No Mixed Drinks is a site that celebrates beverages that are not “mixed.” For anyone that loves alcohol of any type, this should give reason to pause.
All right. If you didn’t pause, you’re reading the wrong blog. You can go.
Only the alocholists still with us? Great.
A huge part of No Mixed Drink’s reason for being, and it’s focus on beer of all the non-mixed beverages, can best be encapsulated by this single conversation:
“Hi!”
“Hello!”
[I know this is boring, but stay with it. It gets more interesting.]
“Have fun this weekend?”
“Yeah. I had a new beer, Dale’s Pale Ale. That beer is awesome.”
“Absolutely. I haven’t had that beer in a… well, a while I guess. You like hoppy beers?”
“Yeah.”
“Dale’s is pretty fantastic. It’s a big beer, though. I can only have a few.”
“Yeah. But it’s so totally worth it.”
[This goes on.]
The key point, for me, about this conversation is that people can bond over a single beer. In spite of time, in spite of place, chances are very good that those beers were almost identical (it helps that Dale’s Pale Ale comes in a can). For me, there is an amazing shared experience thinking that someone can drink the same beer as I can, regardless of time and space. Indeed, some beer drinkers and I are separated by hundreds of years. But basic chemistry and biology means that if something like the Star Trek universal translator were ever perfected, then we could talk about that beer. We would have something in common that is very much about our experience as human beings.
The same is not true for other beverages, other drinks. Wine changes from year to year based on the weather, and in the bottle from day to day as it ages. It’s become a cliche since Sideways, but it’s completely true that the wine you drink on any given day is not the same wine as will ever happen again. I’m lame for pointing this out, but let me: it’s a near religious lesson in life; you can never stand in the same river twice, and you can never drink the same bottle of wine. This experience is as powerful as a shared experience could be; and it can be shared in it’s own way. However, it is very different than beer.
So to, with the mixed drink. The mixed drink, unlike wine, is so spontaneous as to fly in the face of all permanence in the universe. The time, the ingredients, the bartender… all these things make for a true event. Certainly, a great bartender brings consistency, but then you’re likely at a great bar having a great evening (hopefully) that is unique in its own right. It’s different. And, it should likely go without saying that the act of making a drink is a truly expressionist art that everyone can participate in. It’s fun, it’s lively, and it’s a set of skills (including tasting) that it’s truly neat to master.
Beer, of course, is different. It’s a shared experience that is fairly easy to have and fairly easy to replicate. And, although the people, the time, and you all change, the beer (hopefully) stays pretty close to the same. I think that’s one reason the beer and the internet go so hand-in-hand: beer is asynchronous and location independent. Although I could never prove it, I honestly believe that the rise in the internet and the rise in craft beer consumption go together. We all have a place to talk about the weird beer we find in the store now.
That said, there are many lessons in life and many lessons about the beloved by-product of our yeasty brethren. If you’re interested in how the other half lives (and you should be), I can suggest nothing finer than American Drink. They write and drink like everyone should, and they taught me how to make really great grenadine.
If you have any doubt that beer and mixed drinks should, in fact, go together, I refer you to Darryl Robinson’s excellent Drink Up episode on beer in mixed drinks.
If you’re still not convinced, there is nothing I can do to help you.
…
And, yes, this entire post was an excuse to link to American Drink.Twice.
smole 11:57 am on August 31, 2010 Permalink |
Two Hearted Ale is one of my very favorite IPAs, and I like the floral hops in the nose quite a bit.
By way of explanation: I’ve always assumed that they use far fewer and less potent bittering hops than others, and add fewer of them at the beginning of the boil. Adding the hops later supposedly gives those excellent floral aromas with less of the bitterness, as would dry hopping or adding hops at the tap (like a Randall). Anywho… it’s hard to tell, as Bell’s doesn’t disclose the hops on their site. A better taster than me would be able to guess the exact varieties used, though.
woolwine 12:09 pm on August 31, 2010 Permalink |
Good to know! Everybody seems to heart Two Hearted; also, a friend of mine helpfully points out that it offers a lot of bang for the buck as regards ABV. Not that I need extra help in that department.