The Poet, New Holland Brewing Company

Today’s beer has in a roundabout way gotten me thinking about heaven.  It’s called The Poet and its label is a raven in the night.  A pretty clear allusion to Edgar Allen Poe’s poem named after the bird.  From my reading of it, the crux of the work comes in two stanzas near the end.

`Prophet!' said I, `thing of evil! - prophet still, if bird or devil! -

Whether tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,

Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted -

On this home by horror haunted - tell me truly, I implore -

Is there - is there balm in Gilead? - tell me - tell me, I implore!'

Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'

`Prophet!' said I, `thing of evil! - prophet still, if bird or devil!

By that Heaven that bends above us - by that God we both adore -

Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,

It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore -

Clasp a rare and radiant maiden, whom the angels name Lenore?'

Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'

In the first stanza the narrator learns that his ceaseless mourning has deprived him of the promise of heaven.  Worse yet, in the second stanza he learns that he’s also lost heaven for his beloved Lenore as well.  If heaven had never existed, the raven would have said “no,” but it pretty consistently sticks to “nevermore,” pinning the blame on the bereaved lover.  It’s all kinda giving me second thoughts about drinking New Holland’s Poet, but it is an oatmeal stout.  Also beer.

Bubbly bubbly head.

The second thing I noticed about the label was that the moon is upside down!  The basalt lava plains mostly occupy the northern hemisphere of the near side, duh!  I’ll just focus on the glass.  This looks pretty darn good.  The aroma hits me with lots of milk chocolate.  The crystal malt brings the sweet feeling of smugly enjoying esoteric poetry.  It ties a rope around your waste and keeps you from losing yourself in the deep, dark abyss of the chocolate malt.  Each sip is a tightly controlled descent into the enveloping unknown while always tethered to safety.  Subsequent visits to the aroma as the beer scurries down the glass reveal the hop notes hidden in the 37 IBUs.  This is squarely a tasty beverage.  Even the tactile senses of the mouth get to revel in it’s velvety smooth texture.  No banishment from celestial existence here!

Poe was not at all the only poet to muse over the concept of heaven.  I recently encountered End of the West where Michael Dickman describes a quasi “What Dreams May Come” image where heaven is whatever you want.  The last page of his Wang Wei: Bamboo Grove reads,

You know

how we are going

to disappear

into the dirt forever

Or burn

into the sky

into oceans

Well, I love this about us

and I want to be able to do it

all by myself

It won’t be scary

or cold

Not like what they told us at all

If the are spiders

and there will be

spiders

they will not kill us

in our

New Cities

In the next poem, End of the West, he goes on to describe four of these “New Cities.”  Each one a personal heaven for a loved one and one for himself.  We all get a heaven that we construct through our experiences and desires.  Or maybe it’s even closer than that.  In a more straightforward way, Helen Lowrie Marshall wrote,

Heaven’s not a fenced-off place

In some far distant sky,

Nor is Eternity consigned

To some sweet by-and-by.

Heaven lies in every

Ordinary, common day.

We make our own Eternal life

Each step along our way.

Eternal time is measured

By a common hourglass.

We glimpse a bit of Heaven

As hours and minutes pass.

We only need the eyes to see.

The heart to count its worth,

To make our own Eternity

A Heaven here on Earth!

Three different poems from three very different directions that all have one thing in common.  They all paint an intrinsic link between the here and now and heaven.  Whether it’s Poe’s heaven that can be brought in and out of existence by our commitment to living, Dickman’s heaven that is formed by our life before death or Marshall’s heaven that is this present life, the onus is on us.  Heaven will not just come scoop us up one day.  We have to take charge of it.  Man!  I should start wearing floaties before reading poetry because it is getting deep!  Beer is such a small thing, insignificant when compared to the fundamental workings of the universe.  But I for one think it’s not a terrible place to start.  Even if it doesn’t know what direction the moon goes.  Cheers!

Sir Dunkle, Berghoff Brewery

When you walk into a beer garden in Bavaria there’s a good chance you will only have one brewery to choose from and only five options.  It’ll all be brewed in house and listed simply as Helles, Dunkles, Weiß, Pilsner and Radler.  When you walk into a brewpub in the United States you may have other breweries represented (depending on how restauranty it is) and every beer will have its own name.  Hoppy Hooligan, Summer Beach Fest, Boozehound Bruce, etc…  So when Berghoff Brewery in Stevens Point, Wisconsin decided to mix up a standard dunkel, it just couldn’t resist nameifying it into Sir Dunkle.  They even reversed the e and the l.  Lets see if their Americanisation stops at the name or if it permeates the beer itself.

Dark indeed.

Very lagery.  Lots of malt notes but the delivery is light and crisp.  That jives with the high clarity of the beer when held up to light.  If feels like a standard American lager with a bit of the same aftertaste to boot.  The sweetness from the darker malts does a very good job presenting itself without the smooth or creamy mouthfeel it often accompanies.  It lingers quite a bit and even thinly coats the mouth.  While not reminiscent of a South German Bräuhaus, I think I will remember Sir Dunkle if I’m headed somewhere with lots of American lager fans.

The label declares this to be a dark lager but Berghoff claims this beer as an altbier, which uses top fermenting yeast.  I just don’t know what to believe.  My mouth says lager, which means either it’s not an altbier at all or they really didn’t utilize the yeast strain to its full potential.  Not sure which would be worse.  It’s like taking an IPA and aging it or making it into an eisbier!  Damn you Americans and your twist top bottles! I feel so betrayed, bemused, bewildered…  Good thing none of those B words affect the beer itself.

Indica, Lost Coast Brewery

Mysticism is the idea that truth or understanding can be attained via subjective means.  One way to think of it is as Stephen Colbert’s “truthiness.”  Always go with the gut because books lie!  Another way to think of it is as a complement to concrete knowledge.  Much like Kierkegaard’s kennenschaft, implying discovery through personable intuition.  Or as any writer who tells you fiction is really nonfiction because it documents the human condition.  The bottle today’s beer comes in describes its aroma as mystic.  That’s not a common word used for the chemical compounds that waft from a glass of beer, but it very well could be merely a function of the India motif their label is going for.  Indica is an IPA so they’ve taken the I from the acronym and jumped on the western association of Hinduism with mysticism.  This association probably stems from the religion’s view of widely disseminated truth.  “May good thoughts come to us from all sides” being a common prayer.  Also because yoga and reincarnation can conflict with the dualism imparted on western religions by Greek philosophers.  I doubt the hops in Lost Coast Brewery’s Indica will unite my atman with the One, but maybe it can align my chakras or something like that.

Orange and cloudy.  Perfect IPA.

That mystical aroma is pretty leafy, but the bulk of the flavor doesn’t hit you until it’s in your mouth.  Another more colloquial usage of the word comes to mind.  That of something mysterious.  As in, where did Lost Coast get the zip file to transport such a hoppy flavor without puckering my face into oblivion?  It may even be on par with the inexplicably large cheese flavor in cheez-its.  Usually with a beer this bitter, my tongue would be having to brace itself for the onslaught of each sip.  Instead that aforementioned leafiness evenly distributes itself between my mouth and my stomach.  Good guy Indica gives you the hops you want without punching you in the face.

Perhaps this is the mysticism referred to on the label.  You can know there’s more to hops than bitterness and floral tones.  You can find beers with lots of IBUs that don’t shrivel your face.  But until you’ve experienced a beer that can deliver lots of bitter hops while simultaneously sidestepping lots of bitter hops, you can’t really know.  It’s a paradox of zymurgy.  Maybe I’m just overreacting.  Maybe I like beer too much to be objective.  Maybe I’ve just had too much.  What I do know is that my experience in this moment, as subjective as I must concede it is, is unquestionably positive.  Mystic, even.

Satin Solitude, Central Waters Brewing Company

Today’s beer comes from a brewery that strives to be green.  Central Waters Brewing Company sources most of their ingredients from local producers, going as far as founding a coop to meet demand.  They’ve switched to efficient light bulbs with motion sensors to automatically turn off when no one’s there.  They’ve even installed solar arrays to heat their water and provide 20% of their electricity.  I wouldn’t be surprised to find Jimmy Carter wandering the brewhouse in his signature cardigan turning down all the thermostats.  While green politics were unable to take root in the 1970s U.S., businesses like Central Waters are picking up the fight.  A local brewpub owner once ticked through a plethora of green techniques and policies he had in place despite having only one location at the time.  So much for the “environmentalism kills small business” trope.  Anyway, lets move on to the beer.  We can determine if the focus on greening has taken their eye off the ball.  I give you Satin Solitude.

So satiny.  So alone.

As the beer exits the bottle and falls through the air it looks brown, but once it has settled into its new home it is pretty darn close to black.  Good.  I like the dark ones.  The aroma hints this may go coffee on me but doesn’t assure it.  My tongue is a bit more confident.  The coffee notes do not dominate the game, leaving room for others like cream and small doses of carbon.  I can kind of see where the Satin in the name comes from.  The mouthfeel masks the alcohol bite so that this 7.5% stout feels not a point over, say, 6.8%.  Small change but noticeable nonetheless.  Other reviewers have mentioned this beer is a bit thin for an imperial stout.  I wouldn’t say that.  Not every stout is Old Rasputin.  Get over it.  Always remember that each beer style contains a diverse set of brews.  Satin Solitude takes a slightly less bombastic approach and rocks it.  So what if it’s not as thick?  If I want a second one, I can have it.  Try drinking multiples of the far end of the imperial stout spectrum.  I find assessing beers by their own merits leads to more enjoyable drinking.

Well, for Central Water Brewing Company at least, a focus on being green has definitely not detracted from the quality of the tipple.  Perhaps they can serve as an inspiration for us all.  Maybe we can reduce our carbon footprint without reducing our standard of living after all.  If the beer is good we might not mind even if we did have to sacrifice a few luxuries.  Here’s to good environmental stewardship and good beer!  Can we have both?

Si se puede!