Author: Richard Murff

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

Bitchin’ Camaro: Hot Cars and Cold Beer in the Natural State

We were somewhere around Blytheville, at the old airport, when Big Red blew a rod in a foul cloud of black smoke at better than 200 miles per hour. I remember saying, “That’s not supposed to happen like that,” to the man in the lawn chair. The little fella been watching the races all weekend and had been telling me about how they’d had to tow the Lamborghini out of the beanfield earlier. So, there I was, watching motorcycles join the 200-mph club, impossibly expensive Italian sports cars sink up to the rims in Arkansas loam, and a 1969 Camaro called Big Red blow its engine on its way to breaking an event record.

These motorheads travel heavy, which means the Big Red team travels with a spare 2000HP engine. Since they hadn’t broken the event record, not this year at any rate, they thought they’d install another block overnight. I got packed off, along with a film crew from from a show called Hoonigan, to the Holiday Inn. That was fine, I don’t know anything about engines and I needed a beer.

Arkansas — or Little Rock — has a solid craft beer scene, but few of them seem to make that long journey over the bridge to the Memphis market. Diamond Bear Brewing Company, however, is alive and well and available at a number of places over here. A local beer seemed fitting, as Arkansas is the Natural State, and in an epic battle between man (Lamborghini) and nature (beanfield), nature definitely won that round.

Diamond Bear’s Southern Blonde Ale is a solid winner for toasting this kind of contest. It’s a lager, but doesn’t go away, like many of them do. The brewers say that it has a bit of caramel in it, but it comes off as a twist of honey to me. It is more malty than hoppy, but nothing in the palate really breaks out to yank your tongue. This is not a stand-in for a watered-down lager, but a hazy beer with a big fuzzy collar on it and an ABV of 5.18 percent.

Little Rock has the beer scene, Blytheville doesn’t have much. Except an airport — make that two of them. The muni airport, I had to explain to the Southern Californians, was mostly crop dusters. Blytheville International, they explained to me, used to be a command for B-52 bombers, and therefore has one of the longest runways in the country at 2.75 miles. Which is why the Arkansas Mile Event is held there; drivers need a mile to get to top speed and, basically, another mile to stop.

Since Big Red first started racing in the Southwest in the late 1980s, the team has continued racking up event titles like some people collect baseball hats. Over the years, it has become something like the Elvis of Pro-Touring cars. The whole event, and the show that goes with it, have something of a California feel. So, after I foisted the Arkansas beer on our visitors, they foisted Lagunitas IPA on me.

There really wasn’t any arm-twisting here, as this IPA was nothing new. Lagunitas is available almost anywhere, and its IPA, a well-balanced ale that is hoppy without being too bitter, is one of the go-to IPAs wherever you are. While there is a lot of talk about the pairing of beer with food, you also have to consider pairing beer with, say, an event. This IPA is a great brew to play with this adrenaline fueled, gear-head foolishness. It weighs in at 6.2 percent ABV, and it is a clear ale with a crisp, nice finish.

And a nice finish is what the boys from California were after, having spent nine hours installing another engine into their monster car. They weren’t drinking anything, but I suspect they were getting a contact high from the methanol fumes.

RJ Gottlieb, the driver, hit 243.6 mph on Sunday, but fell short of the 250-mph goal. I think he was just high on whatever you call that.

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

What Are the Best Beers for the Beach?

It’s getting to be about that time of year when we head, bumper to bumper, down to Florida’s 30A, to what used to be known as the Redneck Riviera before we all got uptight and precious about everything. Sugar-white beaches, oil-free blue water — and much of Memphis standing around in fewer clothes than back home.

There is, of course, a smallish cooler of perfectly iced beer under the umbrella; you need to hydrate, as well as brace yourself for the sight of your shirtless neighbor intruding on your sub-tropical paradise.

Only one question remains: Exactly what beer should go in that cooler?

If advertisers are to be believed, and they are no less reliable than cable news or social media, then you should be filling it with Corona. If you consider yourself more of a connoisseur of beach beer, you might fill the cooler with Jimmy Buffet’s Landshark “Island Lager.” It really doesn’t matter because they taste exactly the same. In blind taste tests, almost no one could tell the difference. I’m qualifying with that “almost” because someone is going to want to argue the point, and I’m not in the mood. I stand by my testing methods. In fact, the packaging is so similar and the marketing so incestuous that you don’t even need the blindfold to get confused.

And, so what? It’s not as if Corona or Landshark are bad beers. As beach brews go, they are hard to beat — light, crisp, and with a clean finish. Not terribly interesting, but whether you are deep-sea fishing like Papa Hemingway or laying bone idle in the sand, no one goes down to the Gulf to think. Occasionally, the more philosophical of us will ponder something deep and existential like the wisdom of having yet another dozen warm-water oysters, but that’s about it.

Still, there is nothing wrong with upping your game when it comes to your beach cooler, and since all of Memphis is going to be down there, why should your knockoff Yeti be any different?

Available around town in cans is Wiseacre’s Memphis Sands lager, a great non-clever brew that is named after our famous aquifer and not the grit in your swim trunks. Another good hometown option you can haul down to 30A is High Cotton’s Mexican Lager. Both go great with fish guts and lapping waves.

Normally, this is where I attempt to describe these fine beers, but what’s the point? Memphis Sands and Mexican Lager occupy the same neighborhood as Budweiser and Corona respectively — they’re just at the better end of the street. It’s sort of like when the BBC takes a crack at something as common as the American soap opera and winds up producing Downton Abbey. Deep down you know it’s a soap opera, but damn, the production value is through the roof.

You’d think that IPA, literally invented for the sweltering heat of India, would be a beach go-to. Practically, you have to be careful with those hop-forward beers that are delightfully bitter at one temperature and less so when they warm up. Not less bitter, less delightful. Crosstown’s Traffic IPA is a West Coast style, which means it still tastes like a great IPA, but they’ve laid off the hops.

If you forget to pack the car with Memphis beer, Motorworks Brewing out of Bradenton, Florida, is available through most of the state. Do yourself a beach favor and pick up their Pulp Friction grapefruit IPA — it is brewed for the Sunshine State, and it is fantastic. The upside of either IPA is that you won’t be sucking your tongue when napping under that book you’re pretending to read.

If you need a final reason to “go craft” on vacation, remember that they tend to have a higher ABV. True, this dramatically increases the likelihood of your drowning, but it does help dull the senses when that neighbor on the next beach chair exposes his gleaming white belly to the sun.

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

Surviving Barbecue

It’s hot and smoky. The vibe down by the river during the World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest, if we’re going to be honest, is more moonshine than anything else, but that is ill-advised. Theoretically, it’s about the food, but it’s not so much what you’re eating as how you’re eating it — gourmet produced on an epic scale. You’ve burned your reserves, you’re exhausted, overheated; vegetables have been banished to the soft confines of East Memphis. What it is, is barbecue.

Not award-winning pulled pork from aficionados coming from around the globe, but that thoroughly Memphis carnival of meat, liquor, fried adrenaline, heat, and the lingering whiff — beneath the wood-smoke and pork fat — of off-license glaucoma treatments being applied with mellow determination.

In my long experience, the thing that holds it all together is beer. Not pork, but beer. Hear me out: In your car, the engine gets all the glory, but without a drive shaft you aren’t going anywhere. To get yourself through Barbecue Fest, you need beer. Cheap domestic beer, and a lot of it. Not for drunkenness, but for maintenance of that strange and tricky equilibrium where the alcohol keeps the exhaustion at bay, but doesn’t pull you under.

I recall in high school — before the safety barriers were up and the event had a lot more “Thunderdome” to it — my friend Tim trying to climb the bluff and tumbling headfirst into hilarious failure. A skinny fella, Tim looked like a Wham-O hula-hoop bouncing down the bluff with the skinny outrigger of his arm holding a beer. He came back to us in a Ferris wheel of profanity and hair, with a mouthful of grass. Tim hadn’t spilled a drop. We called it a Barbecue Miracle, but the truth is that if he’d been drinking Arnold Palmers, he’d have lost the whole cup in the first loop.

In fact, the whole utility of beer at Barbecue Fest isn’t to be gassed, but to just float. Heading into the park and into the slow-moving river of humanity, you realize a) why the invention of the shirt predates that of beer or even the concept of free will, and b) that any damn fool can go Downtown and, in this heat, drink themselves silly and go take a nap. The real savvy is to maintain a constant 65 percent utility for several days running.

If this 65 percent number is hard to gauge, here’s a rule of thumb: Drink enough to maintain an internal level of amusement, but not enough to start telling people what you really think. Well, that and don’t fall off or out of a tent. Although who has a tent these days? It’s all scaffolding, electricity, sound systems, lights, and disco balls. The buzz around Tom Lee Park last weekend was that someone had taken a spill off a second floor. I’ve been in the tent in question, and to take a plunge like that is more dumb luck than bad luck. As it was, the gravitationally challenged person was limp enough to take it in stride. So, again, beer is your friend.

I’d go as far as to argue that cheap domestic keg beer is the inspiration for the whole thing. It is the spark that brings the team to life. Sure, you’ve got to have something to smoke, but you’ve got to have a team name, and after a while, those swine puns get hard to come by. And the very clever ones don’t sound like the product of an altogether sober mind. There is an undeniably creative genius unleashed by this sort of beery slow burn. Like when I overheard, sung to the tune of the traditional “Old Man River,” the following:

“I’m so bloated,

Yes, I’m so bloated.

I keep on bloatin’

Just keep on bloatin’

Awwwaaayyyy!”

That’s not the liquor talking, or the glaucoma treatments. That’s the beer. And one more thing, don’t worry about the details, but trust me, leave the Limoncello at home.

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

Whiskey Barrel Beers

On a ramble through Kentucky’s Bourbon Fest a few years ago, I happened across a most Kentuckian innovation: ale aged in bourbon barrels. These days, it isn’t as random — or Kentucky — as it seems. Goose Island Brewing has been monkeying around with a Bourbon County Stout since the 1990s. So, bourbon-barrel beer? It’s worth a try.

Likely as a result of the bourbon boom in the last decade, brewers have been trying the same technique with lighter styles. With the surge of popularity for bourbon, a “two great tastes that taste great together” experiment seems to be happening, making bourbon-barrel beer the boozy version of a peanut butter cup. The bourbon boom has also done something else — made used whiskey barrels a lot cheaper.

This is because bourbon distillers, by law, can use those charred white-oak barrels for mellowing moonshine into the nectar of the Gods only one time. Making beer, on the other hand, is a short-term process; no one wants a beer that’s a couple of years old. Whiskey needs several years in barrels to take away the harshness of the freshly made stuff. The barrels expand and contract with seasonal temperature fluctuations, so that the whiskey soaks into and out of the charred wood — which makes Kentucky, with its hot summers and cold winters, the perfect place to make the stuff. Wood is porous, so there is evaporation — called the “angels’ share” — of up to 1 percent of the volume per year. The angels’ share doesn’t all go into the air, however; a fair bit stays in the wooden staves.

The barrels are perfectly good, but can’t be reused if the product is going to legally be classed as bourbon. Traditionally, these gently used barrels were sold to Scotch distillers to help recoup costs. That still happens, but bourbon production is now so high that there are more barrels than the Scots need, so they are being used to age sherry, brandy, tequila, and, yes, beer.

Storing beer in whiskey barrels draws that angels’ share out and into the beer. Traditional stainless steel vats provide more precision in the beer-brewing process. No two used barrels are exactly alike, so what you get when you pull the bung and pour out the beer is always going to be a bit of a mystery. Which is a great story of craft, but how does it taste?

Brewery Ommegang out of New York has a smoked vanilla porter made with light, smoked malt as well as chocolate malt. The porter is aged in bourbon barrels for six months with whole vanilla beans. It sounds expensive, and it is expensive. It is also very deep and — words fail me — luscious. But with an ABV of 8.9 percent, no one is going to be funneling this stuff. It pours and looks like a Guinness, but although rich, sits a lot lighter. The weather and the seasons being what they are in Memphis, I was looking for a lighter version. Which led me to Boulevard Brewing Company’s Rye on Rye out of Kansas City. While I’m not a huge fan of rye ales, this one doubled down, aged in whiskey barrels from Templton Rye — which I really do like. Over all, it hit the spot. It was light enough, but had that lovely rye spice imparted by those wonderful whiskey-logged barrel staves. Spicy yes, with vanilla and hops, and a nice clean finish that doesn’t leave you looking for a toothbrush.

The great thing is that these two beers taste nothing alike. Barrel-aged beers are all different. To Memphis’ craft brewers, I say this: In a few years, Old Dominick is probably going to have a lot of whiskey barrels it can no longer use. Now you know what to do with them.

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

BBQ Brews

With May just around the corner, a Memphian’s heart, taste buds, nose, and waistline turn to barbecue. It really doesn’t matter if you like the stuff of not, the whole city is going to smell like it in May. So, how to wash that glorious pulled pork down?

If you take an amble through Tom Lee Park during the contest week, you will be surrounded by the best pork the world has to offer. Given what they are drinking down there all week, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Busch is the natural pairing for barbecue. It’s not, though it is an economical pairing and a sensible one at that. Being on a barbecue team means that all your family, friends, and anyone you’ve made extended eye contact with in traffic will be mooning about, cadging invites, and expecting to be fed all week. And they will want a beer. You will provide it because, well, you don’t want to be that guy. Feeding them Natty Light is fine.

On the other hand, if you are just feeding yourself and a select few, you can do better than that. While I think we all ought to be forward looking, I’d like to politely ask the good people at Memphis Made to make some more of its old Lucid Kolsch. They described it as “A lawnmower beer with flavor.” Another great ‘Cue beer is an ESB, Extra Special Bitter — it goes great with big flavors and, if you want to drink local, a time machine. Alas, both High Cotton and Southern Prohibition have retired their ESBs. That makes me blue.

We can’t live in the past, though. The truth is that, while they aren’t glamorous, those American-style lagers do in fact go pretty well with barbecue. The big macros aren’t trying to be particularly interesting — they are brewed to be drinkable — which works well, because barbecue is a big, bold taste, that usually has a little heat. To move up the scale a bit, you won’t go wrong with Wiseacre’s Memphis Sands. It’s a solid, drinkable lager that aspires to be a solid, drinkable lager. High Cotton makes a Mexican Lager that is slightly lighter but a solid, drinkable lager. Also, a good choice for die-hard Jimmy Buffet fans.

For something new and summery with a little twist, Meddlesome has a Water Malone, a light American-style wheat beer made with watermelon puree. It will give you just a little twist of sweetness to soften those big, spicy barbecue flavors.

The issue here is that barbecue competitors, seeking to win in May, very often tweak their recipe to play to the judges. In Memphis this invariably means making their sauces sweeter — sickeningly so in my opinion. A friend of mine, whose team places as often as it doesn’t, has a recipe he only serves to the judges, and never to someone who he’d have to look in the eye.

Given the danger in these parts of over-sweet sauce, an American-style pale ale is a near-perfect pairing. The big hoppy IPAs can get bitter and overwhelming in the heat, and are sometimes just too much paired with big food flavors. Pale ales just play well with barbecue, so it’s a little odd that Delta Sunshine is the only local brewery currently making one. Being the new kid on the block, it’s not exactly everywhere just yet, but keep an eye out for Room 414 Pale Ale.

With that in mind, Atlanta’s Sweetwater 420 Pale Ale is one of the best local(ish) craft choices to wash down that pulled pork, baked beans, and whatever else you are going to get up to next month. Yazoo Brewing has a good pale ale but, as we all know, Nashville doesn’t know the first damn thing about barbecue.

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

Spicy Spring

“I don’t drink too much, I’m just a victim of great weather,” I said, sensibly — although it’s possible my mother would classify that as more excuse than explanation. Any way you look at it, though, the weather is nice. Spring has sprung.

The onset of spring in Memphis is like watching a very amiable couple decide what to have for dinner — it’s a lot of back and forth. Then summer shows up and obnoxiously delivers some sadistic combination of heat and humidity. We aren’t quite there yet, so if you didn’t know that spring was here by standing on your front porch you can always turn on one of the eating channels for this season’s “newest” warm-weather food trend: Southeast Asian.

Which is fine by me as I love those wild, colorful, spectacular flavors. Not sure how “new” any of this is, because people in Southeast Asia have been eating for a long time. Still, innovative twists on old recipes abound, and if you want to stay on trend, you’ll need to find the perfect beer before the million little pieces of what we’re calling the modern media runs the idea completely into the dirt.

High Cotton’s Thai Pale Ale

Last weekend, we headed over to Hammer & Ale to squat on their parking-lot themed patio and think this one over. I ordered a Soulful Ginger, brewed just down the street by Memphis Made, a brewery that has never been afraid to monkey with new ingredients. It was weird, or more charitably, unexpected. Not bad, though. I liked it; it just took a sip or two to grow on me. Good Japanese whisky will do the same thing to you. With the first sip, you think, “This isn’t Scotch!” and the second you think, pleasantly, “No. No it’s not.”

Soulful Ginger is weirdly good: a light, refreshing, saison style with hints of ginger and peppercorns to give it a little spice and a clean finish. Originally from France and Belgium, saisons were brewed in the cooler months by farm workers who weren’t too busy to keep them hydrated in the warmer months when they were. The French name for seasonal workers was “saisonniers.” Saisons are some of the great unsung beer styles, and an obvious one to adapt to hot and steamy climates like Thailand or Midtown. It is a great beer to go with something spicy, maybe something with lemongrass and sesame oil. The flavors just click with that palate of ingredients.

If the ginger is a little too out there for you, High Cotton Brewing has another good option on tap these days. It’s called Thai Pale Ale. Now, anyone who has spent any time in Southeast Asia knows that they are not big ale drinkers over there. Primarily, they stick to what we’d call the kind of watered-down lager that, until the 1990s, was about the only beer you could get stateside. And it’s popular for a good reason: The weather is hot, the food is spicy, and the beer goes down easy. In some parts of the world, there is always a thirst to quench.

High Cotton has applied the same idea for the devoted hop-head who’s looking for another option to pair with spicy foods. Thai Pale Ale is light and crisp but still has that “hops pop” that gives it a finish able to stand up to a great whacking dollop of Sambal Oelek chili paste without trying to fight it.

Either option is a great beer if you’ve been so inundated by clever Southeast Asian food recipes from the internet that you feel you just must whip something up at home. Go grab a growler of either, or both, and have at it. If you miss the mark on dinner because, you know, internet recipes, just pour yourself another pint and chill.

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

Soccer and Beer and Memphis: A Perfect Combination

(Credit: Memphis 901 FC)

The last professional soccer game I attended was the Memphis Rogues. I played the game a little in lower school, but can’t be accused of taking it seriously. If I’m going to be honest, I’m one of the few University of Alabama alumni who doesn’t take that sports program seriously either. I have, however, been to enough baseball and football games to know that what, and more importantly, how you drink at these things is crucial. And that may be the real sport.

Memphis has a professional USL soccer team now, the 901 FC, and I felt compelled to see its inaugural match-up with the Tampa Bay Rowdies. Admittedly, soccer is a lot tighter on the clock than football, and baseball doesn’t even have one. Soccer games all run 90 minutes, more or less, so you haven’t got hours to burn. The good people over at the Bluff City Mafia — the 901 FC’s supporter club — got around that hurdle by kicking off the pregame festivities at 2 p.m. down at the Brass Door. This was followed by a short, boozy march — complete with flags and chanting — to AutoZone Park for the 6 match. Good people.

Memphis 901 FC

A full house watches Memphis 901 FC at AutoZone Park.

So, given the time involved, Game-Day Drinking is like its cherished cousin, Day Drinking: It’s important to set the right pace. You don’t have to dial it back to “lunch with Grandmother,” but you certainly need to keep it a click or two below peak “Warren Zevon.”

For her part, the enchanting Mrs. M thought that arriving at the Brass Door at 4 p.m. was the perfect touch of fashionable lateness. By that time, the place was filled with an impressive amount of whooping and hollering. Impressive, because there was absolutely no reasonable cognitive association these happy people could possibly have for a team that had never played before. Except, of course, that it was Memphis’ soccer team. And there they were, leading bar-wide cheers with perfect strangers. It makes a fella proud.

Beer-wise, there was a lot of Guinness being slung about, but there always is in Irish bars. And for a game-day brew, it’s not a bad choice. The ABV is a relatively low 4.2 percent, and while it tastes heavy, the truth is that at 125 calories, it’s only 15 more than Bud Light.

Outside, the steam was rising from a recent rain, and inside, it was crowded — and I’m fat. So I went with a Wiseacre Ananda — light and crisp — but you might want to avoid it for a long haul. Mrs. M had a Bud Light; a lady is entitled to her mysteries.

The lovely thing about soccer is that it is one of the few times Memphis seems cosmopolitan, as you move through a crowd hearing Irish-English, Australian, along with some lively Spanish in Latin American accents. Mrs. M’s grandfather was English, so I was curious — for purely sociological reasons — to see if all these chants and beer-swilling would trigger some first-rate English football hooliganism in her. She was too busy making friends with some people from Philadelphia, but the night was still young.

We marched and chanted and finally turned the corner into AutoZone Park. For some reason, being in a stadium always makes me slink back to domestic brews, although you can get a limited selection of local craft beers at the game.

The readers who had to google to find out just who the hell the Memphis Rogues were might not have the association of cheap domestics and sports, but they work well. You want it to be tasty and drinkable, but you also don’t want to think about it too much either. I had a big, tall Budweiser. True, soccer really isn’t America’s game, but Bud is owned by the Belgians now, so it’s a topsy-turvy world these days.

Incidentally, Mrs. M never went even remotely hooligan on me or anyone else. That woman is a delight.

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

Flyer “Beer Bracket Challenge” Down to Final Four

The whole thing started a few years ago, when Flyer associate editor Toby Sells blindfolded himself to pick the match-ups for the Flyer‘s first Beer Bracket Challenge. It was all kind of a goof that first year, replete with a “trophy” made from an old ice bucket that editor Bruce VanWyngarden found in his garage. Now, the Beer Bracket Challenge has morphed into a lineup of 24 local beers from five breweries going toe-to-toe against each other for votes from Flyer readers. It is a friendly competition, but it is a competition — and these Memphis beer gurus want to win.

For the more casual craft beer fan, the Beer Bracket Challenge, assisted by some delicious pizza at Aldo’s Pizza Downtown, where this year’s seeding ceremony took place, is one of the best ways to take the aimlessness out of your tour of the booming Memphis craft beer scene. Sure it’s fun to simply toss a ball idly into the air on a lazy day, but sinking it through the hoop when there is a mob trying to stop you is just more fun.

There are four divisions in the challenge. The “Tapped Out” division was seeded with two big winners from last year, Meddlesome’s 201 Hoplar and one of my long time go-tos, Wiseacre’s Ananda — two IPA heavyweights in a town that loves its IPAs. In the first round of voting, 201 Hoplar beat out Midnight Magic, a German Black Ale from Memphis OB (Original Brewer) Ghost River. Ananda lost out to another Meddlesome entrant, Dirty Dova. This was a little surprising, but as beers go, Dirty Dova, a crisp and refreshing double IPA, is a winner. In fact, it may go down a little too easy; its 8.5 percent ABV makes it a brew on a mission. Get a Lyft home.

In the “Perfect Pour” division, Wiseacre’s Tiny Bomb lager beat out another top seed from last year, High Cotton’s Thai Pale Ale, making it to the third round, where it was voted out, losing to Memphis Made’s Fireside, a malty roasted Red Ale.

In the “Drafted” division, Meddlesome continued its winning streak, as its Broad Hammer American Brown Ale edged out Memphis Made’s Cat Nap IPA. Broad Hammer then went on to beat out Crosstown’s Siren Blonde Ale in the next round and, then, finally, steal a win over Wiseacre’s Regular Pale Ale to make the Final Four.

Over in the “Frosty Mug” division, Wiseacre’s coffee stout (and nearly guaranteed hangover cure) Gotta Get Up to Get Down, beat out Plaid Attack Scotch Ale, another perennial favorite from Memphis Made. Gotta Get Up was beaten in the next round by this year’s Cinderella story, Meddlesome’s Brass Bellows, a great blonde ale. For the record, Brass Bellows had some fearsome competition from long-time favorite Ghost River Gold, followed by a close contest with High Cotton’s Mexican Lager, a sort of cosmic ideal of Corona.

The Beer Bracket Final Four for 2019: 201 Hoplar, Broad Hammer, Brass Bellows, and Fireside. The big winner in the tourney has been Meddlesome Brewing. If not exactly the new kid in class, they are certainly not the old guard either. Their tap room, out near the end of Shelby Farms, might be a bit out of the loop, but their beers are hard to ignore.

Final Four voting ended at press time. We know that Meddlesome will take home our Beer Bracket Challenge Cup. But to find out which beer won, you’ll have to check next week’s Flyer.

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

Prank Calls to Satan: Wiseacre’s Wicked Good Beer.

Once, in my younger days, I thought it was a terribly clever idea to prank call the planet. Which is how I know that at one point in history there were three people named Mortimer Underhill living in London, England. With long distance rates being what they once were, I didn’t pull a stunt like that on my phone. So, about three weeks later, there was also one set of parents in Baton Rouge who had a terrible time reconciling their daughter’s overseas phone bill. She later admitted it was pretty funny, but I was still on the hook for dinner.

So when I saw that Wiseacre Brewing had a black IPA called Prank Calls to Satan, I was intrigued. And why not? My ill-advised yet expensive quest for Mr. Underhill was entirely fueled by barley-water. This is the sort of imbecility we used to do in a world before the internet and Caller ID.

There is no real history to black IPAs. The brew is still considered an emerging style, although you see it around fairly often, these days. It is an ale with IPA-level hopping that also has a distinct toasted malt flavor. While it looks like a stout, it lacks the heavy body of that style.

I’ll admit that I’ve never been an unqualified fan of some of these “emerging” styles. Some of them can be too clever by half. And there are plenty of very traditional practices that, like the Salem Witch trials, really ought to remain a historical curiosity. I’m looking at you, Sour Beer. On the other hand, it’s no good standing in the way of innovation, either.

It was on a rainy, almost warm day that I headed over to Wiseacre to test Prank Calls to Satan.

It’s available in cans, but a trip to the taproom over on Broad is almost always worth it. The rain coming off the overpass gives the porch an urban groovy backdrop, and inside it looks like a family garage that has been taken over by an artistic, pot-smoking son — the one no one trusted to go to college out of state.

Wiseacre calls Prank Calls “deceiving and fun.” It’s deceptively drinkable is what it is. Honestly, I was annoyed it had taken me this long to try it out. The highly toasted malt gives it a deep, dark color, but it’s much lighter than anything we’d call a stout. With the just right amount of Delta and Chinook hops, this ale has a crispness that isn’t usually found in a toasted beer. It is a solid 6.5 percent ABV, but the 40 IBU hits a great balance of bitter body.

In short, this is a beautiful note to hit on a Memphis afternoon that can’t decide if it’s winter, spring, or summer. And I imagine that it would go well in the fall as well.

As for what to eat with it, the hoppy crispness opens up possibilities, because it likely won’t overpower other flavors. All kinds of tapas and appetizers would do the trick, especially the stinky cheeses. To be clear, Ramen noodles wouldn’t stand up to it, but this Black IPA will play well with a cheeseburger or a pizza. As much as I love barbecue, however, I can see how it might confuse the issue.

The guys over at Wiseacre named the beer after a Far Side cartoon that made them giggle. For me, all I could think of was making phone calls at 2:30 a.m. (8:30 a.m., London time) looking for a chap whose parents had saddled him with some ridiculous name I’d just made up. Mentally, that’s a strange place to go for a beer, but it was fun. The perfect beer to toast idiotic collegiate foolishness ruined by technology, and the manual transmission, while I’m at it, and, of course, one Mortimer Underhill, Esquire.

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

‘Vous and Brew: The Best of Memphis, Old and New

One of the great things about the boom in Memphis craft breweries is what we might call the normalization of local beer. That, and the small buzz of boozy civic pride that goes with showing it off. The taprooms around town are great in their own unique ways, but if your clothes aren’t tight enough to hang out at those places, you can pretty much go to any restaurant and be confident that there will be at least a couple of locals on tap.

That’s good for the people who live here, and it’s good for the people who visit. A friend of mine came into town for a meeting the other day, so we went down to the Rendezvous. For one thing, it’s one of his favorite spots to eat in the city, and second, nothing says “business casual” like having the one sportcoat you packed smell like award-winning barbecue at 8:30 the next morning. He’s also a craft beer enthusiast — and one of the relatively few craft connoisseurs to have actually sampled the vaguely hallucinogenic and entirely unfiltered Murffbrau back in our college days.

I’m old enough to remember when those ribs were invariably paired with an enormous pitcher of Michelob. While I don’t remember anyone ever having a problem with the beer selection back then, the ‘Vous has updated its beer list.

Barbecue packs a lot of flavor, and even the best of the breed can be a bit heavy, so you don’t want to pair it with just anything. But truth to tell, those old commercial American-style lagers went pretty well with ribs, no matter what the dilettantes will tell you. To that end, Wiseacre’s Tiny Bomb lager, with its little twist of honey, would be a great choice. Eventually, though, we went with a couple of Traffic IPAs from Crosstown Brewing.

I once described Crosstown’s Brake Czech (not currently available, because no one asked me) as the cosmic ideal of Budweiser. Traffic IPA certainly fits this mold. It is a West Coast style that fizzes with hints of citrus or fruit, hopped enough to keep it dry and crisp, but not enough to really wallop you with that tongue-sucking bitter. Crosstown does offer an Imperial IPA for the dedicated hophead (and I’ve had my moments), but this isn’t it. Traffic IPA is crisp and drinkable and doesn’t get dense, which is what I like about it with a heavyweight food like barbecue.

Since it opened, Crosstown has done a very good job of not getting too clever with its brews. They don’t seem obsessed with inventing a new beer, but are more focused on making the best of some really great styles. In a world that’s preoccupied with staying on top or ahead of the latest trend — this is refreshing. The way beer ought to be. True, there is no reason to be stodgy about beer-making, but it isn’t all about novelty either.

Of course, to show a visitor the best of Memphis, you have to take them to a restaurant that requires cutting through an alley, around a garbage container, and into an underground bunker. Sneer if you want, but that’s the Rendezvous — and Memphis, too. When the royal British princes came to town a few years back, that’s where they ate. Although, if memory serves, they went in through the other door. Granted, that example is a little misleading, but it is true enough.

So, I thought it fitting to pair some great food from a long-beloved Memphis institution with a local beer rolled out of the newly revamped Crosstown Concourse. It’s pointing to a future that, if we keep our heads about us, will stand on the shoulders of the past. It is the history of Memphis and its future, helping each other out.

No writer worth his salt will ever let a metaphor like that go to waste.