Author: Richard Murff

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

Sampling a Couple Brews From Beale Street Brewing

In these harrowing times, even something as innocuous as a trip to the grocery store has taken on an air of danger and adventure. We pad down the aisles like masked ninjas — keeping our distance from other humans, eyeballing the paper goods. On-the-fly tabulations are turning us into mathematical savants as we calculate toilet paper usage rates. Heady stuff, people.

I suited up and headed to the Madison Growler Shop for quarantine supplies — which included some Bud Light for Mrs. M because she’s never really supported my career choices. But just because something is possibly dangerous, that does not mean it shouldn’t be pleasant. I had a nice chat with the guy manning the taps, which, due to social distancing, was done nearly at the top of our lungs. “So what’s new?” I bellowed.

“Have you ever had Beale Street Brewing?” he called.

“No,” I hollered. You really do have to enunciate with a handkerchief tied around your face.

“That’s okay, no one has,” he yodeled back. And so it was then that your intrepid beer reporter jumped into action. Setting down my clean, COVID-19-free growler on the counter, I ordered it filled with something Beale Street Brewing calls Hop Ale and which I was assured is not an IPA. Actually, it’s exactly what it claims to be — an ale that’s been hopped to hell and back. It’s good, hoppy to be sure, but somehow (and how the people at Beale Street Brewing Company managed this is a mystery) not overwhelming.

What is a bit overwhelming about the Hop Ale is the ABV, which is 7.5 percent. I told Mrs. M that if I’m sitting on the patio in the sun with a beer, it means that I’m working and I am not to be disturbed. So she instantly showed up on the patio with one of the aforementioned Bud Lights in hand. I’ve always had the piddling fear that she doesn’t take me entirely seriously, but the more immediate issue was that I was on the hook for all 32 ounces. Because I was working.

What the hell? It’s not like we were supposed to be going anywhere, at least not if we could help it. I’m a reasonably law-abiding citizen — so I drank an entire growler of Hop Ale late on a Tuesday morning. Driving wasn’t really the danger for me, I’ve worked at home — and written about booze — for over a decade. I wasn’t going anywhere, except to my desk, where I’m frantically trying to finish a non-booze related manuscript, because writers don’t make squat. You try to negotiate the logistics of a first-rate coup d’état with 32 ounces of 7.5 percent ABV coursing through your system. With nonfiction you can’t just make stuff up, and mysteries of foreign policy only get more mysterious. I needed a nap.

Two days later we picked up a couple of cheeseburgers from Huey’s curbside and I tried another Beale Street Brewing sample — Space Age Sippin’ Hazy IPA. It clocks in at a marginally lighter 6.5 percent ABV, which I’d bought in cans, so I wasn’t obligated to drink the entire haul in one sitting. This hazy IPA — and I should have started with this one — is one of the best new beers I’ve had in a long time. It is hazy, but light and refreshing. It leans on some groovy hops I can’t name that give it a great citrusy floral nose and taste. I’d get into more technical details about the beer and the company, but I can’t. Their website, while pretty to look at, is more or less useless.

And to the fun-haters, I know that I could have written this column with a four-ounce pour of each, but that’s just wasteful and these are dire times. A certain trust between correspondent and reader is essential. Besides, what sort of geopolitical analysis would you get out of a glass of lemonade?

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

Working — and Drinking — From Home

CREDIT: Richard Murff

Like a lot of people in my profession, I work at home. So I was social distancing just fine before the entire country started doing the Covid Shuffle. I hadn’t even seen my handlers at the Flyer since the Christmas party, and now it’s spring.

Although it’s starting to feel like summer. The charming Mrs. M. works for a school that has temporarily gone online, and the good people at Sewanee have shuttered the fortified mountain compound — so we’re all on top of each other. There are three people in my formerly isolated, book-lined fortress of solitude. I love them dearly, you understand, but it’s hardly the “social distance” for which the CDC is calling.

Richard Murff

work boot full of local brew

I’m writing an introduction to an old book by Sir Richard Burton — no, not the actor who married Elizabeth Taylor twice — the explorer. He was known at Oxford as “Ruffian Dick,” which lends nothing to my point, but I thought that you should know. When Burton left his native England to make himself obvious in Africa, he knew that he’d be exposed to diseases for which his pasty white behind had no natural defense. While his system was being “seasoned” (a euphemism for getting some far-flung virus and not dying from it) he warded off the crud with … brandy. And lots of it. Later this would be refined into the gin and tonic.

Our own pilgrims at Plymouth — those infamous buzz-kills — drank mostly beer because they didn’t trust what was in the water. Harvard’s dining hall once only served beer for the same reason. A practice they had to stop because, well, you know how undergraduates get.

My system has been mildly seasoned, but it’s nothing I picked up in Latin America or North Africa. I got zapped smack in the middle of ZIP 38111 when I built a swing set for Littlebit and was eaten alive by mosquitoes and contracted West Nile Virus. It sucked. Fever, cold sweats, and everything ached. Literally everything. I’m not sure how it manifests in women, but it felt like someone had stepped on my cods in a work boot. Sure, I lost 15 pounds, but I was assured at the time that it wasn’t in a good way. For all that, the doctor told me that, being in my mid-30s at the time and relatively healthy, nothing but my social calendar was in any real danger.

More annoyingly, West Nile, which practically has to be injected into the system to do its thing, has not remotely seasoned me against the current airborne COVID-19 dread. Like everyone else, I’m social distancing, even if, with the house full of teleworkers and students, it doesn’t feel very distant.

The CDC will tell you that the only thing that G&T and beer actually cure is sobriety. And that’s true enough. Still, it got me wondering — could we inoculate ourselves and save the local economy by drinking loads of Old Dominick Gin and going curbside with growlers of Wiseacre on Broad, Memphis Made in Midtown, High Cotton in Downtown, Ghost River on South Main, Crosstown in, well, Crosstown, and Meddlesome in the far east? Is it time to rally?

You’re damn right it is! We’ve hit the spot where the economy is about to crumble under the weight of, if not the coronavirus, certainly the fear of it. The megastores and the national outfits have the fat to weather the storm. Local businesses don’t. We really are all in this together, so raise a drink that’s locally sourced, even if we keep our distance.

The upshot is that if you’ve ever wanted to try the fabled three-martini lunch of our ancestors, this is the time. Why not? You aren’t going anywhere. Although, I’d suggest keeping the cocktail glass or the odd boot of local brew out of shot of your laptop’s camera. You’re still on the clock.

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

Oxford Growl: Celebrating an Anniversary South of the (TN) Border

The lighting at the City Grocery down in Oxford is mercifully low. There I was with the charming Mrs. M, squinting through a romantic gloom that made even me look good, as we got into our second bottle of wine. Well, the second bottle we had there, at any rate. Earlier we’d been on the rooftop bar of the Graduate Hotel eating charcuterie — which if you don’t know is like cold cuts but more high-minded and priced like antibiotics. Was it worth it? Well yes. It was our anniversary.

I’d booked us into the Graduate Hotel — The Growler Package to be clear — which was cheaper than the regular rate and included a growler and a discount at a local taproom. Normally a husband needs to be careful about combining tax write-offs with anniversary outings, but we’ve all got to take risks these days. The plan was to drop into The Growler on our walk to the square, and that is, I’m pretty sure, what happened.

There is nothing remarkable about The Growler. It’s a reasonably well-lit taproom and has the pleasant vibe of your parents’ finished-out basement. The crowd seemed to be mostly grad students and their dogs. You can talk; its nice. The Blind Pig down the block is the packed basement bar lit in beer-sign neon — what old married people remember as a “college bar.” Next time you’re in town, choose accordingly. Everyone at The Growler seemed to have an unwritten psychology paper due on Monday. At least I hope they did; it was Saturday night for God’s sake. You children are our future!

I ordered a Yazoo Brewing Company Saison De Bois because I like saisons, and Yazoo rarely gets it wrong. Rarely. The real issue was that it didn’t taste like a saison. Part of it may have been my expectations, like when my mother told me that carob was “like chocolate.” I’ve hated it ever since.

Saison De Bois is aged for six months in French oak puncheons (a type of barrel or a short stave used to keep tunnels from burying miners alive, depending on who you ask), which explains why it had the oakiness of fundraiser Chardonnay. The issue went deeper than that, though. Only later did I find out it is part of Yazoo’s aptly named “Embrace the Funk” series, launched around the time I was warning you to steer clear of those sour beers. The end effect was that the clean finish of a great saison was blurred by a tartness that just shouldn’t have been there.

In defense of sour beers, I’ve had one or two since my initial warning that have been pretty good — and as refreshing as claimed. And in defense of Yazoo, the Saison De Bois was the first I’d call a misfire. If you need a second opinion, the beer has won the odd prize. Like my judgement, however, you need to take these honors with a healthy grain of salt. In a lot of trade awards, like political primaries, it’s hard to avoid a backroom fix.

It was fitting, then, that I’d discovered this misbranded attempt at random in Oxford, home of the Ole Miss Rebels … wait, no … wait, it’ll come to me … What the hell is their mascot these days? The whole ZIP code seems to be going through an identity crisis down there.

A few hours later, after the lamb and the second bottle of wine, the landshark fins had started to circle in the Côtes du Rhône. I was feeling expansive; I’m setting a speed record for a book I’m writing and have a reasonably successful marriage. At the risk of derailing both, as well as this column, I ordered a Scotch for dessert. The plan was to drown the circling fins before they could get started, but I miscalculated. It seemed to actually encourage the little devils.

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

Heavy Metal Beer: Hair Bands are Making Brews

The voting has opened for the Memphis Flyer Beer Bracket Challenge. Not being at the Young Avenue Deli for the Flyer‘s Toby Sells’ reveal of the match-ups in four categories — light beer, dark beer, IPAs, and seasonals — is no excuse not to cast a vote. These are some of the best beers from Ghost River, Wiseacre, High Cotton, Crosstown, Meddlesome, and Memphis Made. Who is the favorite? Well, that’s not my job, Spanky, that’s on you. Support your local brewers, and pray to all that’s holy that they don’t start promoting their beers with 1980s hair band music videos.

This is a greater danger than you might think. There is a strange trend lately of aging heavy metal bands launching their own brews, and it raises some legitimate questions: How involved in the process are they really? What’s the policy on spandex and carbonation? Do they wear hair nets? They should.

Is it any weirder than that Ian Anderson guy from Jethro Tull becoming a salmon farmer? Or Francis Ford Coppola making wine (yes, actually, he’s an almost-Italian foodie with a certain attention to detail)? Or, for that matter, George Clooney getting in (and out with a boatload of cash) of the tequila game or Ryan Reynolds flogging Aviation Gin (the commercials are brilliant)? Probably not.

Still, the side hustle of these aging rockers is a bit off-kilter. Growing up, I was never a fan of heavy metal because the music is so awful, but I got the general vibe. So when legendary Iron Maiden vocalist Bruce Dickinson starts going on about the band’s new Trooper Sun and Steel lager being “a delicate, subtle fruit flavor infused into a pilsner-style lager,” the world seems to have air-guitared itself off its cultural axis.

Sun and Steel is a saké-infused beer, or rather, it’s a double-fermented lager, with the second round of fermentation using saké yeast. The name comes from a song about a samurai on their 1984 album Piece of Mind. What’s more confusing is that it’s not actually bad — a little weird, maybe, but not bad. Dickinson says that the beer, now available stateside, is a thank you to all the fans who came out to the “Legacy of the Beast” North American tour in 2017. Okay. The Legacy of any Beast worth its salt, I’d think, would be neither subtle nor delicate.

Iron Maiden isn’t the only band getting into the game. Last fall, Megadeth released its second beer in collaboration with award-winning Canadian brewer Unibroue. It’s a Belgian-style farmhouse ale called Saison 13, named for front man Dave Mustaine’s chronic fascination with that number. We are told that it is made with “13 special ingredients.” In my opinion, a good beer needs to be made with however many ingredients a decent brewer thinks are needed to make it work, not the magic number of some formerly drug-addled obsessive compulsive. But that’s just me.

The first Megadeth foray into the otherwise decidedly not-Megadeth world of craft beer was called A Tout le Monde, which is French for “To Everyone.” It was named after one of those twangy heavy metal ballads where headbangers want to show how sensitive they are by not screaming. Megadeth went one step further and started singing in French. I understand it was a big hit in Quebec.

Craft beer has a pronounced hipster vibe — so who is the market for these beers? Does it even matter? If the metal bands aren’t playing the FedExForums, they are playing the Tunicas of the world. And when Bonnaroo kicks off for the year, the metal-heads do converge on Manchester. So why not?

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

Dixie Beer: The Story Behind NOLA’s Iconic Brew

On television, investigative journalists are never shown wasting most of their time on leads that go absolutely nowhere — but it happens. A lot. Back in 2015, I was in New Orleans chasing down what appeared to be an insurance fraud case of near-biblical proportions when I found myself in the back of a car driven by the owners of the iconic Dixie Brewery. I’d been a fan since college, and this was an angle to the story that was just too weird not to follow.

Dixie Beer was started in 1907 and bopped along swimmingly until the big nationals drove most of the locals out of business in the 1950s and 1960s. Then, in the 1970s, there was that infamous “bad batch”: 45,000 cases of epically skunky Dixie Beer. Smelling a bargain, Joe and Kendra Bruno bought the brand in 1985. They filed for bankruptcy in 1989, apparently deciding that being technically a microbrewery offering a single beer that tasted exactly like Miller Lite was not a great business plan. Dixie then introduced a more substantial Blackened Voodoo lager and by the 1990s had brewed itself back into solvency.

Then came Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The brewery on Tulane Avenue took on 10 feet of water and was looted shortly thereafter. Ten years later, the Brunos were in an eminent domain argument with the city and LSU over the abandoned building possibly being expropriated for a VA hospital. It made them paranoid. Which brings it back to where I came in.

Kendra leaned around the front seat and asked how she could be sure I wasn’t a shill of the LSU system. The charming Mrs. M leaned forward and said, “Oh, Murff went to Alabama. He hates LSU.”

That did the trick.

Without a building, Dixie was then contract brewed in Wisconsin, and later, after Saints owner Tom Benson and his wife Gail bought the brand in 2017, here in Memphis at the Blues City Brewery. The recipe has remained the same, but it’s hard to see how the Memphis water didn’t improve on that paragon of unremarkably drinkable beer. We’ve got artesian wells; the water in NOLA tastes like underwear.

About two months ago, Dixie returned home to East New Orleans, with plans to take the brand national. Which would be nice, because you can’t actually get it in Memphis proper — not even when it was made here. You can get it in Southaven.

With Mardi Gras upon us, it may be worth the trip over the state line for a six-pack or two in order to get in the spirit. Especially since the insurance companies have ruled out the baby in the king cake as a choking hazard. Absurd. Of course, it is. In fact, all of New Orleans is a choking hazard. That’s where the magic happens.

I understand that Dixie is not using city water and possibly getting it from the artesian wells of Abita Springs — home of Abita Brewing — which, if you need a Mardi Gras beer here, is a great option.

Abita’s Mardi Gras Bock is, to me, an obvious marketing gimmick aimed at the sort of people who eschew king cake simply to avoid choking to death. Its amber, on the other hand, is a great Munich-style beer. Hop 99 is a great ale for all you hopheads, and Wrought Iron IPA is just a great beer.

It’s Dixie Beer, though, that is my psychic anchor to New Orleans; perhaps it’s the memories as much as anything. Their Blackened Voodoo lager is worth trying, especially on Fat Tuesday, not only for the flavor but because it was banned for a time in Texas as being too occultish and witchy. For my money, someone here in town needs to start carrying this stuff on those credentials alone.

As for the insurance fraud story I was chasing, it was deemed too weird to publish. You don’t see that on the television either. That’s just bad storytelling.

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

Ukraine Blues: A Test Drive of Mama’s Little Yella Pils

If you’ve ever been to Ukraine, specifically the city of Kharkov, about 20 miles from the Russian border, you realize that the fact that they’d elect a comedian and star of such rom-coms as Office Romance 1, 2, and 3 as president is entirely plausible. Even advisable.

It’s not an easy place to get to either: an eight-hour flight to Amsterdam, another four hours to the Ukrainian capital of Kiev, and then a final hour leg on a hulking Soviet-era Anatov that moves through the clouds like a barely sky-worthy sofa.

When I was there, the Russians hadn’t pulled their little cross-border stunt yet, and while everyone knew that they were cooking something up, no one knew what form said stunt was going to take. So the Ukrainians did what most of us do when an ill-advised ex shows up musing about getting back together. They started drinking heavily.

Of course, given the over-abundance of history in these parts, they never really stopped drinking. And they’ve gotten very good at it. They aren’t ale folk over there; they mostly go in for Bohemian pilsners to wash down a local spirit called pertsivka, which is just horilla made with hot peppers. (Horilla, it was explained to me, was what Americans who don’t know the difference call vodka). All of which is soaked up with black bread and sausage. What is an intrepid writer to do when he finds himself in a place like Kharkov? He goes native.

Contrary to popular belief, Bohemia is not the home of the University of Colorado, nor is it a neighborhood in San Francisco; it is the westernmost region of the Czechs. Since the last reshuffling of Europe, it’s been located in the Czech Republic. It is also the place where sneers about pilsners being boring go to die.

Admittedly, this was an odd line of thought to be having in that great whacking beer isle of the Midtown Cash Saver, but it’s also pretty bent to get paid to drink at 9 a.m. on a Wednesday. So, there we are. I was staring at a six-pack of Oskar Blues Mama’s Little Yella Pils — and perhaps it was the inescapably Ukraine flavored impeachment theatrics — when I found myself reaching for this Bohemian pilsner and wondering where I could find some black bread. Mama’s Little Yella Pils is a clear golden, medium-bodied lager with a flavor that doesn’t faint away like the more watered-down American version. Using a lot of German malts and yeast, it’s cool-fermented and has a light touch of the Bavarian hops. It will pair well with the usual, just a little better: hot dogs, burgers, and in the rainy back-end of winter, a massive bowl of chili. And given the winter we’ve been having, it doesn’t cancel itself when the weather goes off-script. It’s a brew that you can enjoy, whether you want to give it much thought or not. This is beer as best supporting actor, not the lead — a role the current president of Ukraine wishes he had.

I can’t say that it took me back to those long, strange days in Kharkov. Which is probably a good thing: I recall being packed into one of the city’s buses and seeing a boy, maybe 12, walking down the street with an unlit cigarette dangling from his lips, holding a 16-ounce beer. I wasn’t the only one who saw him, just the only one who thought the whole thing was a little bent. He stopped to say something to a policeman. I don’t know if the kid was speaking Ukrainian or Russian, but the cop gave him a light.

In sum, Oskar Blues is a good beer for a picnic, after work, or to look across a surreal political climate and say, in that English-as-a-second-language accent, “We’re screwed. We are so totally screwed.”

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

The Return of Old Zinnie’s

CREDIT: Richard Murff

Memphis has a terrible habit of waiting until it is just too late to do anything about our monuments and storied buildings. We don’t do much to save them, but we sure love to bitch about it when they’re gone.

Zinnie’s, fortunately, was saved from that oblivion. Well, strictly speaking, it sat in oblivion’s waiting room for a bit, decided the city still needed it, and reemerged at the same location on Madison. The new owners have cleaned it up but retained its old-school vibe. So old-school, in fact, that you can still park yourself at the heavy wooden bar in the beautiful neon gloom and suck down a lung-dart with impunity.

Sitting as we are at the end of a deranged decade, we need a place that’s been operating (mostly) since hairy, go-to-hell 1973. The beauty of Zinnie’s is that the bar’s theme is still “Zinnie’s.” A place from a simpler time. A time when I showed up one night to be told by Stan, the then-bartender, that my friend ____ had been hit by a car leaving the place about a half-hour earlier. Perhaps, he suggested, I should call him to check in. Whether it was Stan’s humanity or keen grasp of risk management is anyone’s guess, but I was concerned. I’ve never been a good salesman but managed to talk ____ into coming back out. So in he walks, still suited up (I think there was a wedding involved), if a bit disheveled, sporting a chipped tooth and an angry red whelp across the cheek where the wiper blade smacked him.

Richard Murff

Everything old is new again at Zinnie’s on Madison.

I bought him a drink, and we fired up a couple of heaters. I asked what it was like — you know — getting plowed by a car while wearing worsted wool. He took things in stride because that’s the sort of place Zinnie’s was. “Not as bad as you’d think,” he said. “Scared the hell out of the driver though. It didn’t really hurt me until he hit the brakes and I rolled off the hood.”

“So basically,” I clarified, blowing a long plume of smoke, “had our driver possessed the presence of mind to just keep driving steadily to, say Canada, you’d have been fine?”

“Yes … but I don’t know anyone in Canada.”

Zinnie’s was the sort of bar where things like that just happened and it wasn’t remarkable. It looks like it still is that kind of place. The main difference now is the great cross-section of local beers. Memphis standbys like Wiseacre’s Tiny Bomb, Meddlesome’s 201 Hoplar, and Memphis Made’s Fireside, as well as an amber and pilsner from the new kid, Delta Sunshine. It’s not all local: There is Hi-Wire brown ale, and a red ale from Steel Barrel. And, of course, PBR, if you feel the need to out-hipster the craft beer people.

Ginny, the bartender, took me around the shots and offered me a food menu. I don’t know if they’ve always had one, but I sure as hell don’t remember it — just that popcorn machine in the back. She recommended the hamburgers and honestly seemed like the sort of lady who’d look after a good customer that had been menaced by a Ford Taurus. The wings are solid pub grub. The Zinnalonni is a thick-cut, fried bologna sandwich with American cheese and slaw. My guess is that this creation will occupy the same place as the chicken-on-a-stick at the Chevron in Oxford, Mississippi. They aren’t moving too many during daylight, but once you float across the hour of good and evil on a river of booze, they really hit the spot.

So at the New Old Zinnie’s, you have the best of vintage Memphis serving a cold pint of the new Memphis. And they’ve still got that big front window. You know, the one with the view of the city’s insane late-night traffic.

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

Get Oat!

Oats have been used in brewing in Britain for hundreds of years for the simplest reason of them all — they were there. Literally, they were all over the place, and cheap. That swell “shop local” mantra loses some of its luster when that’s your only choice, so in the 1890s some clever Scot decided to market his beer out of the bargain bin and fetch a better price by selling it as a health drink. And why not? Oatmeal is healthy isn’t it?

Thus was born the oatmeal stout. Ads ran from Edinburgh to London and all points in between touting its health benefits to invalids, the elderly, and young children. Very young, in fact. It was prescribed to nursing mothers. Nutritious stout was big business, too. Brewers protected recipes and trade names. There were lawsuits and fortunes made. There was also a generation of strangely mellow children.

The health claims may have been overstated, and parents began feeling that maybe they shouldn’t be quite so obvious about getting their children gassed. Oatmeal stouts, for the most part, didn’t really survive World War II.

The style was brought back by Samuel Smith of Tadcaster, England. The brewer started exporting to the U.S. in the mid 1980s — about the time American beer drinkers were deciding that while having two beers that tasted exactly alike cut down on nasty surprises, it cut down on everything else, as well. You can still get Sam Smith’s Oatmeal Stout all over town, and if you are looking for a great example of the style that goes well with the winter months, start there. I don’t know how healthy it is, but it packs the toasty taste and the heft of a porter. The oats add a silkiness and just a touch of sweetness to balance it out.

Young’s Oatmeal Stout is another great classic example of the style that’s widely available. And now you can even “shop local,” with Meddlesome’s Black Cat Moan oatmeal stout. They’ve gone old-school, with a velvety, chocolaty brew. If you are ever in the far east (of Memphis), it is absolutely worth the trip for a growler or two.

Wiseacre’s got a great stout, too, but like a lot of Wiseacre’s brews, it has a little twist. They are the M. Night Shyamalon of brewers. The first time I had their Gotta Get Up to Get Down coffee stout, a mob of us were at a friend’s cabin. We’d spent the night before around a camp fire, drinking too much and telling each other lies about college. (I have no idea why because we were all in the same class.) At any rate, the next morning we realized that no one had brought the coffee. But someone had brought a case of Wiseacre’s coffee stout. Which, as long as we are talking local, is made with Memphis’ own Ugly Mug coffee.

Well, what can I say? Heads cleared, the pep returned to the collective step — it did the trick. Perhaps a little too well because we went water skiing in the rain, then thought some North Alabama cliff diving was a good idea.

I’m really not one to recommend hair of the dog — not because it doesn’t work, but because that sort of foolishness sets a problematic precedent. Still, Gotta Get Up to Get Down is actually a phenomenal hangover cure. I’m not proud of it, but I can say that it does pair well with scrambled eggs and slightly burnt bacon.

In my defense, the alcohol in these stouts isn’t terribly high, despite the hefty feel. And they really aren’t made to be quaffed at speed. I suppose you could funnel one if you wanted, but the resulting belch would shake the windows and start rumors of a Delta Sasquatch. And who the hell needs that?

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

Holiday Beering: A Handy Guide for Office Parties and Family Gatherings

CREDIT: Stockcreations | Dreamstime.com

You’ve made it through Thanksgiving, but remember, that was just the gut-busting starting pistol. Whether religious or not, we’re all facing a nondenominational holiday season that makes an Ironman Triathlon look like a quaint British baking show. It will test the very fiber of your being and the stitching in your pants. Far, far too much cheese will be eaten. Drinking helps.

In a world where everything is customized, what exactly do you drink? Context matters. For example, Guinness tastes better in Ireland, and absinthe — outside of Paris or New Orleans — is just awful. To wit, a guide for you to drink the proper beer for the right environment.

Other than “Stay one drink behind your boss,” there are no universal rules for office parties. If your company communicates primarily in spreadsheets, drink lagers. They are stable, reliable, and it’s hard to get more mainstream. You can overdo this; a light kölsch is so innocuous that it might give the impression that your math, while good, might be too good. There is a reason the rest of the Eurozone hates German monetary policy.

Stockcreations | Dreamstime.com

If you work in a place where people say things like “flow” and “the new normal” or have ever asked a client about their “platform,” then IPAs are precisely “on brand.” To be sure, they are just as mainstream as lagers; they just refuse to admit it. Double IPAs are even more so but will likely increase the regrettable type of “flow.” The tech fields speak the same gibberish, but there is literally nothing I can write about that sector that will be current at publication.

If you work for an investment bank, just order the most expensive item on the menu and be sure to let your co-workers see you buy it. Don’t let them see you pour it down the sink when you realize a $21 pint of spruce beer was ill-advised.

Many companies promote employees if they have a track record of being a pedantic twit. If that’s you, drink a witbier. There isn’t anything that pedantic about the style per se, but when you pronounce it, really lay into the ‘wh’ sound. This will annoy all assembled in a way they can’t quite place. They’ll hate you but will naturally concede you are on the cutting edge of something.

Wherever you earn that green, remember that pumpkin spice beers are an aphrodisiac. Tread lightly. The same goes for the Special Belge style; while not an aphrodisiac, you won’t be able to resist the obvious pun. Best to avoid. Lambics and sours will announce that you are, in fact, unemployable.

Family get-togethers are simpler because they can’t fire you — but that cuts both ways. You already know the score here, and you don’t need my help. Understand that, for your in-laws, this is the traditional time to come together, explain why you suck, and try their best to have you voted off the island. Try to be nice. If you’ve married into the sort of family that reads a lot of Dickens and wears a lot of plaids, go with stouts and ales. If there are framed pictures of men in lederhosen, drink German dunkles. If the pictures are of men with Natty Light cases on their heads — well, when in Rome … .

A saison is a great way to announce to all that you do have the vague notion that your food did come from a farm, and that’s a good thing. A tad sanctimonious, but it will win crowd-points if your new Aunt Madge always dries out the turkey like she’s making jerky.

If you married a Catholic, you’d be forgiven for thinking that a Belgian abby ale will fulfill your Sunday obligation. It will not. Just ask my mother.

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

A Taste of Fireside Ale

CREDIT: Memphis Made Brewing Co. | Facebook

A lot of people will tell you that the American amber is an all-American style, that these beers sprang from nowhere, but don’t you believe them. This is America, man, the land where nearly everything came from someplace else.

The style is actually an American take on the Irish red, a lighter version of the heavy Scottish version of the English nut brown ale — the malty version of its cousin, the pale ale. Got it?

It’s enough to make a Brexit lawyer reach for a whiskey. But not a Kentucky bourbon because, you know, there is a trade war going on.

Memphis Made Brewing Co. | Facebook

I was trying to sort all of this out on a very cold afternoon when I slipped into Bounty on Broad, feeling about as arts district as I ever do, since the universe and my bank account forced me into nonfiction. My blood hadn’t quite thickened up for the winter, so I ordered a Memphis Made Fireside. I’d never tried it before and can’t really tell you why, other than that the name puts me off: I’m too hot-natured to drink something called Fireside.

Fortunately, I can admit when I’m completely and totally wrong. Fireside does have a great toasty finish and feel, but if you are looking for a stout or a Scottish ale, this isn’t it.

Amber/red is a style that sits somewhere in the middle — between the booming beers, like the heavily hopped ales and the big stouts, and the light lagers — especially the hot-weather lagers like the Mexican and Thai styles now appearing in local stores. To be clear, there is nothing wrong with the middle way; it certainly worked for the Buddha, and we could all use a little more of that. Fireside is a solid version of an American classic that has its origins across the seas. And it has the awards to prove it.

Fireside feels closer to the Irish red style, in that it avoids the aggressive hopping of many of the West Coast ambers. Ultimately light on the bitterness, it has a toasted medium malty bloom and sits at a drinkable 5 percent ABV. But, despite the name and all the warm flavor notes, it is a pretty light, clean beer. Other reviewers have called it “accessible” but I don’t quite understand that, unless you’ve got a bartender who pulls you a beer and then sets it on a shelf slightly out of reach. What it means to me is that you can drink Fireside on its own and not be bored, but if you’re hungry, it goes well with hearty pub-food favorites like burgers and pizza.

It’s available pretty much anywhere in Memphis, in either cans or on tap. It wasn’t on tap at Bounty — and if you’re there, try it with the quail or the pork carnitas — so a word on cans: Unless you are on a picnic, go ahead and pour your beer into a glass. This doesn’t much matter with the big-name pilsners, but craft beers are different creatures, and there is usually a lot going on (even in the ones not trying to be too clever). Your sense of smell plays a huge part in the taste experience — which is why everything tastes the same when you have a cold. You’re likely to miss Fireside’s aroma of toasted malt and light-caramel toffee finish when you’re sucking the thing out of a can. So listen to your grandmother and pour it into a glass because drinking a good beer out of a can is like plopping down $9 at the movies only to watch it with the sound off: You’ll be able to follow what’s going on, but it’s lacking.

Circling back around to another point of concern, if your bartender is setting your pints out of reach, then find another bar. Quickly.