If show up at the grocery store in Dallas looking like you just got roughed up in the parking lot, chances are people will think twice about believing you are who you say you are. Which is how I almost didn’t make it into Central Market Cooking School’s Saturday Brewtopia event with much-lauded Brewmaster Garrett Oliver of Brooklyn Brewery. Good thing I’m persistent and in possession of an honest face, otherwise I would have missed out on what was one of the more informative brewing events of recent years.
If you’re at all committed to our (not-so-secret) malted mission, you’ve already read Tim Rogers reflections on Garrett’s hosting of Sunday night’s Supper Club at the Meddlesome Moth. Why, then, should I even bother to post about what, to the naked eye, appears to have been the same event on an earlier night? Because it wasn’t – not at all, not by a longshot!
Jump for the joy of beer.
The events, while admittedly similar, were as different as Sarah Vowell and Tori Amos – the first bookish and aesthete; the second only slightly less-bookish with elements of exclusivity and excess.
There’s no way to sit in a room with Oliver and not feel awash in way more info than you’re capable of digesting. That’s because he’s made a career, a study, a life out of knowing more about it than you do. And that’s OK. Being in a room with him is like saying to Atlas, “Here, you take the world. You have the shoulders for it. I’ll just sit over here in the shade and watch you flex.”
In that spirit, I shall now provide a very abbreviated list of what you missed (and you missed a lot as Mr. Oliver made good on his claim that he is capable of talking about beer for 3 hours without breathing):
- Brooklyn Brewery’s Monster Ale Barley Wine is a flipping rock star. It’s only produced once a year, so set your countdown clock for November when it hits Central Market’s shelves again.
- If a beer is made by Trappist monks inside the walls of a Trappist monastery, it can be labeled as “Trappist style.” Otherwise it’s just plain old Abbey beer.
- If a beer’s too cold you won’t be able to taste it properly. Warm it up in your hands or do what the Germans do and keep a vat of hot water on the table for warming your glass. (Americans and Australians are the only ones who think ice-cold beer is a good thing.)
- Mexico used to be part of the Austrian Empire – hence Dos Equis, a 4.7% Vienna-style amber lager, and the strong resemblance of Mexican music to oom-pah polka. (Difference: Mexican music is happier; Austrians are all about the angst.)
- Brooklyn Lager is also based on the Viennese beer style.
- When you say “wine” in this country, people immediately think of the top 10 percent. When you say “beer” people immediate think of the bottom 90 percent.
- After a drunken, Manhattan-fueled, fireside wind-up with the cocktails writer from Esquire, Oliver actually figured out a way to combine rye and bittering herbs to create a beer that mimics a Manhattan cocktail.
- The hops that provide the name and much of the character of Brooklyn’s Sorachi Ace Brewmaster’s Reserve were developed by the Sapporo brewery in Japan as an experiment. No one in Japan has ever heard of Sarachi Ace hops.
- The strong hoppiness of an East India Pale Ale (or IPA) developed when British brewers, needing to create a beer that could sustain eight months at sea, made it stronger (kill those bacteria), drier (less sugar for bacteria to feast on), and hoppier (hops act as a preservative). Lo and behold, the resulting flavor became its own variety.
There was more – so much more. And you missed it…bummer. Clearly, you don’t want to miss out on any of this week’s other brewmaster cooking school events. Sign up at Central Market this instant or get left behind yet again.
