Nom de Bier – Great Lakes Edmund Fitzgerald Porter by HP Lovecraft

This is entry #2 in the series “Nom de Bier” – good beer reviewed by famous authors (as emulated by me). I do not claim to speak for these authors, nor am I an expert scholar in their particular style, so please feel free to correct/admonish as you see fit.

Beer Review – Great Lakes Edmund Fitzgerald Porter
Style: American Porter
ABV: 6.0%
IBU: 37

By: HP Lovecraft

They claim to have found me wet, alone, and gibbering nonsense on that lightless southern shore of the Superior. I could not find in my memory a name, nor a station, but my clothes betrayed my identity. It seems that against all odds, I was the lone survivor of the Edmund Fitzgerald.

In relaying the specifics of how I, and only I, got there, I can say little. The official investigation found the freighter had taken on water some seventeen miles from the Michigan shore, and there gone down in the fury of a southward storm. I remember it differently, but my attempts to explain are discounted as the ravings of a man whose mind was broken by stress and loss. The flashes of truth that do return to me in the deep midnight, are admittedly, things so fantastic and terrible they evade common belief.

My name was given back to me on November 29, 1975, after several weeks in a Detroit hospital. I had been John Bailey of Duluth, Minnesota, deckhand of that now great wreck, but the other details of my life seemed vague and otherworldly. A result of a severe knock to the head claimed my doctors, despite no clear wound or laceration to confirm their diagnosis. My records say I was born in 1949 to a Paula and Michael Bailey, just outside the tiny Massachusetts port of Innsmouth. The place feels right, but the age feels wrong, and the mirror shows me not a man of twenty-six, but one of a much, much older countenance.

I’ve been questioned by countless police and government officials, all trying to ascertain exactly what happened that night. What pieces of reality stitch back together coherently tell me our Captain, the affable but quiet Ernest McSorley, had control of the situation despite the severity of the storm. We’d joined with another freighter – the Arthur Anderson I’m told – and the two ships had been working in tandem to navigate and ride out the worst of the crests. The storm surged fiercely, of that there is no question, but not so fiercely I do not think, as to wrestle control away from our captain and sink the ship on those desolate shoals.

To placate the glimpses of madness that routinely overtake my psyche, or perhaps to assuage my guilt of being a lone remainder of the crew, I drink. I hear the slanders upon my intellect slung from those righteous locals, know their callous disregard for my situation, but pints of strong porter have been my only refuge. I find now why the sailors of old London so loved and relied on the brown ale; it fortifies like no other, physically, mentally, and spiritually. My constitution fares poorly with whiskey, and something about the lore and history of this brew calls to me through endless bubbles, muffled but undeniable.

In my sober hours, I have been reading about the ship before the storm. Most authorities seem obsessed with what happened on November 10, 1975. My concern is that the fate of the ship was decided well before that, when it took on its cargo, and me, in Duluth on November 7. But of this, for now, I can say nothing without risking another trip to the resident psychologist, who already questions the strength of my mind.

As typical, we’d been hauling taconite ore from the Minnesota quarries. Normal fare, massive tonnage of quartz and iron, all to fuel the precambrian fossil fuel monstrosity that held sway over the lake-tied cities. Occasionally, our manifest would include sundry other materials from locations generally undisclosed. Questions were rarely asked as ore was ore, boring, heavy rock valued for its mineral content and little more.

One entry on the manifest from November 7 caught my attention and sent me down this path of incredulity and insanity. A single load of wooden crates, otherwise nondescript and banal, had been marked as coming from “Northern Canada/Greenland” making it an anomaly among the other loads of clearly domestic rocks. I’m sure our head of logistics thought nothing of it, and our Captain, so close to his retirement, most likely wanted to be underway as soon as possible.

The information in the ledgers, the wooden crates, their mysterious contents, seemed familiar, and personal. My head reeled from memories lashing out of my unconscious. I felt faint, and sought out drink, hoping to silence my mind for at least one more night.

I awoke sometime later, head pounding and stomach lurching. But when I could not find my feet, I found it was not intoxication, but that the floor was moving beneath me. Undulating with sudden jerks that knocked me back onto a sparsely covered bunk. The wind yowled against the bulkhead and all at once I heard men cry out while thunder broke the black sky. The men on deck shouted that we’d struck something, been run aground by the storm’s power. But I did not look over the rails. My mind pull me down, into the imposing dark of the ship’s hold.

There, in the otherwise pitch black, the wooden crates hummed and hissed, putting off a pale blue glow that just barely made their outline visible. The rocking of the ship had dislodged them from their fastenings, and one had fallen from high to the steel deck below. Using a flashlight from near the doorway, I threw some light over the cargo, but had to grab a railing to stable myself when I saw the now exposed, spilled contents.

A dark ooze seeped from shattered glass bottles, pooling out in all directions unnaturally, defying the flow of any liquid I’d ever seen. I moved closer to inspect and noticed that it seemed warm and pulsating, characteristic of something alive. I passed the beam over the largest pool and looked deep into the shiny viscous mess; it sparkled a dizzying show, millions upon millions of dots of light tearing through space at dazzling speeds, the cosmos contained in a fluid window through which I viewed impossible infinity.

The humming and hissing intensified. Something deep and forgotten in my body pulled at me, commanded my mind and muscles, and told me, in a tongue I’d never heard by somehow understood, to drink. I cupped the horrid stuff between my hands, letting it slip and drip through my fingers, before putting it to my mouth and swallowing voraciously.

I staggered back onto deck to hear the men screaming to abandon the freighter. The sounds from below now sang across the night sky, and in the eye of the great storm, countless stars, more than man could count, pierced any remaining clouds. Below, the liquid had seeped out from a crack in the hull, floating on the water like an oil slick, pulsating harder and more visibly. There was a great rumbling from below and the water churned into a froth, the stars above becoming so bright that the night could have been day.

A huge, misshapen mass rose from the waves. It smashed down across the center of the ship, snapping it cleanly in two. I heard screams for half a second then…quiet. The ship gurgled as it filled with water, while all around me the sinister ooze formed a perfect mirror to the star-stained space above.

That’s the last I remember. The drink has brought me back to that night, dulled my mental protections enough to let that reality of that night come out. The memory was more vivid than a dream, but less attached than waking reality. I dare not tell anyone what I think to be the truth as I know how they’d respond, and what they’d probably do with me.

Every sip I take reminds me of that sip I took. I cannot stay. For some reason I’m pulled from this life to another. I’m headed north and do not plan to return.

Grammarian’s note: Syntactically, Lovecraft’s style was dense and overwrought, with heavy use of adverbs and adjectives. He wrote in the early 1900s, so the high rhetoric of his writing wasn’t totally unusual, even if it seems so in retrospect to modern readers. I tried to mimic his sentence patterns too, as he’d often go from a simple right-branching sentence right into a packed left-branching sentence with numerous adverbial clauses. Thematically, he wrote about dark, cosmic horrors that had lived eons before humankind but still existed as shadows of history and lore in certain parts of the world. He loved to use obtuse foreshadowing where the narrator established himself as unreliable due to personal madness, typically caused by their connection to some ancient, brooding evil. He also had a bit of a gruesome obsession with the ocean, and what secrets it could possibly contain.

The Cult of Craft

Bryan’s conversation about “Craft Beer Evangelists” hit a nerve.

Mainly because, for the past few years, I was a member of a cult. A group of single-minded missionaries, of fanboy zealots, of plaid-clad revolutionaries, riding out from California on their own modern crusade.

I didn’t even really know I was a member, but I still played my part. I parroted the virtues of our leaders to anyone who would listen (and many who were only pretending to listen), meanwhile demonizing the unforgivable sins of our “enemies.” To me it all made sense, it made me feel good, and gave me a sense of identity. The group felt like home, a warm and cozy fireside gathering where the other people in the room just “got” me.

I didn’t question or challenge the narrative. I was perpetuation manifest. I was a member of the Cult of Craft Beer.

Ha! Beer as a cult! Sounds ridiculous, right? Perhaps Oliver has been dipping into the rum stash too much, and came out the other side a wee bit hyperbolic?

Perhaps. But perhaps not.

Let’s look at some of the defining characteristics of cult-like behavior (my emphasis added):

• The group displays excessively zealous and unquestioning commitment to its belief system, ideology
• Questioning, doubt, and dissent are discouraged or even punished
• The leadership dictates, sometimes in great detail, how members should think, act, and feel
• The group is elitist, claiming a special, exalted status for itself, its leader(s) and members
• The group has a polarized us-versus-them mentality, which may cause conflict with the wider society
• The group is preoccupied with bringing in new members
• The group is preoccupied with making money
• Members are encouraged or required to live and/or socialize only with other group members
• The most loyal members feel there can be no life outside the context of the group

Sound familiar?  Trade organizations setting definitions so we know what to drink? People on social media treating honest criticism as inflammatory nonsense? These behaviors rear their heads often, as new people enter the fold, or diehards do their best to keep the group-think thriving. The “Us-versus-Them” mentality is particularly strong, and has a become a defining aspect of “craft,” even though the “devious” Big Beer Companies still produce and sell 80%+ of all beer in the country.

The cult is alive and Tweeting. Don’t believe me? Here’s a recent conversation I got into with @BrewStuds:

@OliverJGray @beerbecue7 a good chunk of the country is still fighting to have the same freedoms that we enjoy in the more reformed states

— Brew Studs ♥ Beer (@BrewStuds) October 29, 2015

Rhetorically, this is dangerous territory. It puts beer in the same category as emancipation from slavery, civil rights, women’s suffrage. It sounds like we are fighting for some righteous cause, like we’ll go to war if we must for our “rights” (even if those rights only apply to what fermented drinks we can buy). It’s absurd when viewed from the outside, but totally reasonable to someone on the inside.

I challenged BrewStuds and said their thinking was potentially militaristic. Their response: “Militaristic? Passionate maybe.” This argument comes up a lot in conversations about beer, the idea that passion is justification for pretty much any behavior, and the real reason for brewing beer. Not money or economics or science, just “passion.” It tends to trump anything else; in the eyes of the cult, there’s no way craft brewers are anything but open and altruistic, because of their “passion” means they’re making great beer for us to enjoy with no ulteriors whatsoever.

This psychological magnetism to beer isn’t really a surprise, though. It was going to be something, and beer’s timing was impeccable.

With the economy still sluggish and a large chunk of Millennials out of work or underpaid, America is ripe for cultural makeover. Much like Tyler Durden’s “Project Mayhem” in  Fight Club, those joining the craft movement do so of their own free will after meeting others who’ve joined the proverbial fold, seeking some kind of freedom from the status quo, something they can wrap their identity around to feel like they’re part of something bigger than themselves. Beer might seem an odd vehicle for cultural readjustment, but history plus availability plus the clever story of authenticity woven by small brewers has made it a perfect catalyst for social chemical reaction. Plus, humanity has always had a penchant for intoxication.

The first rule about beer club is that you ALWAYS talk about beer club.

Now that I’ve managed to step aside (either through disillusionment), I can see just how powerful the pull is. Many Americans (especially young Americans) are lacking financial and vocational independence, and it makes sense that they’d seek identity through some cultural movement. It makes sense that they’d come together to form a group, and beer, breweries, and bars offer an ideal set of circumstances (regionalism, nationalism, egalitarianism) on which to build a like-minded community.

But all perceived sense aside, a one-sided narrative, especially one fueled by a business-minded trade organization, is not an ideal way to live one’s life. Cults, typically, are not good things. They promote polar thinking and mindless subservience, even if the original goal was something much, much more humanistic and kind.

But cults are also not often an intentional creation, they just happen when one’s message reaches enough people who agree with it.

So is craft a cult? By literal definition, definitely a solid maybe.

Note: I want to make it very clear that I am not against the Brewer’s Association, no more than I’m against ABInBev. I’m a writer, trying to stay impartial. I actually support the BA and what they’ve done for over all US beer. But it’s important to look at all sides, as objectively as possible, without letting your personal prejudice (either way!) color the debate.

So you want to be a Beer Writer? – Yeast 101

Uh oh. Your homebrewing buddy just said something about “brett” and is asking your opinion about buying a stir plate. This conversation is getting dangerously yeasty.

But that’s OK! I’m here to help put the “you” back in “Eukaryote” with a primer about yeast, and why it’s so damn important to beer.

Much like the other posts in this series, this primer will cover the basics (yes, I left quite a bit out) for those who want to write (or speak) with a little more confidence. If you’re looking for a journey to the center of fermentation, check out Chris White and Jamil Zainasheff’s book from Brewer’s Publications.

Yeast as a Living Thing

Yeast is literally everywhere. You breathed some in just now. You probably ate some that was resting on your lunch. The little buggers are all up in your shit (literally), and play an important bit part in maintaining your body’s homeostasis. Fret not; it’s an integral part of our immune system and you’d have to ingest a very large amount of it to experience any ill effects (see: auto-brewery syndrome).

Biologically, yeast falls under the Fungi kingdom (here’s a quick reference if you forgot your high school taxonomy). They are technically eukaryotic (meaning their cells contain a nucleus that houses genetic information), but are the only single-cell eukaryote ever described by science. Despite any deeply romantic feelings you may have developed for your favorite IPA, yeast reproduces asexually, through the very painful-looking process of mitosis.

It’s tricky to organize yeast because they don’t all fit under one taxonomic group. But generally (please don’t kill me, biologists reading this) the yeast we use to brew can be classified by species, which are often sold to brewers as strains. Homebrewers and bakers will be familiar with Saccharomyces cerevisiae, which is probably the mostly commonly used yeast in ale. Lagers use Saccharomyces pastorianus. Then there’s the popular Brettanomyces, which is known for its distinctive and sort of gross qualities.

But that’s just a few, easy to recognize examples. There are ~1500 described strains of yeast, many of which we don’t use in brewing. The yeast in our bodies – often responsible for a number of nasty infections – is called Candida albicans. In healthy humans, this yeast is kept in check by bacteria. Fun fact: lactobacillus, a bacteria use to make some kinds of sour beer and sourdough bread, is one of the natural counter-balances to the yeast that grows in our guts.

Somewhat amazingly, we didn’t even know that yeast was a thing until one very cool French dude named Louis Pasteur described yeast and what is does in 1857. Although a scientist named Leeuwenhoeck (yea, I have no idea how to pronounce that, either) visually saw yeast in 1680, he didn’t really know what is was. Prior to Pasteur’s badass book, “The Diseases of Beer, Their Causes, and the Means of Preventing Them” some people assumed fermentation was spontaneous, and as White and Zainasheff note in their book, some people even thought it was the work of god(s).

Wooden brewing paddles were passed down through generations of brewers, all of who were apparently oblivious to the fact that wood was porous, and that the yeast from previous batches of beer were hiding deep inside all of their tools, just waiting to inoculate the next batch.

Yeast as a Brewing Ingredient

There’s a classic quote beer writers should know:

“We brewers don’t make beer, we just get all the ingredients together and the beer makes itself.” — Fritz Maytag

Yeast is going to do its thing regardless of what we do. The brewer’s job is more interior decorator than creator: she needs to turn the wort into a welcome, clean, inviting home that the yeast want to move into to start their family. But the yeast aren’t picky; they’ll move into any home that’s got plenty of sugar to eat, even one infested with other nasty tenants of less reputable backgrounds. The brewer has to do everything she can to make sure the yeast and its family are the only ones living in the house, and that they’re as healthy and comfortable as possible.

Yeast can come from third party labs as dry cells, or ready-to-use liquid. While pre-packaged yeast can be used (I’ve used it dozens of times), many brewers will create a yeast “starter.” This is basically a sugary proto-beer that kick starts the growth of the yeast. A starter ensures you’ve got plenty of healthy yeast to begin and maintain a strong primary fermentation. Some companies sell “smack packs” which are a sort of all-in-one starter (that includes an activator) where you just “smack” the bag of yeast to mix up the contents and create a mini early fermentation before pitching it into the wort.

Logistically, yeast is added after the wort has been boiled, hops have been added, and the combined concoction has been cooled. The drop in temperature in very important: yeast are living things, and adding them to hot liquid can easily injure or kill them. To properly reproduce, yeast need oxygen, so wort is aerated. This is tricky, because oxygen is a mortal enemy to fermented beer.

Oxygen before yeast? Good! Oxygen after yeast? Bad!

Yeast’s primary role is to eat the sugars extracted from the base malts during mash, and turn them into ethyl alcohol and carbon dioxide (C02). That’s an incredible oversimplification though; the amount, type, and length of sugars, the temperature of the fermenting beer, and the type of yeast used all dictate how the yeast will perform. Fermentation is what makes beer taste like beer; you couldn’t just add alcohol to hopped-wort and expect beer. Yeast is responsible for hundreds of other compounds that produce flavors we’re all familiar with (banana and clove and fruit esters, oh my!)

Yeast is the prime mover for the Original Gravity (OG) and Final Gravity (FG) equation. By measuring the original amount of sugar in the beer, and the comparing it to the final amount when fermentation in done, a brewer can calculate how much sugar is left in the beer, how much was eaten by the yeast, and how much alcohol it created. The amount of sugar the yeast ate is also called the amount of “attenuation.”

The trick to remembering the difference between ale and lager is that they are brewed using different yeasts (see above). Ale yeast ferments “on top” of the beer, while lager yeast ferments “on the bottom.” This is not a perfect rule. Yeast generally moves through the entire body of the fermenting beer, but this describes where “most” of the fermentation activity occurs.

More important than where they ferment is how they ferment; ale yeasts prefer warmer temperatures (55-70° F), while lager yeasts prefer colder temperatures (40° F). Ale yeast would go dormant and sleepy at such cold temperatures, but certain strains of lager yeast can and will ferment at higher temperatures, resulting in estery, fruity lagers a la “Steam Beer.”

Yeast as a Word

Yeast is almost always a noun. While I’m sure some intrepid wordworker could use yeast as a verb (I may be guilty of that), “yeasted” and “yeasting” don’t exist in a traditional vocabulary.

While it can be used as an adjective (yeasty) I’d warn against using it too often, because like “malty” or “hoppy,” it’s not overly descriptive. It functions perfectly well as a general label, but different yeasts perform and taste different, so when describing it, try to pull out words that capture the essence of what the yeast has done to the beer, not just that it is in fact, in there.

Writing about yeast tends to get biological very quickly, so be sure to balance your diction appropriately. No one wants to read a text book, but no one wants juicy scientific details left out either. Above all, respect yeast’s role in making beer, and remember that even though it’s not as glamorized and talked about as hops (or even malt), it’s (arguably) the single most taste-defining ingredient in the entire brewing process.

Don’t believe me? Try drinking straight, uncarbonated wort.

TL;DR – Remember that yeast is the “living” part of beer, ales and lagers are classified as such by their yeast strains, and the scientific names are always italicized.

So you want to be a Beer Writer? – Malt 101

Hey, I see you there, backing away from that conversation about malt because one person started talking about amylase activity in mash.

Get back in there slugger! I got you covered with this overview of what malt is, how it’s made, and why it’s important.

This primer will cover the basics (yes, I left quite a bit out) for those who want to write (or speak) with a little more confidence. If you’re looking for a deep dive into delicious piles of malt, check out John Mallet’s book from Brewer’s Publications. I heard the guy who edited it is pretty cool.

Malt as a beer ingredient

While consumers may name hops as the most recognizable ingredient in beer (water is always so sadly overlooked), malt does a ton of selfless work in the brewhouse. Loose kernels of malted grain are cracked in a mill then added to the mashtun, where they steep at a specific temperature to encourage enzyme activity, ultimately creating the sweet primordial soup from which all beerish life will eventually emerge: wort.

A beer’s recipe will normally include a combination of base malts and specialty malts.

Base malts are generally pale with high diastatic power (also known as degrees Litner), meaning in layman’s terms that they have the potential to produce more sugar, more easily. They provide the food for the yeast (often called fermentables), and a beer made entirely of a single base malt would be a shade of yellow or gold with a singular complexity.

Specialty malts are added at various points during the mash (depending on the recipe), and contribute to the color, aroma, and flavor profile of the beer. Contrasting the base malts, they tend to contain very few fermentable sugars, and are used primarily for their other gustatory and olfactory qualities.

The length of the sugars extracted by the enzymes in mash dictate much of how the yeast will ferment the beer, too. It may not be as sexy as those sticky pods of lupulin, but malt is incredibly important to brewing (and enjoying) beer.

Malt as a verb

Although “malt” in the brewing industry often manifests as a noun (“what kind of malt did the brewer use in this beer?), the verb form – “to malt” – is more important to understanding the ingredient.

Cereal grains grow tall, and when they are mature, produce seeds. These seeds are like any other; out in the wild, they’d fall to the ground, get covered in dirt and moisture, and begin to grow when the next season came rolling in on Spring sun.

Simple enough.

But taken out of the natural cycle, cereal grains cannot make beer until they are malted, or more specifically, soaked, germinated, and dried. Maltsters (the people who make malt, shockingly enough) harness the seed’s biological imperative, and trick it into growing. They place the seeds into a bed of water and let them begin to grow roots and breathe. The goal is to allow the seed to change – or modify – sufficiently that it will break down its own internal sugars and release them into the hot waters of the mash to make wort.

When the seed is fully modified (or close to) they halt the growing and modification process by blowing hot air through the grain. After the tiny roots are removed (a process call deculming), the malt is kilned, both to prevent spoilage and create desired flavors through Maillard reactions. All of a beer’s color is derived from its malt; the darker the roast, the darker the beer, from the delicate daffodil of lager (pale bale malt) to the midnight dark of stout (roasted barley).

It’s imperative the grain be malted well before it reaches the brewery; without the malting process the seeds would be dry, rock hard, and lacking the necessary sugars to provide a feast for the yeast. Apparently some attempts at non-malt beer have been tried by the Japanese, but 99% of the time, when we’re talking beer as history and culture knows it, we’re talking malted grains.

Malt as a noun

“Malt” as a standalone makes for a poor noun. It’s far too abstract, as many different grains like rye, wheat, sorghum, oat, rice, and corn can be malted.

While yes, malted barley makes up the vast majority of all malt used in beer making, it’s important to quantify which type of malt you’re referring to, which is why you’ll often see references to “malt barley” in beer writing. Malted barley itself can be expanded out into a huge list of varieties and levels of roast, and many beer recipes use multiple types of malted barley to achieve certain flavors and colors (two-row, six-row, Munich, Carapils, Crystal, patent black, etc). Other beers mix types of malted grains – a rye IPA for example might use both malted barley and malted rye.

“Grain” is equally lacking as a noun. Industry jargon discusses the grain bill of a beer (or the list of malts that went into the mashtun) but the word itself refers to unmalted seeds. Grain exists in the fields; it’s an agricultural term. “Grist” – as in grist bill – reads similar; it implies ground grain (like that used to make bread flour), but makes no reference to whether or not it has been malted. Neither are fundamentally incorrect and both are used widely, but it’s always good to remember exactly what each means.

Malt as an adjective/adverb

In Chapter 2 of his book, Mallet says that he thinks Munich malt is the closet match to quintessential “malt flavor” and I tend to agree. It compares best to malt as it appears outside of beer: malted milkshakes and malted chocolate balls. But other varieties of barley malt taste very different; dark roasted specialty malts, like Special B for example, can have notes of raisins and dates, while some other pale base malts taste like Pillsbury dinner rolls or KFC biscuits. All that to say that while there is a basic malt flavor, varieties of malts can taste very, very different from each other.

“Malt” works perfectly as a traditional adjective: malted barley. Use it with impunity.

It doesn’t work at all as a blanket adverb: “malty.”

“Malty” is lazy. And boring. And uninspired.

It’s equivalent to boiling The Alchemist’s Heady Topper or Ballast Point’s Sculpin down to “hoppy.” A single adjective doesn’t do justice to the complexity and variety our tongue and noses are capable of experiencing. Saying a beer is “malty” is like saying that your steak tastes like meat or your wine tastes like grapes; of course it does, it’s quite literally made of that thing. Every single beer in the world (barring maybe that weird aforementioned Japanese stuff) will in some capacity taste malty.

Use bready or biscuity instead. Or toasted or roasted or burnt. Hundreds of other, more specific adjectives can describe what you’re tasting, so don’t  cop out and go with “malty.” Your future readers thank you.

I understand a lot of people use “malty” as a way to grade the level of noticeable malt flavor when compared to others beers and styles, but it’s still an unimaginative smear of language being used in the place of proper, descriptive prose. If something tastes more malty than something else, say exactly that, but then follow it up with concrete examples of what you’re actually tasting.

Malt is both simple and complex, both obviously present and hiding in the background. Take the time to get to know how malt works in your favorite beers, and you’ll discover a new appreciation for the naturalistic side of beer, and how amazing it is that maltsters have basically bridled and domesticated the Kreb’s cycle. It may not be glamorous, but it’s still beautiful in its own, agronomic way, and deserves to be treated with respect lest it, and your writing about it, be infested with weevils.

TL;DR – to use the term “malt” or “malted” is to imply that a grain underwent a specific process that has been used to make beer for centuries. It’s a verb first, a noun second, an adjective third, and an adverb never.

One million pounds of barley malt drying at the Budwesier malting plant in Idaho Falls, ID.

Nom de Bier – Samuel Smith Yorkshire Stingo by William Shakespeare

This is entry #1 in the series “Nom de Bier” – good beer reviewed by famous authors (as emulated by me). I do not claim to speak for these authors, nor am I an expert scholar in their particular style, so please feel free to correct/admonish as you see fit.

Beer Review – Samuel Smith Yorkshire Stingo (barrel aged)
Style: English Strong Ale
ABV: 8.0%
IBU: 30-35

By: William Shakespeare

Sonnet CLV

From bottom where Eros did spring his Sting,
Through much bubbly affair rose sweet head, O;
But focus nay on bubbles should the tale sing,
Instead in oaken planks dark fruits do grow.
A Smith named Sam, a hero born into
Malten cavalcades proceeding to tun;
Man and Nature together set to brew,
And what yeast embark may ne’er be undone.
An odd thing though this, partly tongues note sour –
By work of raisins and spry, teeming wood –
It dances reliquary, somber, dour;
As if mourning a time long passed, lost good.
A tribute, nay, an homage aged old,
Captured in glass, for you to pour, to hold.

Sonnet CLVI

That god not settled with simple ale bliss
Sought more beyond what tradition limits,
As sailors once set eyes on ambergris,
So too did Smith on the cooper’s habit.
And O! How the amber flowed from slick steel,
Down and round bent staves to beer bellies bound,
And here it stayed, a year, flavor made real:
The hold of a ship, full of beer, run ‘ground.
That year much did swirl for yeast finds sleep rare,
And what once was beer in tree’s brace did find
Notes, smells unfettered now but palate fair,
And bitter music played in time with rind.
If one sought brown or pale or stout sweet woe
For neither, nor, and none, this strong ale show.

Sonnet CLVII

Elements conjured forth through Water pure
A tincture; Fire’s bane and Earth’s lament.
On Air life gulped sweet life shy of demure,
And found in liquid our Spirit’s repent.
Ask one now, she, ‘should imbibe or abstain?’
‘All depends’ answer they, ‘what dost thou seek?’
From life from this place, melodic refrain?
Or days left unfulfilled, the same, so weak?
If the latter, fly now, Smith wants you not;
Much rather he’d have a soul gilded bold.
So into your life cast Gambler’s lot
A chance you should take, on true Yorkshire gold.
But also weigh Eros, mission love born,
And weigh too, ones headache come morrow, come morn.

Grammarian’s note: I went with sonnets over a play for brevity’s sake, and because I prefer rhymed iambic pentameter to blank verse. I started with CLV (155) as Shakespeare’s final sonnet was CLIV (154). The structure for a sonnet is 12 rhyming quatrains (ABAB CDCD EFEF) with a single rhyming (GG) couplet as the closing. For more information, check out the basics of his style: http://www.shakespeare-online.com/faq/writingstyle.html

Nom de Bier – Beer Reviews as Told by Your Favorite Authors

One of my favorite exercises during grad school was to write essays that emulated the style of a specific author. My advisor (and all around amazing person and writer), Cathy Alter, had us read a nonfiction memoir and then, to the best of our ability, recreate that writer’s voice and style using our own words and topics.

It started off rough; trying to understand and then properly execute a writer’s style is like trying to guess the ingredients of an Iron Chef dish by only tasting a small portion during dinner. There are so many elements to work with, and a nebulous je ne sais quoi unique to each writer that makes 3D printing their prose a labor in dedicated and careful study, not just casual keyboard jockery.

But after some practice, I got better, and found that by analyzing other writers at a deep, intimate level, my own writing improved. It had the added bonus of teaching me to respect a large range of styles, and understand there is no one best way to present your story.

I’m nearly two years removed from grad school, and I miss those little exercises.

The obvious conclusion, “why not bring them back on the blog?”

Which of course lead to, “how do I emulate another writer’s style but also include beer?”

Enter: Nom de Bier – where iconic authors review beers!

Or, um, I try to recreate their styles and write a beer review in homage to said writer.

Originally, I had planned to do it on my own; randomly pick ten or so of my favorite authors and imagine how they’d review a beer. But one of the best parts about the grad school exercise was that I was forced to read new, different authors, outside of my comfort genres and usual literary wheelhouse.

So I made it social:

If you retweet this, I will, before the year is out, write a beer review in the style of your favorite author. #beer #beerwriting

— Oliver Gray (@OliverJGray) August 17, 2015

I did not expect 27 retweets. I’m fantastically excited that people seemed interested in this idea, and even more excited that I’ve now got an extensive, Twitter-friend built reading list. My Kindle is about to get abused in the best possible way.

When trying to emulate an author, there are three major aspects to capture:

1. Voice (this is the hardest part, and requires a bit of biographical research to know when and where the writer came from)
2. Syntax and sentence structure (this one feeds into voice: Hemingway, for example, penned his novels using a very specific syntactical method that many now recognize as part of his style)
3. Literary themes (easy enough to pick up on; much harder to execute)

Below is the list of requesters and their favorite authors (if I missed you, shoot me a tweet or email). Given that I have a lot of reading to do to truly understand these writers, I may do them out of order as I play catch up on some I’ve read less (or none) of. I may also warm up with some of my favorites, too, just to get into the swing of things before tackling some of the crazier ones on this list.

• Keith Mathias ‏@KWMathias – Cormac McCarthy
• Josh Christie @jchristie – Mary Roach
• Aaron O – BottleFarm ‏@theBottleFarm – Hunter S. Thompson
• Raising the Barstool ‏@RTBarstool – Sun Tzu
• Leslie Patiño ‏@lpatinoauthor – Harper Lee
• I think about beer ‏@ithinkaboutbeer – Mikhaíl Bulgakov
• Andrew ‏@DasAleHaus – R.L. Stine
• michaelstump ‏@_stump – William S. Burroughs
• The Beermonger ‏@The_Beermonger – Michael Chabon
• Tony ‏@DrinksTheThings – Arthur Conan Doyle
• Douglas Smiley ‏@BmoreBistroBeer – Douglas Adams
• Liz Murphy ‏@naptownpint – Christopher Buckley
• Jeff Pillet-Shore ‏@allagashjeff – Neil Gaiman
• Suvi Seikkula ‏@seikkulansuvi – Edgar Alan Poe
• cassie ‏@lastxfantasy – Johnathan L. Howard
• Xtian Paula ‏@drowningn00b – Haruki Murakami
• ‘rissa ‏@ScoginsBitch – Irvine Welsh
• Fayettebrew ‏@fayettebrew – Chuck Palahniuk
• J. R. Shirt ‏@Beeronmyshirt – John Steinbeck
• Sara ‏@DoWhat_YOU_Like – Robert Heinlein
• Nicola Chamberlain ‏@nchamberlain – Kurt Vonnegut
• Michael P. Williams ‏@theunfakempw – Lewis Carroll
• Heather Hedy F ‏@Hedytf – Stephen King
• Robert record ‏@Reach4therail – Richard Wright
• Melba ‏@melba_dnu – Harlequin Romance Style

I’m not going to hold myself to any particular schedule, as I’ve found out that doesn’t work well for me. Or my job. Or my social life. Or my brewing plans.

If you missed the original tweet and want to add your favorite author to the list, shoot me an email at literatureandlibation@gmail.com, or tweet me at @OliverJGray. Assuming I don’t spontaneously combust, or you don’t offer some very obscure, highly niche writer, I’ll get to your request eventually!

(And yes, I am still writing “December, 1919,” and working actively on Homegrew. Posts regarding both coming soon)

Beer Bloggers and Writers Conference 2015 – Moving Beyond the Beer Review

In a few weeks, amidst the serene beer landscape that is Asheville, North Carolina, I’ll be presenting on a panel at the Beer Bloggers and Writers Conference. The panel itself, “Moving Beyond the Beer Review” promises to be a pretty awesome foray into moving ones blogging and writing into the fertile lands that exist past the walls of the basics, and I’ll be speaking with some very esteemed company (a description of the panel can be found here).

I’ve done a lot of presentations in my 29.7 years, either at work, or through school, or as part of some culminating social experience. I’m one of those people who doesn’t fear speaking publicly, and sometimes even really enjoy it (especially the “have energetic conversations with enthusiastic people” part). Call me loquacious. Call me loudmouthed. I like to speak.

But this presentation manifests in my brain differently; perhaps because it’s the first presentation I’ve ever done about this little laborious love I call a blog, or about beer, or about writing about beer. It means a lot more to me than some generic book presentation or SharePoint training, and as a result, I really want to make sure I get it right. Thus this post.

Moving Beyond the Beer Review

Note: This is not a copy of what I’m going to present at the conference, I just wanted to get my ideas down/logically oriented and simultaneously make a reference document to share with attendees. If you’re going to be at BBC15, there might be some overlap, but I promise I’m not giving everything away. Think of this as supplementary ramblings.

When I started writing about beer, I wrote beer reviews. Creating accurate expository descriptions of beer means taking the time to learn brands and smells and flavors, giving a writer a good basis for creating good prose. Basic beer reviews are Beer Writing 101; a prerequisite needed to ground your mind and palate in the proper context, before exploring more elaborate topics.

I quickly moved past the beer review in my own writing, and have, for a few years now, sort of looked back at them with irrational disdain. My default line is that the traditional appearance, smell, and flavor driven review is boring. But simply dismissing them as not interesting doesn’t capture my true sentiment. It’s not that they’re inherently bad or have no use (the popularity of sites like Beer Advocate and Rate Beer proves otherwise), it’s that they don’t offer a reader anything except flat, encyclopedia-like information. I wanted to dig deeper and figure out why the beer review turned me off so much.

To start, there are some inescapable flaws with the traditional review:

• They’re too subjective to be worth much
• Thousands upon thousands of people have already reviewed most beers
• Myriad sites already exist with this content, so reproducing it on a blog doesn’t offer anything new
• There are so many other things in beer culture to write about besides what the beer tastes like

But these still didn’t get to the beating heart of why I disliked reviews so much. After much soul searching, I came to this ultimate, writerly conclusion: a generic beer review offers no story, and as a result, has a very hard time engaging a reader who seeks anything beyond rote fact.

A quick, important grammar lesson before moving on. And don’t get me started on your “not liking grammar.” A writer who doesn’t like grammar is like a chef who doesn’t like spices or a soccer player who doesn’t like shoes. Learn how to use your tools or find another trade.

Annnnnyyyyyway, there are two kinds of verbs: transitive and intransitive. Transitive verbs take a direct object, while intransitive verbs take a subject compliment.

Transitive: Oliver writes about beer.
Intransitive: Oliver is a writer.

While both sentences are similar, the transitive sentence shows me more information and progresses the sentence by using a strong verb, as opposed simply telling me a fact about the subject. Whenever you see “is” or “was” substitute in an equals sign and you’ll see what I mean.

Oliver is a writer (Oliver = a writer)
The beer was an IPA (Beer = an IPA)

All you’re doing with “to be” verbs is creating a comparison, not actually moving the writing forward, or creating an engaging narrative.

Let’s look at a full (but simple) paragraph to get an even better sense:

Transitive: Oliver writes about beer. He spins stories about fermentation. He also enjoys teaching people about grammar.
Intransitive: Oliver is a writer who writes about beer. His stories are about fermentation. Teaching people grammar is something he enjoys.

See the difference? Notice the lack of flow and staccato rhythm of the intransitive sentences? You’re also sinking deeper into the mire of passive language when using intransitives, and are forced to adorn your sentences with even more grammatical embroidery to capture the same information.

The operative word and idea is that transitive verbs show the reader something. There’s an old adage that pops up in writing workshops everyday: “Show, don’t tell.” It’s the idea that you want to guide your reader through a narrative and let them experience it as they will, not hold their hand and point out every little detail that is suppose to be important. Even if you’re only writing a review, readers want a arc, a mini-plot, a point, not just a data dump. This concept isn’t scary or new, either, it’s part of storytelling (and fiction!) fundamentals.

Knowing this grammatical sleight of hand, we discover that the beer review is not in fact boring, it simply does not show the reader anything.

Instead, it tells them. Forces information through their eyes and into their brains with no elegance or flow. It tells them what it tastes like, what it looks like, what it smells like. Why, as a reader, would I want that? Why not just go out and experience that myself?

When you ground your writing in intransitive comparisons (I see a startling overuse of “to be” verbs in nearly every review I read), you’re subconsciously telling the reader you don’t trust them to properly read your writing, or understand what you’re trying to say.

Not cool beer writers, not cool. Trust your readers, assume they’re smart and that your writing is clear. Have as much faith in your product as you do in the products you review.

BBC15 TL;DR – The innate problem isn’t the idea of beer reviews themselves, but with how a vast majority are executed. I see the same problem is event recaps, brewery and brewer profiles, and release statements, too. If you want more readers, more conversation, more engagement on your blog, you need to learn to use verbs to tell a story, even if that story is of you sitting at home, tasting a beer.

For some examples of transitive, story-based beer reviews, check these out:

http://literatureandlibation.com/2013/11/06/beer-review-sam-adams-thirteenth-hour/
http://literatureandlibation.com/2014/09/10/beer-review-southern-tier-warlock/
http://literatureandlibation.com/2014/06/27/beer-review-bells-two-hearted-ale/

Grammarian’s note: I don’t mean to imply that intransitive verbs are incorrect and should never be used. Obviously that’s not true, as I used dozens of them in this post (including this sentence). Just be aware of when you’re using them, and if they’re the proper verb for the context of your sentence. Sometimes they are, but with newer writers, often times they’re not. For more information about verbs, read this.

December, 1919 – Chapter 12

Welcome to chapter twelve of “December, 1919″, a serialized novel written by Oliver Gray. New chapters will be published every week. Links to all published chapters can be found here. 

Chapter 12

Wherever I went, the German followed. If I went to the bakery, he was already there, marble rye in hand. Outside the newspaper, he’d loiter on a street corner, near the valets and drivers. Through the steam of coffee dissipating into the frozen air, I could pretty much always see him, a giant half obscured in mist.

He wasn’t exactly inconspicuous. He’d drop his hat down to cover part of his face, but rose above almost every bustling city crowd; an oak among saplings. I hadn’t called him. Definitely hadn’t paid him. And yet he persisted, on my tail until the moment I walked back through my front door at night.

I didn’t mind.

Virginia did.

“It’s creepy.” she said, watching him with a side eye as we stood outside the office near the newly paved taxi line. Hot asphalt mingled with exhaust. The stench of modern progress. “How do you know you can trust him? What if he figures out what we’re doing?”

I laughed. “This guy knows what mom made me for lunch, what story I’m chasing, and my exact shirt size. He already knows about the malt, the kettles, that sack of dried hops; I’d guess everything, Ginnie.”

She huffed, not panicked but annoyed. “Well he better be able to keep a secret.” She leaned into my side, jabbing me with her elbow. She locked her eyes to mine. A deep, piercing stare to show she was serious, but all I could see was a sparkling array of emerald.

He had kept the secret, so far at least. I’d done my best to slip and sneak through side streets on our sojourns to the brewery, but this man was a professional. I’m sure he had no problems keeping up with me, even with his massive size. I’d seen him in streetlight shadows when I snuck out the cellar door after a session. Whatever his reason for following me, it had nothing to do with the clandestine brews we’d been boiling in the midnight deep.

We’d produced three barrels in two weeks. Our kettle limited production size; we hadn’t dared fire up the actual brass, not with the news of police already clashing with smugglers and brewers moving south from Canada. Virginia had pawned her gun after she’d realized that it takes a lot more gumption to use the thing than it does to own it. With the money she bought our kettle – an old but sturdy pot from a soup kitchen – and an angry little dagger – white buckhorn handle leading to five inches of potential cuts.

There was plenty of malt to mash for a while, but we had precious few hops to work with. The small garden behind the brewery would produce enough bines to keep us brewing, even if we couldn’t consistently guess the bittering we’d get from the fuggles that my father had dropped into the soil years ago. That didn’t matter now anyway. It’d be at least six months before they’re pop green cones all sticky with yellow dust, spicing the air with pungent citrus and pine.

I’d found some cans of pre-hopped syrup in a dry goods store just outside of Cherry Hill, across the Delaware. The nasty goop compared poorly to real, grain-mashed wort, but the yeast didn’t mind, and I figured beer-starved patrons wouldn’t either. Virginia scolded me for even considering a cheap path, especially when my father had done all he could to keep Philadelphia beer pure and traditional.

“Here, taste this,” she said, holding out a steel ladle. “It’s sour and thin; no one would want to drink this.”

She wasn’t wrong – I’d stretched too little syrup too far – the beer was horrible, if still technically beer. “Beggars can’t be choosers?” I said, raising my voice with my shoulders and tilting my head. She threw the ladle at me.

“I know it can’t be the same as it was, but if we’re going to do this, we should do it right,” she said, her tongue a paintbrush of devotion. “I want to be the best illegal beer in Philadelphia, no, the entire east coast!”

Her zeal made her even more beautiful, even more enticing and alluring like her passion fueled my own. “I agree,” I said, “but if we don’t have any hops, we don’t have any hops.”

“I wonder…” her voice trailed off as she looked up, pensive. “The IRS probably kept all those ingredients, right? And not just ours, but all of the ingredients from all the local breweries.” A grin stole her lips and wrenched them upward. “And I bet they put them all in one place, too.” She rose onto the toes of her boots, as if the climax of her idea was lifting her into the air. “We find that place, find a way in, and take what we need!”

I sighed. Saw it coming, but still faltered as the freight train of crazy came barreling down the tracks. “You’re out of your mind; you do know that right?” I asked her, making sure my mouth wasn’t hanging open.

“It’s not that crazy. All those ingredients…right there. Hops aren’t heavy. We could make off with pounds of them and be set for months. All we have to do is learn where they took it all.” She moved closer. The excitement manifest in a rapid heart beat and ragged breath.

“We’re brewers, Ginnie, not burglars. You think we can just break into a government building? Just jump up to the roof like John Carter of Mars?”

She paused for a moment. “Maybe we can’t.”

Relief prepared to sink in…

“But maybe someone else can.”

…and then disappeared, dashed against the rocks of illogic and insanity.

She paced in a circle around the bubbling kettle, performing her nightly deep-thinking ritual. She stopped, raised a hand high, then brought it back down as and even bigger smile took over her face.

“The German.” She said, triumphantly.

“What? No.” I said.

“Yea, it’s perfect. That’s what he does. Learns things. Gets into places. He’s everywhere,” she said as I sat on my stool, staring at the boiling wort, unsure of what to say. “It really is perfect, Jack. We ask the German to steal us some hops.”

“I could do zat,” said Schweinsteiger, almost silent, like a cat, stepping out from the darkened piping behind two kettles. “But you two will have to do something for me, first.”

To be continued…

December, 1919 – Chapter 11

Welcome to chapter eleven of “December, 1919″, a serialized novel written by Oliver Gray. New chapters will be published every week, unless the author has radical arm surgery. Links to all published chapters can be found here. 

Chapter 11

I flipped the big German’s card over and over in my hand, staring off at a darkening Philadelphia skyline. The clouds hung low, pregnant with snow due any day now, hugging the city in a cold embrace. The weather matched the mood; all the talk in the taverns felt muted and melancholy, like the entire city was collectively mourning those last few drops of booze left to die too young in the bottom of barrels. I’d cloistered myself on the roof of the brewery, tucked back behind the second stacked brick chimney where I thought no one could easily find me.

There, in the shadow of my father’s legacy, I cried. The wind slapped so fierce against my face I thought my tears would freeze, freeze like my spirit had as I watched the flames lick at the wood of his coffin. Threats and shadows finally snapped my last thread of stoicism, and I sat, like a child lost in the sprawling maze of a rush hour downtown, unsure what to do, or how to do it.

Berman and Moore never left my mind, but now, given Ritter’s insistence and insinuation, I saw demons in every shadow of every street corner. Protection? From who, and how? Legally, physically, emotionally? I looked down again at the crisp edges of the card, tracing my fingers over the elongated fours of the accompanying phone number. I hadn’t called. Not yet. I needed time to understand the danger, and know if it was only me who needed protection.

At the thought of my decisions putting my mother or Virginia or sweet William in danger, I abandoned any attempt at stifling my sadness. My sobs meandered upward on the draft between buildings, disappearing forever into the grey as my body purged itself of all the pent up fear and frustration.

“Crying won’t solve anything.” The voice startled me into action, and I jumped up, drew the small knife I’d been cradling like a paranoid vagrant, and turned to face its owner.

George looked terrible. Worse than terrible. His face pallid and sickly with huge, dark circles under each eye that made it like he’d just gone ten rounds with Jess Willard, and then another ten with Jack Dempsy. He’d lost weight, too, but still towered over me, imposing and austere. I moved back, keeping the knife out in front of me like a kitten brandishing its underdeveloped claws at that the maws of an hungry timber wolf.

“No need for that, Jack.” He lowered himself onto a brick outcropping across from me. “I’m not here to hurt you. In fact the opposite. Sit down.”

He motioned casually for me to pocket the knife and lower my guard. I put the knife back into its little leather home, but kept my hand wrapped around the handle, my nerves too cautious to trust anything or anyone.

“Heh, this prohibition might be the best thing that’s ever happened to me. Haven’t had a drink in two weeks. Was pretty rough at first, but I think the light’s finally coming back into my soul.” He held out his large, gnarled hand flat, palm down. It shook violently for a second before he closed it into a fist, brought it to his face, and blew warm air into the hole in the middle. He shivered, too, shoulders involuntarily shrugging despite a very heavy canvas coat.

“I can’t apologize for what I did. It happened and the consequences can’t be undone.” He didn’t make eye contact as he spoke, just stared off at some point behind me. “Virginia won’t talk to me. I understand, of course, but it’s killing me. Her mother doesn’t know anything, and the lie, or at least the lack of truth, eats away at me every day. I haven’t touched a drop since. The whiskey transforms me into a man I can’t trust.”

“George…” I said, trying to be gentle.

He cut me off. “You don’t have to do that, Jack. So like your dad. Try to make everything better even when it isn’t,” he said as he shivered, or shook, again. I couldn’t tell whether he was fighting the DTs or the cold, or some awful combination. “Your dad was like a brother to me. Losing him, then losing the brewery, then losing my entire identity to this temperance movement…I just couldn’t cope.”

I relaxed my grip on the blade and let the tension slide out of my muscles. He seemed sincere, and from his demeanor, it looked like the cold turkey detoxing had left him too weak to be a threat to me. My fear at being caught alone with him suddenly shifted to pity. Strange, I thought, how our emotions can flutter so ephemerally from one extreme to the other.

He sniffed, wiping his nose. “I never expected you and Ginnie to…well…you know. Andrew always joked about it, but she’s my girl, and I never accepted that she’d grown up. I want you to know…” his voice dropped, like he couldn’t figure out what to say, or was very reluctant to say what he needed to. “I’m happy for her. For you. Who better for my girl than my best friend’s son?”

He took his hand out of his coat pocket, and held it forward. The last hand I’d shook was Ritter’s, that massive, powerful paw that made my hand feel like it was made of tissue. George’s hand felt strong, too, but less assertive, less mighty, more connected and forgiving, like the callous digits, scarred and dry, were forgiveness and embarrassment incarnate. I took it, shook it. He coughed and flipped the collar of his coat up against the stubble on his neck.

“Let’s get down,” I said, shaking off a shiver myself. “It’s going to start snowing any minute now, and I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to climb down a slick, frozen ladder.” George forced a smile, and weakly got to his feet. As he shuffled toward the steel railing that lead back down to the brewery floor, he turned back to me.

“I know it won’t matter, but can you tell Virginia that I miss her?” It was hard to tell in the bluster, but for a moment I thought I saw a tear well in his eye.

“Crying won’t solve anything,” I said, flashing a cheeky smile.

He sniffed and nodded, before disappearing down the ladder, into the dark shadows of the brewery floor below.

To be continued…

December, 1919 – Chapter 10

Welcome to chapter ten of “December, 1919″, a serialized novel written by Oliver Gray. New chapters will be published every week, unless the author is hit by a car. Links to all published chapters can be found here. 

Chapter 10

“Rumor has it you gave the IRS inspector a hard time.” McGuire didn’t look up from the newspaper he was reading.

“I suppose.” I said, standing in the doorway to his cramped office. He’d just brewed coffee and the silky smell of roast swam across the room and up my nose. “I thought it was all pretty simple, really. He asked questions. I answered them.” I wanted to sit down, but McGuire made no offer.

“Rumor also has it that you’re not going to take this lying down.” He said, lifting his head and looking at me, one eyebrow raised.

I swallowed the lump of anxiety in my throat. Only Virginia knew about the malt; William had suspicions, but was far too meek to speak to anyone.

“They’re my rumors, of course,” McGuire said, after I remained silent. “Rumors that you’re going to finally put that writing talent of yours to good use. Rumors that you have some insider information into the way this “prohibition” is being handled.” He leaned back in his leather chair, folding his hands behind his head. “Rumors that a certain paper might be happy to run that story, if it’s well written.”

I stumbled to respond. “Oh. Yea. That. I probably should write something, huh?” The fear decrescendoed, but I still had to beat the fires of panic down to keep them from spreading to my face.

McGuire smiled. “Beats transcribing notes. Here.” Across the desk he slid a worn leather notebook, brow and cheeks scratched and marred by years of journalistic abuse. I opened it to find perfectly crisp white sheets beneath the covers. “The outside’s not much to look at, but I had Jason downstairs bind a whole new pad inside. That leather’s got history; it’s what I used when I first started writing.” He said, looking equal parts proud and expectant. “Time to starting taking the notes yourself, Cooper.”

I wanted to reach over the desk and hug him, but quickly returned to the doorway. McGuire wasn’t the hugging type, but this was the first time he’d done anything even bordering on paternal.

I flicked through the pages, letting the sharp edges of the brand new paper pass across the callous of my thumb. The sheets fanned a dry mustiness into my face. The smell of fresh potential. “Thank you,” I said, quieter than I intended, “I’ll put it to good use. I know just the man to talk to first.”

“Good.” He said, pushing himself and his chair away from the desk, standing, and stretching. “I’ve been doing some outside reading. Is this something you could do?” He passed a section of newspaper to me, folded over, like he was trying to shield the contents from prying eyes. The national headlines had all been centered on the coming legal changes, but this one, clearly from a small-town paper was different:

“Pottsville Brewery to Weather Coming Drought with “Near-Beer”

A low-alcohol brew had been part of Virginia’s original idea, but I had shot her down, thinking it impossible. Continued brewing, even of something barely alcoholic, would certainly keep us in malt and hops. Maybe even give us an avenue to launder some of our other, less public projects. “Near-beer.” I said, pretending to ponder.

“Yep. Looks like beer, smells like beer. There’s so little alcohol it narrowly dips under the government’s mandate. I tried some last week in the District; doesn’t taste amazing, but it’s better than nothing if you’ve got that particular thirst for suds.” McGuire said, pantomiming a swig from a very large and very imaginary mug of beer. “From what I understand it’s just watered down regular beer.”

“Potentially a small beer made with second or third wort runnings. Watering down a regular beer would create something cidery and nigh undrinkable.” I looked up at the ceiling, imagine the tiny grist you’d use to brew a beer less than one percent by volume.

“Now you sound like your father.” McGuire said, breaking my concentration with a slap on the shoulder. “Uptown is yours now; I say you keep it running through all this. I’d put a hefty bet on that being what your father wanted.”

I hung my head, picturing dad. McGuire was probably right, but the mention of him, his plans, the rest of his life, stung. “We already signed everything over to the IRS. This would have been a little more helpful a week ago. There’s no way we can go back on that now.” I said. I hoped I wasn’t being too short.

“I’ve already thought of that,” he said, as he picked up the phone. “Jess, can you please send in Mr. Schweinsteiger?” A voice on the other end complied and then hung up.

A minute later, a hulking frame, nearly 6 and a half feet, ducked to step into McGuire’s office. He was lean but muscular, square-jawed, but handsome in an imposing sort of way. “Ah, Mr. Cooper, my pleasure. Should I call you Jack?” He spoke very quickly, words painted in a fresh coat of German accent. “Oh but how rude! Let me introduce myself. Tobias Schweinsteiger, esquire.” He bowed at the waist, nearly hitting his head on the ceiling fan.

I bowed back, and took the man’s hand in an overly firm handshake. The power in his hands bordered on supernatural. I thought for a second he was going to shake my entire body in one accidentally violent greeting. “Schweinsteiger?” I asked, butchering the attempt to pronounce his name with my American inflection.

“Ya. My family has come along way from raising pigs. Now I put them in prison.” He laughed. I could have sworn the whole room shook. “Gregory says you may be in need of my services?”

Gregory. McGuire’s first name, finally. I looked over at him, and he shrugged. “Services? What is it exactly that you do?” I asked.

“I help those who have been wronged. Especially wronged by bad people. I have a reputation, you see.”

“A reputation?” I said, looking up into his grey eyes.

“Yes,” he said, “I have been practicing law in the US for sometime now, but I wasn’t always a barrister. In Germany, zey call me Der Ritter.”

McGuire chimed in. “The Knight.”

Schweinsteiger reached into his coat and pulled out a card. With a flick, he tucked it into my shirt pocket. He then lifted his right fist to his chest – as if he was holding a sword – and grinned at me.

“I protect the innocent,” he said, pride now blended into his accent. “From what I have been told, you may need some protection.”

To be continued…