Writing Update

One thing I try not to do in my posts is apologize for not posting because I have been busy.

I am all but done with Narrative Journalism, having finished my long-form piece on beer and brewing in Ithaca. Right now I am looking to get it published somewhere, so I should probably stop posting extracts online. But I can't help myself. Here's the lede paragraph:

Tell me, O muse, of the drink of many flavors,
That’s traveled far and wide and drunken drinkers of old.
Many are the men whose hearts it heartened and speeches it slurred.
Pale ale to pitch-black porter, lightest lager to richest imperial stout,
I seek beer, served in pub and bar and brewed in home and brewery.
Through my own folly I fail, fool, drinking without discerning,
As though Dionysus himself kept me from learning.
Of these things, fermenter of imagination, tell me,
In my search for perfect beer in snowy Ithaca.

That's what it's all about, in a barley husk.

Previous chapters:
Trappist Westvleteren
Beer, in a Barley Husk
Driving to the Ithaca Beer Company (Excised from the final draft)
Trivia at the Nameless Bar (Significantly cut down in the final draft)

I was talking with a friend yesterday about how well all the pieces are turning out. It is amazing how much improvement comes with four years of writing. And as much as I love to lambast The Ithacan - for its rowing coverage [except for the women's team, which has a great reporter covering them this year], accent section, and pretty much anything else that catches my eye - I encourage everyone to pick up an issue next week, which will have a special insert of select narrative pieces produced in Narrative Journalism Workshop. Perhaps even mine.

At this point this post has been mostly about me. Allow me to direct you, then, to "Homebrewed Beer," the blog of a man I watched brew as part of my Narrative piece. He posts a recipe and detailed analysis for every beer he brews. It's pretty awesome.

Besides an eight-page research paper for my Biblical Interpretation class, the last bit of writing for the semester is my English honors thesis on the memetic use of "apocalypse" in the environmentalism movement. I am taking a look at the way environmentalists write about this "environmental apocalypse" and what it says about their outlook. Right now I am working on a section tentatively titled "Polar bears and other native populations."

Essentially the second semester of my senior year has been dedicated to combining my passions: beer and journalism (and poetry), reading and communications and writing and religion. After writing about what everyone else wanted me to write about for years, I feel very fortunate to be able to write about what I want. Hat tips to professors Twomey and Schack. Actually, what I just wrote is not entirely fair. Big hat tip to professor Cohen for inspiring me to blog and thereby continue writing about what I want to write about. Thank you all.

And if you've made it this far, thank you for reading

Trappist Westvleteren

My search for the perfect pint continues. Excerpted below is a section from a piece I am working on for my narrative journalism class on beer and brewing in Ithaca. Previous excerpts can be found at the bottom of this post.

...Around this time I take my search for the perfect pint online out of sheer desperation. The ones I’ve tried are good, even great, but not quite what I am searching for. Countless online resources claim to have found the holy grail of beers, and the search can be quite similar to a wine connoisseur searching for an elusive bottle. I stumble upon the website of what is arguable the world’s finest beer, Trappist Westvleteren, brewed in small batches by Belgian monks in a centuries-old tradition. I decide to forego this beer upon reading the instructions for buying a crate:

1. Fly to Belgium and rent a car. You will need the car’s license plate number to be allowed into the abbey.

2. Check online for the monthly calendar giving the date and times reservations may be made to purchase a 24-bottle crate. In April, that comes to seven hours total: between 9:00 and 12:00 local time on April 8 to purchase three crates of Trappist Westvleteren 12 and between 10:00 and 12:00 on April 13 and 14 to purchase two crates of Trappist Westvleteren Blond.

3. Call up the abbey of Saint Sixtus of Westvleteren to make said reservation (+32 (0)70/21.00.45). You will wait in a long phone queue, and your call might not even be answered. You will need to specify the time you come and the license plate number of the car you will be driving. One order per car per telephone number (they check!) per month.

4. Drive to Donkerstraat 12, B -8640 Westvleteren. Beer may be picked up at a specified time Monday through Wednesday, 2:00 to 5:00 p.m.

5. Pay 38 euros for a 24-bottle crate of Westvleteren 12 (28 for the Blond) plus a 12-euro deposit. (About $68 total or $2.83 a beer. Not so bad if you don’t count the flight, car rental, and accommodations in Belgium).

6. Enjoy, or age in a cool cellar to perfection. And no reselling. Not that you would buy a few cases and resell the bottles at over 1,200 percent markup. Nor would you send it to your buddies through the mail. That’s illegal. And God just might be keeping track of his divine suds.

Is it worth it? For some, no doubt. But is it perfect?

Previous Excerpts:
Beer, in a Barley Husk
Driving to the Ithaca Beer Company (Excised from the final draft)
Trivia at the Nameless Bar (Significantly cut down in the final draft)

Beer, in a Barley Husk

What follows in an excerpt from my narrative journalism piece on brewing in Ithaca:

Beer is made of four ingredients: malted barley, hops, yeast, and water. The Reinheitsgebot, or German Beer Purity Law, was passed April 23, 1516 and forbid brewers from using any ingredients in beer other than barley, hops, and water. This was in the days before knowledge of yeast, when the muck at the bottom of fermentation vats would be scooped up and brewed into new batches. That muck was rich in yeast, the essential component of converting sugar to alcohol.

Today, beer is made with a number of other ingredients, including corn, rice and wheat. And though the Reinheitsgebot has been repealed (and never affected American brewers anyway) purists still stick to the four ingredients. The basics, however, are still the same. Let’s get to know them, shall we?

2-Row Pale Malt: Barley picked and submerged in water till it begins to sprout. Placed in a kiln, the barley becomes frozen in time, with a great supply of sugars that have converted from starches in order to feed the once-growing plant. But you have to know it.

Place your proboscis upon it. “Cereal grain” seems so anachronistically fitting – it smells like sweet cheerios – the grainy smell of a barn – not of hay, but of sweet barley – not the cardboardy smell of oatmeal. It’s an intense aroma, but a sweet one for sure, and almost musty. It is a tan color, more yellow brown than sunflower seeds, with a similar but rounder shape, like an unblossomed tulip, yonic in its curves and creases. Peel away its brittle hull, beneath, the hard casing cleaves in a way Georgia O’Keefe might very much appreciate.

Put one on your tongue, transfer it to your molars and bite down. There is a satisfying crunch between your teeth, and then the same taste as the smell. But dig deeper. Taste the nutty hull, and then focus on the sweet inside, sweet inside the way a coconut is, with a sort of meatiness to it – not all sweet, but sweet with something behind it. Bite it in half – it’s white on the inside like popcorn – like a popcorn kernel the casing gets lodged in your teeth the same annoying way. Roll the husk on your tongue and swallow.

Hops: I never actually got to see a hop vine laden with upside-down humulus lupulus reeking of flowers and citrus and earth, never peeled back the pinecone bracts of that bitter bud, cousin of cannabis. No yonic symbolism here, though the resins and oils for brewing strictly reside in the cones of female plants. And as the plants are perennial and therefore may be reproduced through cuttings, they stand rigidly in Amazonian ranks up poles and wire.

Ah, but I have only seen palletized hops, which have been milled and compressed into capsules green as grass and remind me in color and shape and texture of the PennMulch I spread the summer I worked landscaping. But smell and taste! Cascades pour forth the tang of grapefruit and flowers, Centennials waft lemon and bitter herb, Magnums dispatch sour earth and grass...