Author: Richard Murff

Categories
Food & Wine Food & Drink

Non-Alcoholic Beer? Temper Your Expectations

CREDIT: Chansak Aroonmanakul | Dreamstime.com

I haven’t heard much about New Year’s resolutions, but there has been a lot of talk about “cleansing diets.” It’s hard to blame anyone for wanting to rid themselves of the taint of 2020. The charming Mrs. M has put us both on something called a Whole 30 diet that’s supposed to — well, she’s explained it to me twice and I still can’t tell you.

Given the way we started drinking in lockdown, though, it probably wouldn’t kill any of us to give our livers a breather. To that end, if you are looking for a non-alcoholic beer to give you the taste and feel of a beer without your put-upon system begging for mercy, your best option is Beck’s N/A. There isn’t really anything remarkable about it other than it does taste very close to its excellent boozy sibling, just a little weaker. Not a glowing review, but it is about the best you’re going to get with near-beer: pretty good.

Chansak Aroonmanakul | Dreamstime.com

There are other good ones out there — Heineken, for instance — and most are German or Dutch. I’ve never seen a truly alcohol-free ale, and I’m not sure I want to. Which is not to say that you can’t enjoy a cold Beck’s N/A while you’re on the wagon. The trick to getting the most out of them, however, is managing expectations. Do not try to fool yourself or anyone else that you’ve got the real thing.

About 10 years ago, I was at a ceremony at the Benghazi Medical Center hosted by what was left of the Libyan Ministry of Health. When Muammar Gaddafi took power in 1969, he introduced national prohibition, and after his ouster, there was no push to repeal it — or a government to do the repealing, for that matter. Boredom at the reception was starting to set in when I felt an excited poke on the arm. Lisle was an Afrikaner, originally, but had moved to Amsterdam to be a perfusionist — the person who runs the heart/lung bypass machine — and found herself attached to the same medical mission as me. “Lök, es dat a bier?” Lisle’s English was technically flawless, but her accent made her sound like a Katzenjammer Kid. But there they were, cold green longnecks peeking out of the ice, along with plastic bottles of water and sealed cups of fruit juice.

I’d had my last cocktail in Istanbul a couple of weeks earlier, and on deplaning in-country I’d been detained for having a bottle of Famous Grouse in my luggage. It was a misunderstanding I blame on a blonde Turkish woman in the duty-free shop, but also explains my detailed knowledge of Libyan blue laws. Granted, Libya didn’t really have a government at the time (still doesn’t), but this sure felt like a government-sanctioned event. Besides, I wasn’t smuggling anything, this beer was already in the country. Don’t sneer, nothing brings out the booze-hound in you like a civil war. We were on the bottles like a pair of deranged chimps.

Which is why I can’t stress enough that there are several good non-alcoholic beers on the market, but it’s crucial that you manage your expectations. You won’t fool yourself. After that first pull, and it was pretty vulgar considering where we were, Lisle and I looked at each other. “Awh, dees is non-alcoholic.” She looked at the bottle with a profound sadness, “Dat’s juss kruel …”

I finished mine — a Beck’s N/A — because it seemed rude not to at the time. Remember, a conflict zone is no excuse for bad manners. Being genetically Dutch, Lisle wasn’t used to watered-down American beer, so she was more offended than I was. On further reflection, the only thing really wrong with it — it wasn’t any thinner than a Miller Lite — was that it had been malted with a special varietal called disappointment.

Categories
Food & Wine Food & Drink

She Devil! How to Drink Your Way Through the Family Zoom

CREDIT: Meddlesome Brewing Company

Ah, you mighty Nimrod you! You made an ass out of yourself on the family holiday Zoom call, didn’t you? I get it, the digital age is no excuse for being any less annoying to your relatives than when you’re in the flesh. Or perhaps you are brave enough to ford the in-person get-together — if so, arm yourself with Meddlesome Brewing’s spanking yet dangerous She Devil Belgian Golden Strong. You picked it because the name reminds you of your Aunt Pidge, and as it is a hefty 8 percent ABV, it’s medicinal. It doesn’t taste too “big” and is very good. A little too refreshing, because suddenly you might go off on an unholy mission to turn the ordeal into a sort of Festivus “airing of grievances.”

I hope that you pour your She Devil into a glass: It tastes better than way, and with a name that clever, there is no way you wouldn’t use it on Aunt Pidge when you let fly. The possible overstep is understandable; these people have been mercifully free of your company for the better part of a year, so you have a lot of aggravation to dispense. Besides, Zoom holidays are a new medium: Any actor worth their salt will tell you that acting for stage and the camera are two entirely different art forms. So what if you play the part a little large? It happens.

Meddlesome Brewing Company

Meddlesome’s She Devil

Assuming that you don’t actually hate your family and they in turn still harbor some affection for you, despite that unique stamp you put on things, you might find that an apology is in order later. If this becomes the case, let me suggest a beer that just gives you some holiday feelz (note the z) that you might actually rememberz later. Lazy Magnolia Southern Pecan Brown Ale comes in at a more neighborly 4.5 percent ABV, which will help you manage your Ps & Qs just enough to calm your nerves, while explaining your appalling behavior to your horrified grandmother or impressionable nieces and nephews.

As far as I know, it’s the only beer that uses whole roasted pecans in the brewing process — so it’s a unique brew, literally. Located down in Kiln, Mississippi, it takes locally sourced to a new level and gives the beer a nutty and deep flavor. And, just like that cousin home from college who wants everyone to know that he’s far too cool for family but won’t log off, it is lightly hopped, so a lot of that caramel comes through. It also sets the sort of holiday tone in a situation where a pecan pie isn’t forthcoming. Not after what you said about it.

While it is very interesting, Southern Pecan isn’t likely to ever be one of my go-tos. That sweetness does lend it to pairing well with savory foods, though. A friend of mine told me it goes well with Thai food. So maybe if Aunt Pidge’s dried-out turkey isn’t on the table, call up Bhan Thai and give it a whirl.

These two beers are polar opposites, but either is a tasty choice. The difference between the two goes beyond the flavor to a matter of utility: Ones tastes like pecan pie served at gatherings of people who haven’t raised self-medication to a performance art. She Devil, on the other hand, is a spanking beer for a holiday to remember (except by you). If nothing else, it’s an example of honest marketing.

My advice for next year is to pump the brakes. Get just zippy enough to annoy, but not enough to get disowned. The vaccine is here, my friend, so next December you may have to sit next to these people armed only with the good silver.

Categories
Food & Wine Food & Drink

Sometimes a Fishing Trip Demands a Breakfast Beer

Norman Maclean certainly didn’t write the only book on fly-fishing, but he did write A River Runs Through It, which is undoubtedly the book on the subject. As Mrs. M and I were heading up through Arkansas to cast some woolly boogers into the Little Red River, I needed some spiritual guidance on the sport. Maclean’s poetic, quasi-religious text does touch on the subject of beer. Being Presbyterian, he abstained from drinking while fly-fishing. Being a Scot and from Montana, however, he didn’t consider beer to be “drinking.”

David Coggins, who writes a fair bit about fly-fishing, says that when he’s in Montana, he drinks a marvelously mediocre brew called Leinenkugel’s; when not on those waters, he defaults to Miller Lite. “I ask you not to think of it as bad beer,” he writes, “but think of it as good water.”

Which is about two teaspoons off of Mrs. M’s philosophical thoughts on Bud Light. Thanksgiving being what it was, there was plenty of that stuff still in the fridge, along with a little Sweetwater 420 Extra Pale Ale, so it all went into the cooler. I’ve heard Sweetwater is too big to be considered craft — but that’s a silly argument. You either like it or you don’t. Either way, it’s a great, refreshing beer with a light hops bite and you can drink it at fish camp without looking like a poser. Something that you never have to worry about with Bud Light, I have to concede.

Having worked from home since 2007, I’ve developed a good working relationship with my trusted Bialetti stovetop espresso maker. Unfortunately, this has made me fairly picky about my coffee. I’d managed not to haul the thing up to the cabin, so there I was, facing an unsociable hour on the water without my daily caffeine snort. Again, I hadn’t actually curated our beer selection for the weekend; I’d just pushed everything on the bottom shelf of the fridge that looked like a beer into a cooler. Which included, as I stared down, bleary-eyed, a can of Wiseacre’s Gotta Get Up to Get Down.

“Say,” said I, “that’s dark, kinda creamy, sorta roasted, and has a snort of coffee in it. Problem solved!”

While it pains a relatively responsible and mostly law-abiding adult to mention a “breakfast beer” (although why it’s any more off-sides than a Bloody Mary is one for the goddess of etiquette), this is the one. I’ve literally never had Wiseacre’s milk stout after about 10 a.m. — and now that I think about it, always near some body of natural water.

All stouts are supposed to be roasty. What separates the milk stout — and makes it a great eye-opener — is the addition of lactose sugar to the brewing process. Because it doesn’t ferment (read: turn to alcohol), it adds a creamy sweetness to the beer that makes it hard to go wrong. Gotta Get Up comes in with a 5 percent ABV — which is important psychologically if you’re drinking it in lieu of your morning coffee. It is, admittedly, higher in alcohol than my espresso.

My grandmother used to make a wicked New Year’s punch that involved five gallons of French vanilla ice cream, a fifth of bourbon, and 12 cups of coffee. It served 40, because Gran was a bit of a New Orleans butterfly back in the day. Gatherings of that size, however, are frowned upon these days, and I don’t own a punch bowl big enough. Gotta Get Up to Get Down almost reminded me of the beer version of Gran’s New Year’s punch. And it comes in much less cumbersome packaging.

As for the fishing? Bucolic, beautiful, almost Zen. While I didn’t know it was a competition, Mrs. M was at pains to tell me she won. Which she did. Maybe it was her skill as an angler — or maybe because she didn’t join me for coffee. Her family is English; they drink tea.

Categories
Food & Wine Food & Drink

Basecamp Blonde: Go Lighter for the Holidays

Remember that the holidays are a test of endurance, not speed. True, this year’s course has been shortened considerably by doing away with a cavalcade of office parties, but take care — danger lurks. There was all that turkey and dressing from Thanksgiving. And if you kept your gathering regulation-sized, you were plowing through a mountain of carbo-loaded leftovers for about a week.

There is still a titanic Christmas ham looming in your future and, the human mind being the mystery that it is, you aren’t likely to remember that no one is coming for round two until after you’ve made three trays of your double fudge “corpulent explosion” brownies. Or at least made a Costco run to pick up a bag of fun-sized Snickers the size of a sofa cushion. Don’t even get me started on that alcoholic amateur night we call New Year’s Eve.

No, we aren’t done yet. And while ’tis the season for those roasty stouts and toasty Scottish ales, you may well want to lighten things up a bit before your cholesterol and BMI turn you into a big, fleshly glacier.

To that end, let me suggest Hutton & Smith’s Basecamp Blonde ale, which their marketing guy describes as “light and drinkable with a nicely malted backbone and touch of bitterness.”

That’s true enough. For old fans of Chattanooga’s Hutton & Smith Brewery, this is a rebranding of Belayer’s blonde ale, which also smells of an aspirational marketing guru being obvious. Understand that, as a former ad guy, I say this with love.

For my money, though, “basecamp” lacks the dash and derring-do of belaying, which is basically trying to vertically hop down a sheer cliff face with a rope and a lot of faith in your equipment. Mrs. M noted I didn’t like the new name because I am, essentially, a lunatic. (There is no reason to mention which agency I worked for, but Dan Conaway also thinks I’m an idiot.) At any rate, I do see Mrs. M’s point — that aligning an ale with a bone-smashing death wish does not set the right tone for what is essentially a quiet, easy drinking beer.

Whatever we’re calling the stuff these days, Basecamp Blonde weighs in at 4.8 percent ABV, and when I say “quiet” I do not mean that you don’t notice it. Hutton & Smith has always struck me as a pretty high-end brewery, and this ale lives up to the reputation: It really is a great beer. Like a lot of H&S products, it’s got that vague twist of the sweet somewhere along the palate, which compliments that “nicely malted backbone” the marketing guy was going on about. There is also that touch of bitterness on the far end, but nothing that puts you into the same sandbox as the IPA set.

If you can’t let the holiday season pass without your trusted Scottish ale — Oskar Blues Old Chub is very good and worth getting for the name alone. Even better, the tartan on the can happens to match my favorite pair of ill-advised trousers.

If you want to shop local (and there is no good reason not to) — remember Boscos pours a great one on Overton Square. While we’re all hanging out at home trying not to breathe on each other, High Cotton’s Scottish Ale is a great expression of the style that is available all over town.

Basecamp Blonde, however, is a refreshing breather from the heavier, roasted flavors of the holidays. I suppose there is a certain logic to the rebranding. The basecamp is where you go to relax and recharge after the brutal endurance race of, say, the Iditarod, the typical Southern holiday season, or tumbling off the side of a mountain to an amused chorus of, “Hey Murff, grab the rope. Man! … That’s gonna leave one big jiggly bruise.”

Categories
Food & Wine Food & Drink

’Tis the Season for a Cider … or Two

And so it was that Littlebit came down from atop the mountain and said unto me: “Verily, Father, I really haven’t the taste for beer, so I’ll have an apple cider.” Or words to that effect.

Sewanee has wrapped up a very nearly plague-free semester and sent its charges home to take their exams. Judging by some of the Instagram feeds, exactly how they stayed very nearly plague-free is God’s own private mystery, but here we are.

At any rate, that’s how I found myself hoisting a pair of Woodchuck amber ciders with the gal.

In wines and champagne, I tend toward the dry side of things, so Woodchuck amber was a little sweeter than I’m used to, but it’s crisp enough that I don’t mind it. What’s more, apple cider fits the environment, which really is half the battle when you’re stepping out of the usual well-worn habits and trying something different.

No bad apple — Lakeland’s Long Road Cider makes a stiff drink with Pommaux.

It’s fall — sure it’s about to be winter, but it’s going to keep feeling like fall until January. The leaves are still turning is what I’m getting at here, and that always provokes a rash of almost historical Johnny Appleseed pieces on the Sunday-morning shows. Which is where I learned that until prohibition the vast majority of apple production in the United States was for booze, not the heart-healthy, keeps-the-doctor-away varieties of the fruit we cram down our children’s throats.

This was always a struggle with Littlebit, who didn’t like apples — until now. So for the craft beer set sneering at the cider, this isn’t a new fad but a tremendous patriotic backflip of a century and a half.

I’m glad she suggested it because I forgot how much I like the stuff. It doesn’t have a foamy collar like a beer, but there is enough fizz to give it a little bite, which is what makes cider so refreshing. It goes down pretty easy, and to judge by the way I outpaced Littlebit, a little too easy. Not the sort of example I need to be setting.

Now that we’ve launched ourselves into the eatin’ season, it’s good to know that cider pairs well with roasty fall dishes — and you’d be hard-pressed to find a better beer to quaff with a roast turkey or a grilled chicken than a crisp, well-made apple cider.

Woodchuck is made in Vermont — and they seem like the sort to be good at this kind of thing. For a more local option, there is the Long Road Cider Company located in Lakeland, also available around town if you don’t want to make the trip. Besides, some of their ciders pack a wallop, so the return trip from out there can get swirly. They also have a 19-proof hard cider called Pommaux that isn’t exactly liquor — but it is great for making an interesting twist on the Wassail-type hot-spiced holiday mug. True, it rarely gets cold enough to require it, but it sure as hell gets damp and clammy enough.

If you want to take a six-pack home, you’re better off with Nashville’s Diskin Cider — which sounds suspiciously like a pecker joke. At any rate, on a recommendation I tried their Daydream Prickly Pear Rosé Cider. Well, I try my best to be positive here, and for that matter I also try not to be sexist, but … This rosé pear cider seems to be ringing the same bell that wine coolers rang back in the ’90s. The sweetness borders on Jolly Rancher territory, and pears don’t have the crisp bite to counterbalance it. In short, I know what market they’ve targeted, and why said market likes the stuff. But I am not that market.

For the record, Littlebit recommends Bold Rock Cider, which claims both Virginia and North Carolina as home. Alas, you’ve got to head up into the mountains for a pour.

Categories
Food & Wine Food & Drink

Action Beer!

CREDIT: Marcel De Grijs | Dreamstime.com

Due to the lingering plague, as well as a violent grab-bag of hurricanes on the Gulf Coast, my topsiders have been drying out for over a year. At long last, though, a regatta in Fairhope, Alabama, got to its date without either running afoul of an outbreak, a hurricane, or the sort of Mach 8 winds that hurl logs, sailboats, and other debris through the air where they are really not supposed to be.

Marcel De Grijs | Dreamstime.com

Before you start sneering — sailing is a fairly COVID-friendly sport, with plenty of fresh air and Vitamin D-brewing sunlight. The whole point of the exercise is to get as far away from the other boats as possible — ideally a lot further than six feet. Add some beer to stave off pellagra, and it can be downright healthy.

Lunch, however, is another matter. After a hurricane season churned up the local waters something ugly, I suspected that ordering the oysters might be ill-advised. Still, 2020 hasn’t killed me yet, so I went all Charlie Sheen/Tiger Blood and ordered the little stinkers anyway. As a preventative, I had a Causeway IPA from Fairhope Brewing Company. If you are in the area, I highly recommend it; it’s one of those refreshing IPAs that is hoppy but with nothing to prove.

One of my lunch companions disagreed: He hates IPAs on the grounds that they taste like IPAs. Which I suppose they do. I found out later that he was geeked up on a lively psychoactive. For my money, Causeway IPA goes well with oysters, but it’s possible it doesn’t play well with psychedelic mushrooms.

Lunches down here are long and lingering, and competitive sailing is not. It’s not a relaxing sport — I can’t remember the last time I didn’t leave the boat with a few bruises. This isn’t the time for lingering contemplation over an artisanal brew. This is time for an action beer, whether you win or not. I mean a good, refreshing cooler beer that you never have to think about, just enjoy. It’s hot; you’ve got some sporting wounds and are wearing wet shorts. You want a Heineken.

It’s a Dutch lager and one of those great mass-market beers that used to be considered premium but, in a craft beer world, tends to sail under the radar (see what I did there?). In a beer universe of very powerful tastes, it is light but still holds its own. It’s not novel, it’s just exactly what it’s supposed to be. Holland, like Germany and Belgium, never joined in the accountant-led American race to the bottom of the beer market by coming up with cheaper and cheaper ways to churn the stuff out. As a result, Dutch and German mass-market beers, the good ones at any rate, were never awful in the first place. They taste exactly like they tasted back when they were considered premium.

For those of us of a certain age, though, Heineken is known for the high margin of error for “skunky” beer. This didn’t have anything to do with quality control in the brewing, rather it was thanks to those green bottles that didn’t filter out light as well as the brown ones. While the bottles are still green, they are now treated and have essentially become high-quality sunglasses for the beer, filtering light as well as the brown bottles do. Personally, I’ve always liked the taste of beer in glass bottles over cans. Brewers keep telling me that cans taste as good as bottles these days. Maybe. They also say that cans keep out 100 percent of the harmful light — which is hard to argue.

If you are on a boat, however, you’re drinking your action beer out of a can anyway. And if your blood is really up, it truly is better to crush a can on your skull than a bottle.

Categories
Food & Wine Food & Drink

Crystal Bridges and Arkansas Brews

The charming Mrs. M and I were headed to Crystal Bridges in Bentonville, Arkansas — which has a world-class art collection and is running a stunning outdoor installation called “Forest Lights” through April.

Most museums that can conceivably call themselves world-class will do so, but, thanks to the Walton family, Crystal Bridges caused a Vanity Fair-grade scandal with the Northeastern art establishment by buying up some of the best pieces in the country and carting them off to Arkansas. Yes, the Euro-snobs had the same complaint about the best Old World art being carted off to New York and Boston a century or so ago, but this time the argument is that Bentonville sounds like it’s in the middle of nowhere.

And you’re damn right it is! But thankfully, pretty much every time you get up in the mountains with a decent economic base, great craft breweries sprout like dandelions. Of course, we were there for cultural pursuits, namely wandering through the “Forest Lights” exhibit, which looks like a Pink Floyd laser light show in the woods but sounds like Enya. One installation, Whispering Tree, involved talking at a tree, which, evidently, had opinions. I don’t know what it says about my marriage because we’ve been stuck together without a lot of company for the better part of a year, yet neither of us were desperate enough to have a chat with a tree. Certainly not if it was going to talk back.

I thought that the next installation looked an awful lot like a beer garden and Mrs. M — an art history major — explained that is exactly what it was. It was beautiful — nice lines, bold colors. My general rule is to always ask the bartender for a local brew. She recommended a cream stout by Ozark Beer Company because it was chilly and windy. It’s a lot of roasted coffee that balances out the sweetness of the caramel with some chocolate thrown in. The ABV is 5.3 percent; it isn’t too heavy for a stout, but it’s got presence.

The next day was warmer, but the wind still cut. Honestly, I don’t remember either of us actually choosing to go on a hike; it just happened. You step off the sidewalk thinking you’re going through a hedge and there you are, hiking. Afterward, we stopped at a restaurant called The Hive where I ordered a Fallen Queen Belgian Witbier made by another northeastern Arkansas outfit called New Providence Brewing Co. As a rule, I’m not a witbier guy, but I’m glad I colored outside the lines. This one had a lot of citrus, orange peel, and a lemon tart along with coriander. Like a saison or a bier de garde, it was just refreshing, the sort of beer that would go well with a really good turkey sandwich. That may not sound very grand, but a good turkey sandwich can be hard to beat.

Because I’m a workaholic, I ordered a second round and landed back on another Ozark Beer, but on the far side of the spectrum from a cream stout. Ozark’s American Pale Ale is what gets called a session beer, or less coherently “sessionable” by beer sorts. What they mean is “drinkable.” If I’m going to use a funny word for it, I’ll stick with the very British and much more visceral “quaffable.” That does this American pale ale more justice. It’s hoppy, even a little tart, and the right amount of bitter. It too will also rock the turkey sandwich, and so much more.

So, the next time you are gallivanting through Arkansas, you have a to-do list: Take in some nature, see world-class art and really cheese off a Yankee in the bargain, and try the local beer. The only drawback to the three listed here is that none are high enough in alcohol to make having a conversation with a tree seem normal.

Categories
Food & Wine Food & Drink

It’s October, Supposedly. Time for a Chocolate Rye Porter!

CREDIT: Richard Murff

I can’t wait to write a fun-filled and informational column in these pages about the perfect New Year’s beer. It’s not that I’m a fan of the holiday (I’m not — it’s amateur night), but that foolishness will signal the end of this damn year. Now I understand that Halloween is being downgraded to “Well, we’d better not. You know, for the kids.” Meanwhile, we all wait for the alert-level for Thanksgiving to rise to: “It will make you sicker than the candied yams.” All of which raises the question: What the hell season are we even in?

It’s not like you can tell by the weather around here. And, by the way, your fall wardrobe may very well be hiding some nasty surprises about exactly how much you’ve fleshed out during the late unpleasantness. It’s the middle of October and we’re all still walking around like beach bums. Or I am, at any rate. May I suggest that we all get in the proper fall spirit with a proper fall beer? And for a proper fall beer, you don’t have to go much further than High Cotton’s Chocolate Rye Porter.

Richard Murff

High Cotton Chocolate Rye Porter

On the front end, I should say that while I like rye in bread, and love it in whiskey, I’ve never been very impressed with it in beer; it always tastes like someone put pepper in my drink. Not enough to ruin it, just enough to verily annoy me. It just doesn’t work for me in an IPA. In a porter, however, rye has a cozy home. High Cotton’s take on a chocolate porter has just enough of that rye to create a neat spice finish to an otherwise classic porter, with hints of chocolate and coffee going on.

With an ABV of 5 percent, this porter will make you warm where you need it, but won’t try to pole-axe you while you aren’t looking. If nothing else, this is a beer that feels like fall, even if you haven’t covered your knees since April. And yet, since we’re certainly going to hit 80 degrees again, you haven’t made too much of a commitment.

For some historical color on the porter style, you should know it’s a traditional beer for the working class in England, where it’s fall 10 months out of the year. But not even the English can live on porter alone, so what do you eat with it? I’d steer clear of anything light and summery, as it would just be overwhelmed. What I’d like to have a glass with is some wild game, even some fowl if you’re throwing everything on the grill these days. A glass will also play well with sausages, good stews of roasted root vegetables, and braised meat. You hear about a lot of people pairing porters with barbecue, but I’m not so sure. With this chocolate rye porter, it seems like that would be an awful lot going on, but you do you.

In sum, it’s a roasty, hearty brew that is still medium-bodied, not heavy. For those of you looking for what we used to call a breakfast beer, you’re looking for a bigger “stout” — which for the modern drinker has come to mean a beer with roughly the same color and a wee bit more heft. Historically speaking, the styles are very intertwined. Even the name “stout” is a shortened version of “stout porter.”

If you are looking for a solid local version of the latter, crack open one of Wiseacre’s You Gotta Get Up to Get Down. Which is made with local coffee, so you can actually drink for breakfast if you are still Zooming your way through what you’re still calling a career. Of course, if you’re still carrying on like that seven months into this hellscape, then knowing the seasons isn’t your problem. You likely don’t even know what time it is.

Categories
Food & Wine Food & Drink

It’s Tapped! Exploring the Origins of Oktoberfest

CREDIT: Richard Murff

It really is something to see millions of Germans gathering together to celebrate a wedding that took place some 200-plus years ago. Or rather, it would have been, but, like the Memphis in May festivals, Oktoberfest 2020 was canceled. In fact, my daughter’s entire semester abroad was canceled, which was heartbreaking for her but saved me the cost of a dirndl — one of those St. Pauli Girl traditional festival get-ups.

The old Erika’s Restaurant aside, Memphis’ German roots are thin, to say the least. The name Murff is a corruption of a German name from what is now Switzerland, where a pair of my ancestors got hired to come over and fight our revolution and never went back. Our two cultures do share an undying bond over schwein (that’s pork to most of you). The Germans have preparations that even a Memphian finds baffling: They’ll serve you a pork knee and it looks exactly like what it is.

Richard Murff

Wiseacre’s Oktoberfest

And, of course, they wash it all down with beer. So I bought a six-pack of Wiseacre’s Oktoberfest Gemütlichkeit Märzen Lager to celebrate the virtually nonexistent ties between Memphis, Tennessee, and Munich, Bavaria.

Oktoberfest was started in 1810 to celebrate the wedding of local Crown Prince Ludwig to Princess Theresa of Saxe-Hildburghauser. The Bavarian hoi polloi weren’t exactly invited to the wedding, but they were invited by the royal couple to celebrate at a respectful distance — and hopefully downwind. Even today, the field used for the 16- to 18-day festival is called (officially) Therassenwiesse “Theresa Meadow.” The shindig was such a blast they all decided to do it again in 1811. After that, no one could think of a reason not to have it.

Oktoberfest is not just a festival where people drink a lot of beer (although they do; in 2013 they polished off 7.7 million litres of the stuff). It is a festival where they drink a lot of Oktoberfest beer. It’s märzen lager made specially for the festival and is traditionally 2 percent higher in alcohol than normal lagers — because we all need a little help pregaming. And apparently always have.

Since the happy couple wed, there have been only 25 years where the festival has been canceled, mostly due to war and, this year, the plague. The Nazis renamed it Grossdeutsches Volkfest, which means “Greater German Folk Festival” — because those humorless bastards would. They canceled it for their war.

To wit: Wiseacre’s Oktoberfest Gemütlichkeit Märzen Lager — weighing in at 5.9 percent ABV — sticks to the traditional style. You’ll see that it is a little darker than the pilsner lager; not heavier, mind you, just a touch toastier. There is a lot of flavor and a maltiness that ultimately drinks clean and neat.

Which brings us back to the pork. This is a beer that works well with barbecue, hamburgers, roast chicken, or even the dreaded pork knee. Which, honestly, wasn’t that bad; it was more that the concept was bent.

I have a friend who owns part of a brewery in North Carolina. He told me he wasn’t into making a pilsner “with a twist,” but just making the best pilsner, or IPA, out there. In their first year, Brown Truck Brewing won a national medal, so maybe they were onto something. Wiseacre’s take on the festival beer fits that mold: If there is a twist, I don’t know where it is. This is simply a great Oktoberfest beer. One that makes me wish I could hear that barking “O’zapft is!” (It’s tapped) in the Munich fall.

Or that I’d actually had to fund the dirndl I’d promised Littlebit. I’d extracted a promise in exchange for this lavish gift that she’d send me pictures. The before pictures only. Dad never needs to see the after-party shots.

Categories
Food & Wine Food & Drink

Airport Rules! Covid Has Turned Travelers into Day Drinkers

Back when the lockdown was really in lockdown, I saw a tweet announcing that Quarantine Drinking Rules = Airport Drinking Rules. Which makes sense. After this year’s alcohol intake, we all feel like we’ve crunched a few time zones.

These days, however, the airlines are struggling with everyone avoiding those “COVID cabins” in the sky. The travel I’d normally put in for the release of Haint Punch is causing me to Zoom more than fly. This isn’t a problem with the East Coast, but the people in Los Angeles take it as a matter of pride not to take unwieldy time zones into consideration. I always make it a point to have a beer in the shot just to let them all know I’m taking a damn meeting during cocktail hour. If you field a call from Egypt, remember that that time zone is so wide of the mark it’s more constructive to just get back on a plane.

Murff takes a meeting.

I almost miss sitting in the Amsterdam airport at 8:30 a.m., drinking a Carlsberg when your body thinks that it’s last night in New York. Airport drinking isn’t for the faint of heart, and it’s not something you want to do daily, unless you are entering a Hunter S. Thompson’s liver look-alike contest. This is drinking with a purpose: to maintain a certain state of mind while avoiding another. Sure, there are those awkward moments when you make eye-contact with some perfectly lovely Dutch lady over her coffee and you can hear her thinking, “Oh … he’s one of them.” She won’t say it of course, and you wouldn’t know if she did. Dutch sounds like a Swede trying to speak German.

In Europe, Carlsberg and Heineken are the universal airport beers. Stateside, Heineken is also pretty ubiquitous. It’s a well-made pale lager out of the Netherlands that is drinkable, refreshing, and has more presence than the mass-market American beers trying to imitate it. At 5 percent ABV, it’s also a little higher in alcohol. Granted, Heineken used to be known for the odd “skunky” beer, but they’ve fixed that problem. The issue wasn’t quality control or even the beer itself, but those green bottles which were less effective than the brown ones at keeping out harmful sunlight.

If you want to drink local, even on the road, American airports are great showcases of homegrown beer wherever (and whenever) you happen to land. If you ask, the barkeep will point you to a beer you’ve probably never heard of and try to sell you a 24-ounce glass of the stuff. This is because airlines seem to like their passengers sleepy and fairly floppy. If you don’t feel like a 24-ounce beer gamble over breakfast, there is always Sweetwater.

Maybe it’s the Atlanta connection, but Sweetwater 420 Extra Pale Ale seems to be America’s go-to airport craft beer. And why not? It’s a West Coast style, dry-hopped ale — more interesting than the standard lager, but light enough to keep drinking without getting that bitter aftertaste. Depending on where you’re headed to (sales calls, class reunion, holiday with family crazies) or coming from (war zones, vacation, a night of designer drugs with L.A. sorts who can’t do time-zone math), this sort of thing is important. You have to maintain.

In the mid-’90s, Sweetwater jumped ahead of the craft beer boom by bringing the West Coast “micros,” as they were then called, to Atlanta. Is Sweetwater local? No. But it is regional and they are still privately owned. They have become one of the top brewers in the country without hitching up with one of the macro brands. And that matters.

As if air travel hadn’t gotten surreal enough this year, I understand that the airlines are now doing home takeout, so would-be travelers can experience reheated, rubbery food fresh out of the microwave in their own home. If you’re going to do that, at least pair it with a gigantic beer. For breakfast.