispatch with any reliance on hops in exchange for more experimental bittering and aromatic ingredients (like Moonlight's Brian Hunt, whose current releases Working for Tips* and Out to Lunch** are creating quite the stir), it was almost a guarantee that I'd develop the odd itch to discover what everyone's whinging on about and brew something ridiculously hop-aggressive, with such a blatant disregard for cost, efficiency and decency that's it's the homebrew equivalence of visiting the melting polar icecaps by a privately chartered jumbo jet. With the air conditioning on full blast.

When the best laid plans of a ProMash report are dashed before you've even left the store with your ingredients, it sets the stage for my favorite type of brewing day, as it's been proven over the years that equal parts improvisation and disaster typically makes for a fantastic finished product. Sparing you the details of all the bits of drama that unfolded as things didn't go exactly as planned, I will, for those of you brave enough to try to replicate this affair in your own home, relate one procedure which will undoubtedly alter the results from the attached chart. Despite my most lucid calculations regarding the evaporation rate of the kettle boil, at the end of 90 minutes there was a gallon more wort than had been anticipated. So, while we pitched just under 5 gallons in the primary, I set aside the remaining gallon and cooked it down on the stove for a couple more hours until it's volume had been reduced to about 1/4, allowing for even more bitterness extraction along with some nice Maillard (mallard? ha!) coloring which has left the blended wort a beautiful, rusty red.

Of course, that was before it started to ferment, cloud up with the wicked weather of an unholy sea of yeast and hops detritus, and proceed to blow the lid off the carboy about a half dozen times until I finally gave up and let it breathe naturally. The video below is a good demonstration for the novice brewer when it's best to allow for better blow-off during high krausen:




So, thing's are going swimmingly. I didn't bother to take a gravity reading, so don't ask for one. Look for an update in the next couple weeks as it graduates to the keg.

(FYI - The soundtrack from the above video is Wah Wah Man by Young-Holt Unlimited.)

And if you thought this post was simply a foil to test run some new audio and video scripts, shame on you. Every time I mention this beer, I hear a red-tailed hawk cry off in the distance...

* Whose acronym bears a striking resemblance to another, quite fitting common acronym.

** Please let this be an Eric Dolphy reference.

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Friday, June 06, 2008

Friday linknibbles - patience and payoff


Still no flowers.

Brewing is an exercise in patience, but with potential great rewards at the end of the day. From around the web this past week:

- Start off with a homebrew recipe from the man who practically coined the phrase, "homebrew recipe" - a Belgian dubbel courtesy of Charlie Papazian.

- Once you've slammed the cork and twisted the cage on some nice 750mL bottles of that dubbel, consider playing along with this cellaring experiment that's already revealing some surprise results.

- While you're waiting, head out to some great pubs and go find the mopey guy who appears halfway through the post, and maybe sing him an upbeat song or something. Perhaps a rousing verse of Hoppy Head?

- If you need to nurse your wounds following the beer-inspired techno onslaught, why not swing by your local beer importer for help working your way through this top 10 Belgian beer list I've been eying (not to be confused with this list of top 10 Belgian beer names).

- For which you'll undoubtedly need some nice glassware.

- At which point, thanks to this reminder from Alan, you can sit back with a classic bit of 90's sketch comedy while you sip your tipple and wonder who exactly prefers those icky alco-pops anyway.

Enjoy your weekends, all!

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The Session #16 - Ach! to beer fests


Before we get started here, a big thanks first and foremost to Geistbear for hosting this month's Session in light of the wildly blossoming writer base that's created a round-up task that's anything but quick (and for a time-lapse history of that bloom, Brookston's been keeping tab). The topic at hand, what with summer's outdoor venues calling from the edge of weather's horizon, is the beer festival, a topic that reflects the evolution of this blogging carnival from its origins as a outlet for collectivized tasting notes, into some more embiggened notions regarding beer's cultural influence, its place in the world. Or at least, this time, its place in the world of jockey-boxes, teensy tasting glasses, overpriced sausages, and blues bands with groan-inducing punny names. So maybe it's only as cerebral as you want it to be.

Considering I haven't got a worldly experience in festing to share, you'd think there wouldn't be much material for me to work from. A few previous drafts of this post, ranging in the ballpark of 1,200 words or so, have been quietly filed away, proving that a true rambleholic like yours truly can spin garbage out of the most meager thread. These were overlong, achingly painful drafts that reminded me what kind of abhorrent writing can spawn from the queasy marriage of a little guilt and a little more bitterness. Perhaps I'll air that dirty laundry on some other slow news day, but today, while the sun is out and I'm wearing my cleanly optimistic underpants, we'll just turn the subject to a quick reflection of the closest event at hand, our quaint, charming, and undeniably local Fairfax Brewfest.


Why so blue?*


Despite what might outwardly appear as an unrestrained obsession with all things beer-related, I'm not hugely hot on the festing thing, and this is actually the sole event in honor of malty comestibles I've managed to attend more than once. And why not? Something tells me that if every small town had an annual festival held in the environs of a historic building with ample patio space, under some of the first sunshine of the early spring, where you could relaxedly catch up with the locals while gawking at the out-of-towners, grilled brat in hand, you might not even need the beer to make it worthwhile. Add a bottomless glass (which regrettably needs to be manually replenished every four ounces or so) to the equation, and it's nearly a sure bet.

Thing is, for all the boy-howdy charm you can rustle up at a festival of this microtude, the stuff that gets poured from all those soda kegs is more often than not identical to a really good local bottle & draught list, but that's not the point (and matters little considering those beers are, for the most part, pretty gosh darned good). Depending on the economic climate, anywhere between 15 and 20 breweries make their appearances with a handful of varieties each, generally within comfortable West Coast standards, mostly local-ish and absent of anything wickedly highbrow. The concept of gourmet grazing was born of foodie thinking, and while there are some snob points to be earned - doing side-by-sides of local IPAs, seeking out that secret hidden gem amidst the field of cloned pale ales - this is not the place to whip out the monocle and moleskin. Events such as the Fairfax Brewfest seem to be from a time before every party needed a theme, some self-validating motif that grants the attendees fair excuse to have a little fun for a change.

Fun, along with good, honest enjoyment of the act of drinking craft beer, seems to be a lesser sibling in the family of beer writing, alongside its more popular, extreme-sports brother, the brainy, Ivy League-bound, tweedy brother, and the exotic international exchange student. Another reason why each small town ought to host a similar event, where by the fourth or so taste of whoozit's pale ale, you notice yourself smiling stupidly despite of yourself, even when your kid's trying to grab your full glass out of your hand?

* Stupid manual exposure settings.

[Help me out here, though. When I dial down the snark-o-matic, is this even worth reading? Would you rather hear some poor schmuck on the soapbox about the pitiful luck a genuine beer enthusiast has at chancing upon anything awe-inspiring in terms of actual, honest to goodness, pure liquid beer at one of these things? No, no. I'm sorry, I digress. Back out into the sun.]

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Tuesday, June 03, 2008

Tasting notes - Brasserie de Blaugies Darbyste


If there's a variation on the archetypal pint of ale that reveals more about the cultural mindset of an individual by the reaction it elicits than the use of fruit in brewing, I'm not sure I've come across it yet. Whether it's as simple as the inclusion of a lemon wedge clinging to the edge of a glass of wheat beer or as complex as the variety of cherry involved in the making of a kriek, there are obviously myriad levels of involvement that fruit can have in its relation to brewing, but the reactions folks will give you when offered a "fruit beer" will tell you more about their own personal experiences than the true breadth of taste you could be referring to. Around these parts, for example, fruit is almost always used to either sweeten a brew, mask imperfections and/or blandness, or as a gimmick to capture what's perceived as a beer-wary female market.

It is in that light, that upon taking her first sip of the beautifully effervescent, ginger-tinged Darbyste, that Des recounted how she thought the local Whole Foods was doing a disservice to its customers by not posting warning labels on beers like Hanssen's lambics. She imagined the reaction - one of severe revulsion, confusion, and likely nausea - that your unsuspecting buyer would likely have upon swallowing something that's packaged in a way resembling a Flemish version of a Bartles & James wine cooler, or worse, Mike's Hard Lemonade, yet tastes far more like a lemon that's been fermenting under a horse saddle. For those who feel some pressure to imbibe an alcoholic beverage, yet can only do so by masking anything that might appeal to mature tastebuds through a generous coating of syrupy, saccharine sweetness, these are not the alco-pops you're looking for. In a comparison that could be likened to the difference between Chlorodyne and children's Tylenol, one might consider Oudbeitje to be the laudanum to Lindeman's Cherry Blast.

To wit, de Blaugies has made one of those warning-label-ready beers. With a deceptively gorgeous bottle depicting a Seba-like botanical print of the figs promised within, De Blaugies' take on the fruit beer via its Darbyste incarnation is a farmhouse funk indulgence. The only hint of fig in the taste, all sugar now being long gone in the fermentation, is hidden amongst a layer of citric sourness and a fog of bretty barnyard haze, a taste redolent of figs caramelized by intense heat, as if baked atop a tart. At its core, Darbyste is a saison with a bière blanche heritage, a spiced, sparkling, demi-sec, and agreeably refreshing summer ale that, like any good piece of farmhouse art, allows for as much analysis of depth as the taster wants to employ, but will equally sate even the most nonchalant quaffer. And, like other classic saisons, its profile seems to change not only as you taste it, as it sits and warms in the glass, but even when the glass is replenished, allowing for the perfect amount of summertime daydreaming laziness as you work your way through the bottle.*

And with the first round of summer's figs ripening on the tree as I write this, in between the omnipresent plums and nascent apples, bag upon bag of impulse buy, nearly-gone peaches and apricots staking out all available kitchen surfaces, it does get a brewer's mind to wandering...

Is there room amidst the local collective taste culture to allow for fruit beers, made locally, that demand a slightly more adventurous palate, one that could embolden craft brewers to take a step towards using stone fruit, berries, or citrus in creative ways that until now have been the sole domain of a small number of farmhouse and wild ale brewers in Northern Europe? Perhaps the growing popularity of bretty beers is an indication that we're ready. Perhaps a smartly-designed warning label would be good for sales, too.

* At one point, I swear, the peppery aromas gave way to what I could only describe as "the interior of a rental car near the end of a vacation in Hawaii when you've been coated in Banana boat for a week." And then it faded back to the barnyard profile.

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