You're Sippin' On: Maine Beer Company's Mean Old Tom

The oxford shirt is ironed, flowing at the hem, and worn-out loafers are tripping heavy on splintered wood. It's nearing fall, leaves beginning to crisp yellow at their edges and brown their stems as you stand on the porch. This porch—integral to what you're doing, whatever you're doing. You lean over the wooden railing and somewhere, someone's turned music on. You look down, the toes of your shoes caught between the chipped pastel railings—you pull a bit and nothing gives, so you stand, admiring the sunset paints the clouds crimson and yellow and that dull pink in between. A swift breeze comes from under the wooden slats, rubbing gooseflesh onto your ankles; you clutch your glass tighter. In the glass? Maine Beer Company's Mean Old Tom: a nice, sessionable, smooth stout that is chock-full of vanilla and chocolate and is as smooth as the late summer breeze on your legs. So you stand there, on the porch, swirling this beautiful, stunning beer around in a tulip glass. You watch as the dark, deep chestnut brown gives way to tan bubbles and foam on the edges of the swirls, waxing concentric around the well of the glass. What's that, you hear? Did someone put on one of your records?

It's Mingus, of course. Charles Mingus. More specifically, it's the album where Mingus delves into piano compositions, and someone's put on the b-side: a manic, polarizing glimpse into the mind of the composer himself. The b-side of Mingus Plays Piano is a swaying, swelling journey into the depths of human nature and interpersonal connection or, more importantly, the lack thereof. Simple meditations that grow and crumple with single notes that capture attention and desire—that, seconds later, repel and shoo away. The balance is unmistakable and characteristically Mingus. And that's where Mean Old Tom comes back into the act.

As Mingus can with one note imply smoothness, so Mean Old Tom can match it. With every note

of vanilla bean and chocolate, there is the implication of more, there is the force of desire. What we may not have known we wanted, we now cannot live without receiving more and more of that particular thing: whether it's a two- or three-key melody from Mingus, or that subtle mouth of chocolate from Mean Old Tom, we need it. We need it now. And, interestingly enough, one of the most stunningly similar attributes of both is their discordance: their divisiveness within themselves. Mingus plays charming, sweeping melodies accented by harsh, dissonant runs. But for every beautiful thing punctuated by inelegance, the desire for that beautiful thing grows and grows. And so when Mean Old Tom drops tannic, acidic light-roast coffee flavors into the back-end of their smooth, sweet chocolate assault, we instantly take another sip: we instantly want so badly to remember that sweetness with the bitterness in mind. Drink deeply, sip sweetly as you look up at the clouds and catch a glimpse of cotton-candy pink before closing your eyes and letting the ivory of piano keys and smiling teeth carry you over grass and field—high, high into that pink.

You're Sippin' On: Evil Twin's Low Life

Back from Beach Week already? You’re fiddling to open the door to your apartment or town home on the outskirts of whatever moderately-big city you live in—dropping them, of course, while your arms are full of luggage and trash. The door gives, you walk into the living room-turned-steam room and set the bags down. You and your cat lock eyes, knowing that neither of you really wanted this: to go on a week

long hiatus in the peak of summer and return to tauntingly high grass and a hardwood apartment coughing up somebody’s sweat in the heat of the day. Oranges are still on the counter from that obscenely good deal from work—the one where you got five pounds of oranges because it was the “economical” thing to do. Scratch your beard, peel an orange, sit down. There’s still a full day before you have to return to work, twenty-four full hours of watching the second hand spin while you wait despondently. You need an escape. So what do you do? Your cat is waiting on you. When it’s 90 degrees inside, and you’re sweating with the orange peels into your Ikea couch, what do you think of?

On the Road, published in 1957, is a great introduction to the Beat Generation’s mindset and manifesto: the creation of art by means of experience through travel and experimentation for the main goal of innovation. Beat Poets and Writers heavily imitated the lifestyle of gypsies, staying nomadic in nature and traveling together in small packs, and whether they were writing down manuscripts of what would later be some of the most influential and revered literature in North America or just sitting among the orange fields of California after a long day in the orchard, their physical location mattered not nearly as much as their mental sprawl and their ultimate accomplishments. However, Kerouac’s art—and the generation of art he helped spearhead—wasn’t a pedantic, formulaic art at all. Kerouac created this generation of honest art with hardly any effort at all, his art an extension of his being. He simply did. 

Enter Evil Twin’s “Low Life”. Evil Twin, founded in Denmark by Jeppe Jarnit-Bjergsø, treads in very Beat footsteps with their self-proclamation and self-identity as “Gypsy Brewers” (meaning simply that they don’t technically own their own brewing facility but instead brew on contract and on-site at other breweries across the world) and their passion for high experimentation in an ever-expanding Craft Beer world. “Low Life” is a perfect example of this: as a pun sighted at another very popular American beer, Evil Twin created an American-Style Pilsner that is absolutely astonishing. A sweet, wheaty nose gives way to crisp, clean orange marmalade flavors and lemon peel acidity righting itself on the back end with slight hop bitterness and lingering citrus. To drink this beer is to read Kerouac’s landmark work: what sets out as a self-aware satire of American culture suddenly creates and manifests in itself a completely new identity—a new and enlightened “future” because of a bland “now”. Whether the name “Low Life” is a joke becomes irrelevant with every sip, as its sweet and sparkling citrus flavors reel you into a world of beer without irony or pretense and leaves you with a respect for this renegade brewery that creates art with every sip—not because they’re trying to break the mold, but because they’re not trying at all: they simply do. 

All Evil Twin logos and beers are used by permission from the brewery/company itself with infinite gratitude from yr. writer. 

You're Sippin' On: Westbrook Brewing's IPA

Welcome to Beach Week, ladies and gentlemen. You’re hours away from any sort of place you can call home, it’s hotter than hell, and the humidity is making your freshly ironed shirts reek thickly of salt and mildew. Are you here with friends? Good on you. Are you here with family? You’re absolutely selfless. But regardless of how you physically got down here, it’s time to get away: so grab a cooler, a towel, and some knock-off RayBans, because you’re going down to the warm, white sands of Charleston, South Carolina.

Upon your first sip of Westbrook's flagship IPA, you’ll understand completely why it’s sitting in your foldout chair’s cup-holder. Mild sweetness set way, way back by thick tropical fruit—pineapple, mango, grapefruit—and exiting the palate almost gin-dry. Low bitterness and a mild citric acidity makes this beer perfect under the ever unwavering Summer sun—carbonation stays balanced even as the beer warms up to 55, 60 degrees (which, believe me, are unreasonably high temperatures considering this beer’s amazing drinkability). Taking a sip of this and closing your eyes, shaded under the UV400 lenses of your boardwalk sunglasses, is an open door into a gorgeous, redolent world filled with the sweet, swirling scents of tropical fruit under palm trees you've never actually seen as you, the drinker, are transported to an island that you've never been to. Hopefully there are no seagulls.

So your taste buds have adjusted, and you finally reopen your eyes. Just look at the waves: crashing syncopated on the shore, washing sand dollars up to your ankles, teasing you with a mighty, sapping pull as they recede. Now, if only there was something you could set this scene to. Poetry, noncommittal as a read, would be preferable, right? But a poet set not so much on romantic movements or landscapes of foreign nature, but maybe a poet with sights set more on the importance of the individual: the individual experience. And of the contemporary poets who focus on that, maybe one with less domineering wording to accompany that crisp, clean finish of Westbrook’s IPA—to linger on enjoyment and think only momentarily of bitterness. Who better than the United States’ 2001-2003 Poet Laureate from Billy Collins?

 

Billy Collins, noted for his impeccable handle of imagery and conversational, unimposing voice, is a shoe-in for this pairing. His collection Sailing Alone around the Room would be my personal pick: the poems in this collection being centered mainly on charming, beautiful scenes--ones that bear striking resemblance to those forming in your mind as you drink down the nectar that is Westbrook Brewing's IPA. Open up to the first poem, take a soothing, meditational sip from the sweat-beaded can, and let yourself escape into that vast blue horizon, that burning bright light set so beautifully before you. 

Westbrook Brewing Co., besides making some of the highest-ranked and sought-after beer in the nation, is up to its neck in wonderful employees and a striking dedication to its craft. I learned this yesterday after taking a long-overdue trip to the brewery and tap room—meeting some of the tap room employees and Morgan Westbrook, truly one of the liveliest and most inspiring people I've met in a long, long time. Any pairing using Westbrook Brewing Co.’s beer has been approved and used with permission from the brewery itself--and with the utmost gratitude. 

You're Sippin' On: Westbrook Brewing's Gose

You wake up, your cat is sleeping on the pillow next to you. You roll over in bed, trying to make out the numbers on the digital alarm clock your parents gave you before your Freshman year of college. You remember that you slept in too late to make it over to that 9:00am service with your parents before work yesterday, so it must be Monday. Then the blinking green digits reveal themselves: it's 11:00am. You panic. "Oh no!" you think, "Oh God, no! I'm late to work!" Then it hits you: you're off today, buddy. You held out through the week, and now it's your turn to blow off some steam. Well, that, or you lost your job weeks ago. Either way, your day is in proper order to get exponentially better. Why? Because you just opened up your fridge to grab some unsalted butter and blackberry jam and... boom. You still have a Gose left. Drop the butter, smash the jam jar, and throw that burnt toast in the garbage.

Just Like Heaven

So, first, a note about the style for those who may be unfamiliar: a gose is a traditional German-style beer (originally from Leipzig), boasting half (or more) of its malt bill to be sweet, sweet wheat. It's then brewed with brackish water, giving it that strangely-welcome salt bite. The can says it best: Sour. Salty. Delicious. Westbrook's Gose is the leading American-made gose-style beer on the market, with its demand exceeding its output in leaps and bounds. In the beer-trading community, having a six-pack of Westbrook's Gose is the type of solid collateral normally reserved for MacArthur Grants and Gold Bars buried in Texas backyards. And for good reason: it's the highest rated (number of ratings/actual score) beer of its style on Beeradvocate. In fact, the only gose-style beers more successful than Westbrook's flagship one are--you guessed it--made by/collaborated with Westbrook. 

So it's a little after noon, now, and you're burning up in the Southern Summer sun. Maybe you're sitting out back, rocking on the wood deck, rolling your own cigarettes; maybe you're a transplant to the south and you're laying fetal in front of your window A/C unit, begging for any kind of god to make this all go away. Regardless of situation, you're drinking this phenomenal beer, and after an hour or so--after making the conscious decision to crack open another (it's after noon, after all)--you need something else. There's something that you're just missing: something more than a significant other or dog. You need a book in your hands. So you're sippin' on a Gose... but what are you reading?

Enter the Great American Post-Modern Stalwart himself: Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Have you been meaning to re-read Cat's Cradle? Contemplating a first-read of Breakfast of Champions? How about that collection of short stories you bought with that obscene amount of book dollars your old university threw at you for signing up so quickly and deliberately? What was it? While Mortals Sleep?

Dave Eggers did the forward, huh?

Yep, that's the one. Whether our hero is writing about sentient robots, the impending decimation of the known world, or maybe a twenty-foot phallus marking a dead woman's eternal resting place, he couldn't be a better match for Westbrook's Gose if he'd made the recipe himself. 

Forever a poster-boy for biting wit and snarling sarcasm, Vonnegut's characteristic voice beats in sublime rhythm to each and every sip of this sour, salty South Carolinian beer. We follow the course of both through their respective palettes--the tongue, the mind--and find that our body's response is strikingly similar: the slightly sweet and salty nose of the Gose go in step with Vonnegut's astringent, apathetic tone--leading up to some sort of shockingly contemptible, morally-deplete climax which is, of course, the Gose's pucker-inducing, eye-rolling sourness. We're knocked, swept off our feet by this, the unexpected and unwarranted. "We didn't ask for this," we say, somehow adding "But thank you," to its end. Then it's vanished. No lingering bitterness, no remnants of a pain we might've endured for any amount of time. We go on, living and breathing, maybe thinking throughout the day, but remembering only the cleansing, purging relief that set on us after, in the waning twilight hours of our day off, a mere twelve hours away from going back to a job that it ultimately unsatisfying and mentally draining: "As stupid and vicious as men are, this is a lovely day." And so it should be.

Before You Start Sippin'

WYSO is not an outlet for alcoholism. This little brainchild is not meant to be an encouragement of excess or an enabling tool for gluttony and stagnation. I adore the art of beer and I have for years: it is my passion, my hobby, and my love. Therefore, when I'm doing exciting (or mundane) things in life, I like to try new beers--and this is what I've come up with. Some of these pairing situations are completely hypothetical, some are conjecture, but most have been experienced by myself, by others, and are--in short--tested and true. You don't drink Miller 64 at a wedding, and you don't drink Cantillon at a company softball game (although I'm sure both of these situations have exceptions). Every situation has the perfect beer, and every beer has the perfect situation. Let's find them.