It’s early on a Friday night, we’ve got a town to paint, and Tex recommends we go to a Corner bar that shall remain unnamed. I put down my Tröegs Hopback Amber Ale in protest.
Enough. No more drinking just to get drunk, no more dubiously mixed drinks, and definitely—definitely—no more discussions of Pinot Noir.
“No way, not tonight,” I snap, fixing my evening’s companions, Tex and Straightedge, with a withering stare. Tex gets off the couch, starts walking toward the kitchen. “If you’re going to the fridge—stop. Don’t open up another can of stinkin’ Miller, Tex. We’re going out, and I’m going to preach to you some real goddamn beer.
“What we ain’t gonna do is head out to the same old standard-issue Corner bars to chill with frat dudes whose drinks resemble cat piss and taste like water. We ain’t going to those upscale, trendier-than-thou joints around Downtown—and we ain’t havin’ top-shelf liquor or overpriced Chardonnays shoved down our throats.
“Oktoberfest is upon us, boys! We’re going out to find some real beer here in Charlottesville.”
And so I have my mission: Initiate two novices to the real brew, the fine stuff, the beers with bouquets that remind you why the hell you are alive on this godforsaken planet, with hop-and-malts that make you dismiss, however temporarily, global warming and broken ambitions, cyclical poverty and misbehaving children, or whatever else it is that keeps you up at night. That evervescent alcohol that could, if only they both drank, fuel brotherly conversation between George Bush and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
“Prepare yourself, boys—we ain’t stoppin’ for no red wines tonight.”
Hammering down the basics
Cue the German folk music. Considering the season, our first stop is a no-brainer: the lounge at Ludwig’s, a Bavarian restaurant on Jefferson Park Avenue that specializes in German beers. The lounge is decorated in every tourists’ stereotype of an Oktoberfest bar: fake kegs built into the walls, beers served in large glassware, paintings of the iconic Bavarian castle Neuschwanstein. Tonight it’s relatively quiet, all the better to instill some beer basics.
A former Lone Star linebacker, Tex looks about as cornfed as you can get. His parents raised him on Schlitz and Michelob Ice starting in high school, and he’s progressed relatively little since then. Straightedge, a gangly 6′ 4" kid who recently graduated from UVA, earned his nickname in high school, when, like a certain sect of punk rockers, he abstained from chemicals (forever shaming his Irish ancestry). When his father took him to a pub for his first Guinness at age 18, Straightedge had a few sips and couldn’t stomach any more. He’s into wine now.
Tex orders the Oktoberfest special, a hefe-weiss that’s a play on the traditional Märzen-style lager. Straightedge, who calls himself a light beer drinker (an oxymoron to me, but I try not to give him too much hell), takes up a pilsner from Jever.
When I see Franziskaner on the menu, I can’t resist. I discovered Franzy back when I was still drinking on a fake ID, and their hefe-weiss dunkel (a dark wheat beer) marked my shift toward pursuing beer drinking with passion, rather than just passionately pursuing a buzz.
Our beer is served (O Franzy! Your golden hue reminiscent of golden youth: eager, earnest, naïve!), and Tex raises his glass, ready for a resounding cheers and a huge chug. Straightedge raises his pint to join him.
“Steady, boys, steady!” I caution. “First, we gotta know what we’re dealing with. Tastin’ beer ain’t too different from the process of tasting anything, from wine to whisky. First, take a good, strong look at what you got in yer glass. Hoist it up in front of you. Is it cloudy or clear? What’s goin’ on with yer head—is it thick and resilient? Quick to dissipate, what? Take in that beauty, top to bottom.
“All right, let’s move on to the nose. I like to take a first whiff, then agitate the sucker a little to open up those aromas and take another whiff. Get those flavors lodged in yer nostrils.
“Only now are you ready to put it in yer mouth. Pay attention to how the tastes hit you, what the mouth-feel is like, how the aftertaste pans out. How does it match up to what you were smelling?”
Tex is grouchy because I stopped his toast; Straightedge looks scared to touch his beer. Hesitantly, they stick their noses over their glasses. Satisfied, I begin my own ritual, only to observe Tex taking a long sip while I’m still sniffing. Sigh.
“Whatcha got, boys?”
“I’m used to throwing back beers,” says Tex, who demonstrates by throwing back a huge gulp. “This one’s weird, ‘cause it’s not all that crisp—it’s sweet at the front of my mouth, but then I get nothing at all.”
“It’s a bit more bitter on the sides of the tongue,” says Straightedge. “A bit more body than I’m used to.”
We move on to Ludwig’s most popular selection, the Cambonator. A doppelbock with a daunting 8 abv [that’s alcohol by volume—for more, see “Glossary of Terms”], it serves with an unsubstantial head, a heavy caramel flavor—which matches its tawny color—and hits with malty sweetness and a feeling of alcoholic potency on the finish.
“This is amazing,” says Tex, after a hearty slurp. “It’s creamy, and less bitter.” Straightedge says he likes it, finds it surprisingly light.
I’m a little worried Straightedge is just telling me what I want to hear. He’s too uptight. He’s stressing about giving me right answers, rather than just digging his drink. It’s time for…
Monologue No. 1: Beer versus wine
“Even though I just said this is like wine tasting, it isn’t, thank God. If it was, we might have to talk about noble grapes and French regions and the weather in 2003. Beer drinking has a layman’s feel to it—we’re casual, relaxed.
“Don’t get me wrong. You can get pretty geeky about lager yeasts and dark malt and other such technicalities. But beer drinking isn’t purely an exercise in subtlety like wine drinking is. Wine tasting requires you to suss out the complex differences in a relatively small span of flavor. Some beer flavors—a pilsner and a chocolate stout, for instance—they don’t even come close to each other.
“No beer drinker will ever be as insufferable as a wine snob—that type of cat who’s looking down his nose at you while you’re sipping one of 10 small samples of identical-looking wines. Those are the guys you really have to be worried about.
“Beer experts, they love a dude coming in to check out the beers. They love recalling their own fondness for certain beers. And they’re open to admitting they haven’t before had a beer that you might mention. You don’t go into beer loving if you’re the pretentious type.
“Where the hell do you get trained for this sort of stuff? You don’t. You just drink, thank God—and then, one night, you find out that you can tell the difference between a Yuengling and a Bud Light. Go to Barnes & Noble, you’ll find a bookcase and a half on wine—but not even a full shelf on beer. I started writing beer reviews as a sort of joke, doing blind taste tests of cheap domestic brews like Old Milwaukee and Schaeffer.”
I take a self-congratulatory sip of Cambonator, feeling my brain expand from the good-natured brew and my own speechifying. But I look over at Straightedge, and he’s still a deer in headlights. Tex raises his glass.
Getting monked
We pound up a flight of stairs and join the din of revelry at Michael’s Bistro. Not all Corner bars are created equal—Michael’s features one of the best beer lists in town, particularly since we’re here for the Belgians.
“It’s time for some real complexity, boys—it’s time for flavor enigmas engineered by true craftsman, often by monks whose souls may belong to God, but whose palates belong to Epicurus.”
At first stab, we go for a variety of popular Belgians: St. Bernardus Prior 8, Chimay Grande Réserve, and, for some contrast, Victory Golden Monkey, a Belgian-style triple brewed in the U.S. Our bartender wanders to some back chamber where the ambrosia is kept, returning with appropriate snifter glassware, to help concentrate the nose.
A stranger sitting next to Tex leans over and sniffs the Golden Monkey. “It smells like rotting grass clippings.”
Tex: “I would drink this until I got really drunk.”
Straightedge: “Frankly, I’m at a point where I can be very easily duped.”
For our next course, I order for us a 22 oz bottle of one of my favorite styles: A double India Pale Ale, this one from Left Hand Brewing Company, with a whopping 9.6 abv.
While our bartender struggles to open the corked bottle, we quiz her about local drinking habits. “I’m always perplexed with the Bud Light people,” she says. “It’s weird. I don’t want to stereotype people, but the guys usually drink pilsner and the chicks usually drink white wine. That’s kind of how it goes down.” She watches me scribbling. “Definitely not a lot of note taking.”
As soon as I can get a filled glass to my nose, I’m howling like a maniac about the virtue of the hop.
“Smell that, boys! That delicious floral hop bouquet hovering above a powerful blend of beer’s best elements, the delectable odor of hop’s ying balancing malt’s yang.” Straightedge dutifully takes a whiff and nods. Tex just shakes his head at my lunatic ravings.
But I won’t be daunted: “Without hops, what do you have? Some overly sweet liquid that, more’n likely, will make you vomit after a few swigs. But craft it with hops—Cascade hops, Bavarian hops, hops for aroma, hops for flavor, whatever—you throw in the hops, and it’s… it’s a revelation!” I take a smell and a taste, eyes closed in ecstasy. “Hops clarify, they preserve, and God! They give us that wonderful, wonderful smell.”
At this point, I’m fairly certain my words are wasted on my companions, so I wander off and strike up a conversation with Button Down, a clean-cut fellow with a touch of Virginia gentility who seems to want more beer knowledge.
Button Down: “I don’t have the vocabulary, or really the knowledge, to tell the difference all the time.”
Me: “Forget the vocabulary. Can you hear what your taste buds are telling you?”
Button Down: “I can tell what I like and what I don’t like.”
Me (arm on his shoulder): “That’s it, man! That’s it. That’s all you need to get going. Now just pay attention to what you’re drinking and ask questions when you can.”
We talk about the beer he’s drinking, a Golden Carolus Triple. After getting carried away in more rhetorical flourishes concerning the vibrancy of its aroma, I remember my journalistic day job and ask him why, prey tell, he wants to know more about beer.
Button Down: “Part of it’s the kind of place Charlottesville is—it’s a town that likes to be sophisticated. But also, I really feel there is a deeper social aspect to going out for a beer with a friend. I don’t think I would ever, you know, just go out for a glass of wine.” Score one for the good guys.
Here his cohort, The Bearded Wonder, breaks in. “I think all levels of society combine around a glass of beer. It’s a common ground. The ground is level at the tap.”
It’s hammered time!
Speaking of taps: We’ve moved on to Mellow Mushroom, home to the widest selection of beers on tap in town. And at this point, things start getting a little sloppy.
Like most great addictions, beer drinking doesn’t start off easy. Few of us liked it when our fathers (or mothers, or cousins) allowed us a sip at some tender young age. There is an early time in virtually every beer drinker’s life when beer is not a beverage with intrinsic value unique to itself, but simply a convenient vehicle for alcohol. Early Beer Drinker imbibes to get drunk alone, for whatever reasons those may be—Later Beer Drinker gets drunk only because he wants to keep drinking good beer. Such is tonight’s story.
I’m pretty sure that Straightedge orders some Flemish sour ale, Tex gets a Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, and I go with a some tasty beverage from Stone Brewing Company—but my note taking is seriously breaking down. Tex has managed to pick up some brunette law student. They start a mini-dance party when “One More Time” comes on.
I escape to talk to a bartender about drinking habits at Mellow, which aren’t particularly surprising—before 10pm, you get some guys who want to talk beer and try different stuff, and afterwards you get the Bud Light-drinkin’ student crowd. But I’m at the point where everything seems interesting. Patrons are screaming in the background like spider monkeys being dissected alive.
In an effort to make our final destination before it closes, I make Tex kiss his law student goodbye, pull Straightedge from his seat, and drag our motley crew out the door. Still delighting in my microbrewed servings, I begin…
Monologue No. 2: The American Beer Revolution
“Almost unarguably, in 2006, we’re in the best time to drink beer since before Prohibition. At long last, we’re not in the grips of a handful of breweries. Coors and Miller and Anheuser-Busch—they’re finally starting to lose market share to the small dogs. In 1983, there were only 80 breweries in the U.S. We’ve come a long way.”
“Numbers are still down. Once upon a time, in 1873, you could find over 4,000 breweries in this great land that made 9 million barrels of beer. Nine million! Today we’re only back to 1,500 breweries making roughly 6 million barrels of beer.
No one is listening—Tex is mad because I robbed him of his damsel, and Straightedge is having a hard enough time putting one foot in front of the other—but I cannot be stopped.
“But the microbrew movement is pushing the giant to change his formula! Taste is back. Anheuser-Busch has finally increased the hop content in their Budweiser recipe—after decades of reducing the hops to try and meet the American drinker at the most common, most watered-down, least bitter denominator.
“Taste has returned! Long live taste!”
Skunked
Perhaps the sour ale shoved Straightedge out of bounds. As we’re walking to South Street Brewery, to compare the evening’s foreign brews to the local craftsman’s, Straightedge begs leave to leave. He’s polite, but when I look at him, his haggard, lowered face shows his misery. I rage that he can’t give up now, with but a 10-minute walk to more delectable pints—Satan’s Ponies and Porter’s Porters await! Broken, shattered, mustering his most agreeable tone, Straightedge caves.
We are not fair to South Street and can’t even pretend to do it justice. There are few other patrons, and I quickly score a round of Hogwaller Kölsh, J.P. Ale, and Satan’s Pony. For Straightedge, more than just his palate is exhausted, and he cringes in his seat, glassy eyed, waiting for me to demand words about the beer in his paws.
After several minutes of anemic conversation, I relent, and off Straightedge goes, disappearing into the gloom.
If this were New York or New Orleans, Tex and I would head out to another bar, in another part of town where folks stay out ‘til they can’t stand up. But, with no other options—and Tex pondering his potential law-school conquest much more than the brew—we’ve lost our zeal, anyway.
I sip my J.P. Ale, suddenly feeling the bitterness of the hops. I’ve failed. Straightedge, clearly, will not remember this night with fondness, dooming whatever might have been delicious about it. Tex has clearly liked the booze, but perhaps not enough to change his habits in any significant way: I have a feeling he’ll be killing a case of PBR at a tailgate tomorrow.
Pint finished, tab paid, bar closed, I head out into a soft rain and hope only that I still have a Hopback left at home.