Summer Series 2023 #16

(Ed.-This is the last post for the week, ’cause work is sending me out of town!)

It is Reverend Nat’s last weekend. As you might suspect, that makes me feel a little pensive, and that pensiveness is on top of a great deal of pensiveness I’ve been feeling for weeks now.

This is the Nonna’s Fruitcake, which is a freakin dynamite beverage. Warm, with cinnamon and rum hints, the fruit qualities shining through, this is the kind of thing I’m really going to miss, even though I’m far from a cider connoisseur. That Portland should miss.

Knowing that something else will rise is, at the moment, smaller comfort than it should be. This taproom near my house opened in June, maybe? I barely got to get to know it. There’s still clearly unfinished, unused space where production was going to go. Hell, on my walk in, I passed by an Indian food truck that smelled AMAZING and my first thought was: well, fuck. I didn’t get a chance to have cider and Indian.

Which is a little silly but our thoughts are not always our own. As I understated, I’ve been pensive for a few weeks but the truth is, pensive has just recently replaced anxious for how I’ve been feeling.

The anxiety has been a genuine, bonegnawing brainweasel for about a month and it has been awful. Really. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone, because it is entirely fucking unreasonable. It is like dealing with a Terminator, except instead of being a mechanical force coming to kill you, it is an emotional force that exists to destabilize you and there is no reasoning with it, no weapon that can destroy it.

To hell with everything about that.

I’m fortunate: I have access to some amazing friends and supporters and finally, therapy. That’s right: started therapy this week. All my other tools for management failed. Bring in the professionals.

Am I OK? No; I just started therapy. It’s going to take a little time to get to where I want to go.

But do I feel better about things than I have in weeks? Yes I do. I feel like I am asserting what control I can over the work I do to make myself a better person to be around.

Am I still being struck by unreasonable bullshit from a 7 pound piece of meat we don’t entirely understand? Yes. That too.

Which, I really do have to be amused by, right? There’s so much I can say that I do understand about the world and its underpinnings, but when it comes to even groking my very self, I have to admit there is a current that is entirely beyond me.

Which isn’t an inept metaphor for the world, too. The more I get I know about things, the more I see the vast space called “Here Be Dragons”.

I’m glad I don’t have to face that space alone. Hope you don’t, either.

A Pause

I just liked this Block 15 Blocktoberfest Marzen ale.

And that’s all I want to say about it. Sometimes, it’s good to just stop and enjoy a thing.

Not every moment in life should be turned into work.

Common Ales: Sierra Nevada’s Oktoberfest

With a honey quality in the nose, the malts are strong with this one. After a few seconds, a herbal quality comes in, so the hops are not nothing here.

The middle is very clean, and the beer is very smooth. It’s bright, easy to drink and fairly crisp on the finish. That said; there’s a hoppy bitterness that arrives well after the fact.

It’s not unpleasant, and it doesn’t blow out the beverage I just had. But it does appear long enough to provide some contrast to the next drink I take-which has a nose full of sweeter qualities.

An interesting and pretty good beer, I say give it a go.

Summer Series 2023 #15

I came to the Lents Bottle & Tap shop to have a festbier, blog, and nom a sausage. So here we go.

This is a classic, the Hofbrau festbier, which is about as old school as you could get. It’s malty, it’s crisp, and it is practically designed to eat sausages with.

It’s a good day for a celebration and since an out of town friend is getting married today, I’m gonna celebrate.

So let’s talk about love, eh? Given the last few Monday’s worth of posts, I’m sure it’ll be fun!

I suppose that if there’s a crux to the paradox of human existence it is simply this: Love is going to break your heart.

And love is going to help you heal it.

But, and here’s the bitch of it, these are different kinds of love.

At this point any reasonable person should just be throwing their hands up, because, let’s face it, that is some fuckin’ nonsense. These things can look the same and feel the same, but the results are utterly different.

I wish I could easily tell someone-even myself-how to tell the difference. When I was younger, it was easy to get swept up in the volatility of things. The heady qualities that, as the Merovingian noted: resembles insanity.

And it’s easy to get gunshy, or mean. To bring out all the bad habits you may have picked up in order to circumvent being the hurt one. I did it. You probably did it.

Sometimes, I’m still doing it, much as I wish I wasn’t.

Yet we still look for love, in hopes that THIS time, we won’t get it wrong. Hell, I’m out there, trying to construct the best version of myself because of love.

“Love is patient, love is kind”-Corinthians 13:4

You know what patience does? Allows for people to grow. Kindness? Offers forgiveness when we aren’t our best selves.

Which is why when love is good we get to heal our wounds, square our shoulders and face the people who love us with the kind of pride that only comes from growth that is earned, work that has never been easy, but eventually shows us the worth.

Love is also slow. It demands that we pause long enough to consider ourselves, to consider the people we love. To change and grow accordingly: for them and for us. If there is any one real anchor on the breakneck pace of our lives, it is probably love.

And it should be.

Common Ales: Away Days-Dope Days

The Dope Days is a brown ale from Away Days and I do likes me a brown, so I have high hopes!

This has a great coffee scent, just a little sweet. Toffee is probably another good word for this beer.

And that is how the beer goes too: light, but with coffee and a little caramel going on. The roasted elements hold fast against anything too sweet, but there’s just enough chocolate to keep this from getting acrid.

Another winner from Away Days.

No Farms No Beer

As I noted Monday, it’s a good thing to be reminded, occasionally, about where the ingredients for beer comes from.

And why it’s important to protect that.

Summer Series 2023 #14

Out at the Topwire Hop Project at Crosby Hop Farms, I’m sipping on the Focus IPA from Fort George. It’s a fresh hop beer which comes with all the pluses and minuses: this beer is not as intense or overwhelming as IPAs can get. But it’s also more subtle and I have to work a little harder to pick up the resin and pine flavors in it.

It’s a more delicate beer than I’d expect, and there is still a little of the fresh cut grass quality that I like in a fresh hop beer. I’d rate this as enjoyable but maybe not first in class.

I like coming out here because being at the farm reminds me that beer comes from places, and involves more than just brewers. There’s an incredible ecosystem that allows me to sit here with a glass of ale and I think we’d all be well served to have experiences that remind us of that.

If there’s one real downside to visiting Topwire, it’s that I’m pretty sure they have the same ‘white people friendly AOR’ playlist on that they did the last two times I came out here-in 2021 and ’22. It is a small price to pay, having to hear Steve fucking Miller when I come out here, but it IS a price.

It’s funny, noting how this places seems to be stuck in the past (I swear there’s good music after Tom Petty released “Free Fallin’,”) because I’ve been wrestling with some old ghosts myself.

I talk a lot about being better or doing the work to become better and the thing is that…it inevitably comes at the cost of confronting the older versions of yourself and acknowledging: They don’t work anymore.

The real bitch? They don’t want to let you go. Or perhaps better to say: the pain they offer is familiar, and thus comfortable, even if it isn’t healthy to endure anymore. It’s why it’s so easy to go back to those ways: I may not love those things, but I at least understand them.

Understanding something is less frightening. So we end up fighting, because the thing I already know and learned is wondering why our input/output isn’t the same, when the part of me that is trying to be better is pointing to a pile of activities labeled “healthier behaviors”.

But, I don’t want to be them anymore. I still try to love them, as flawed and messed up at they are. Because I am still that person but I’m an alternate universe version, right? You can see the connection but there’s still a distinction.

As with most of these things, doing the work is what matters. The accomplishments are nice, but they are the reward for work that has made it all possible.

Maybe I don’t resent hearing Baba O’Riley as much as I think I do. I still hate Steve Miller.

Pale Sequel

So since I didn’t record my data for the Amber Cream ale, I figured I’d try another crack at this beer.

There’s a nice spicy quality in the nose, but what I’m pleased most about is that this beer  has a nice clarity (for my efforts) and a pillowy head of foam.

The finishing bitterness is pretty solid: maybe a little intense for a pale, or for how light the beer is. Fortunately, the higher level of effervescence helps keep the lingering qualities of bitterness off the tongue. So all in all I have to say I did pretty well!

Brew date: 6.11.23

Steeping grains
6 lb Gateway Pilsen
2 lb Vienna
1 lb Biscuit
.5 lb American Honey

Hops
@60 1oz Ekuanot, .25 oz Tettnang
@10 1 oz Ekuanot
@5 .75 oz Tettnang

Yeast: Imperial House

OG: 1.04

FG: 1.01

1 tsp Irish moss @10

Bottled Jun 17

ABV: 4.1%

Not Over Yet

Some of you may’ve heard that the oldest craft brewery in America closed this weekend.

For many reasons this sucks. Historically important place, and I think one of the first breweries to unionize, Anchor Steam has a relevant spot in the history of American brewing and keeping the California Common style alive.

So the workers are trying to save it!

Why not give ’em a pint’s worth?

Summer Series 2023 #13

It’s been too busy to get out to the pub this weekend, so I’m back on the porch for a week with a Hauptstandt Helles. It’s a collaboration brew between Freigeist Bierkultur/Bluejacket

And it leads off weird: there’s a sourish fruity note in the nose, the kind I would associate with red wine. The first sip gives me banana, and totally lacks an emphasis on malt, or the clean finish that I would expect from the style.

Sometimes even the pros take a header.

So I’m not drinking this. What I am thinking about is how comparison is the thief of joy.

Earlier this week a friend pointed out that I was often saying that ‘this will be better in the future’, and in their mind, everything was just fine now. So what was wrong with them that had me acting like things weren’t ok?

It took me about a day to really break it all down but the person I’m actually telling this to is me, about me. That feeling that I was never good enough but someday might be was just a beast to feed that always starved.

So if anything goes wrong-and sometimes they do-I am so certain to blame myself for far too much, because I just wasn’t good enough. Next time I’ll be better, I promise.

To my credit, I am attempting to be a better person. And good people take responsibility for their actions, and make amends in the best way they can.

However, I shouldn’t let that goal rob me from the moments when things are good. People can, and should, be allowed to rest, appreciate things that are good, and accept when those things are good.

No apologies needed. The future still needs working towards, but it always will. Sometimes you can just have a beer with friends and enjoy.