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Sanity
or Fear?
Brickskeller Offers Plenty
of Beer
Article:
Greg Kitsock |
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 Was
it a beer tasting? A political protest? A poetry reading? A
dinosaurs of rock concert? The October 29 tasting at the Brickskeller
in Washington, D.C., dubbed “Sanity/Fear: A Rally for
Beer,” was a little bit of each.
Special guest Tom Dalldorf (editor and publisher of the Celebrator
Beer News), visiting D.C. to attend the Rally to Restore
Sanity and/or Fear on the National Mall, did a spot-on impersonation
of a certain conservative political pundit who shares his name
with “a crappy German import,” according to Dalldorf.
The pseudo Glenn Beck (not Glenn Bock?) ranted about “a
Marxist/Nazi plot against American beer,” accusing highly
hopped craft beers of “putting America’s youth to
sleep and making them impotent.”
The crowd laughed heartily and kept on drinking.
The tasting was a protest against the sort of beer fascism that
demands that beers adhere tightly to accepted stylistic parameters.
Jason Oliver, head brewer at Devils Backbone Brewing Company
in Roseland, Va., contributed Belgian Congo Pale Ale, an IPA
from an alternate dimension. Oliver noted that the original
India pale ales were brewed strong and hoppy to keep them from
spoiling en route to the subcontinent for Her Majesty’s
troops. What would have happened, he wondered, if the Belgians
had shipped a similar beer to their African outposts?
Belgian Congo Pale Ale is hopped with Chinook, Saaz and Sorachi
Ace, and then fermented with the same yeast strain used for
the classic Belgian strong ale Duvel. The beer has the aggressive
bitterness appropriate to IPAs, along with a delicate pear flavor
breaking through the citrusy notes of the hops.
Oliver then channeled Robert Frost in reading an original poem
called The Beer Less Poured:
“Two
beers were upon a tap
But I could only have one
Neither was a piece of crap
By any comparison.
Both were very well made
And one had garnered more fame,
But I picked the renegade
Choosing craft-brewed over name.
Finally came my reward
In all its magnificence
So I chose the beer less poured
And that made all the difference.”
Bill Madden, owner and head brewer of Mad Fox Brewing Company
in Falls Church, Va., offered a special whiskey barrel–aged
version of his intensely malty Wee Heavy. “The barrels,
I’m told, were 10 pounds heavier when leaving the distillery
than when they came in,” commented Madden. Much of the
rye whiskey that permeated the wood seemed to have leeched into
the beer, resulting in a marriage of equals between beer and
spirit, a category-blurring drink. Madden has been accumulating
barrels from the Catoctin Creek Distilling Company in Purcellville,
Va., and hopes at some point to do barrel-aging on a regular
basis.
| The crowd laughed heartily and kept on drinking. |
After the tasting, Dave Alexander grabbed his Stratocaster and
moved to the Brickskeller’s upstairs room, where he joined
Dalldorf (guitar and vocals), Danny Goers (bass), Marc Fellows
(organ) and Torro Gamble (drums) to form a new edition of the
Rolling Boil Blues Band, performing such standards as “Hop
This Town” and “Homebrew Hand Jive.”
The Brickskeller, in the space of less than two weeks, hosted
two nights of a wet-hop tasting conducted by California Brewmaster
Tomme Arthur; Sanity/Fear: A Rally for Beer; and a Smithsonian
Resident Associates seminar titled “The Pursuit of Hoppiness.”
Editor's Note — Coming up at the Brick is the
23rd annual Multiple Guest Brewmaster Winter Holidaze Extravaganzee,
to be held December 2 and 9, according to Dave Alexander. If
you’ve ever wanted to get back to the Brick, this might
be a good time. |
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| Greg Kitsock is an
award-winning beer writer living in Washington, D.C., whose
works appear in many publications, including Mid-Atlantic
Brewing News, American Brewer and The Washington
Post. |
