beers of conviction

Well I used to run from the past
But the world got to spinnin’ so fast
I run from the future now
I run as fast as I can
Tryin’ to be a simple man
I just want to slow down.

               – Chris Knight

Best recording of 2008? I spoke too soon.

When Sean Lilly Wilson asked for a few sentences for the Fullstream Brewery newsletter about the best “album” we purchased in 2008 I took the request seriously. Didn’t want to forget something because our long journey has experiences running together. So I re-listened to my finalists — James McMurtry, Billy Bragg, B.B. King, Randy Newman, Mary Gauthier and company.

What I found was a lot of recordings that I’ll listen to forever, dang good, but not quite great. So I picked “Another Country” from Tift Merritt, in part because her songwriting just keeps getting better and because, by a bit of luck in July, we caught a wonderful free concert in Burlington, Vermont. Or maybe just because she is from North Carolina and Fullstream is in North Carolina. A karma thing.

Not until the day after Christmas did I notice Chris Knight had released “Heart of Stone” a few days before we departed for Germany. Easy given the amount of press coverage he doesn’t receive, although his Amazon sales prove he’s got a bit of a following.

I’ve been listening to it a lot since. If you must drink at least two full servings (six is a better idea) of a beer before you evaluate it then you gotta listen to an album ten or a hundred times. Do the easy-to-listen-to-lyrics get cloying? Do you find something new and rewarding (kind of like the stuff in the background of a Simpson’s episode) each time, maybe as simple as the way he delivers a phrase?

This recording (it’s not an album or a CD; I bought a download) keeps getting better. Knight writes haunting lyrics — usually grim and sometimes violent &#151 about less-than-perfect lives. The music is dense whether acoustic (as the “Basement Tapes”) or with a rocking band in this recording. He’s a wonderful story teller, as opposed to telling stories about wonderful lives. Here’s an example from “Hell Ain’t Half Full”:

Get up in the morning
Fall out of bed
Go down to the basement
Cook up a little meth
All the young folks love it
Coming back for more
Ain’t it good to be working
Got your foot in the door

You’ve got to buy the recording to get the full story, and then maybe the five that came before it to begin understand what life lessons Knight has to offer. He’s a working guy from the blue collar town of Slaughters, Kentucky. You figure he might be a beer drinker, one of us, but even if he isn’t there’s a comparison to be made. Nashville and industrially produced beers on one side of the ledger, artists liked Chris Knight and the beers we drink on the other.

Chris Knight writes and sings songs of conviction.

Compared to Anheuser-Busch, Budejovický Budvar in the Czech Republic — the other producer of Budweiser — is small. But there’s small, and there’s small.

Budvar brews more than a million hectoliters a year and soon will be able to make 1.3 million. I wouldn’t necessarily call that small. Here’s about a minute of video shot in the bottling hall, which also isn’t small. I used our pocket camera to record the video, so excuse the production quality. (If you click on over to YouTube to watch it, then hit “watch in high quality” it’s a little better.)

In contrast, Pilsner Urquell is so big that I’m not sure how you’d try to capture the bottling plant with a video. Then there is Berliner-Kindl-Schultheiss in Berlin, which brews 1.6 million hectos a year. The brewery has two plants within one hall, each aiming to package 50,000 bottles an hour. There’s a large display at each end which counts just how fast the line is running. The digital display will read 49,893 one second, 49,896 the next, then 49,894.

That’s a lot of beer.

Speaking of lists, your can read Beer Advocate magazine’s Planet Earth Top 25s at the Stone Brewing website.

I’m a little surprised that 23 of the All-Time Top Breweries are American. And that 22 of the top 25 Top Beer Bars are in the United States.

I’m a little surprised that I’ve had all 25 of the All-Time Top Beers (“New beers comes and go. These are the ones that stuck around.”), and I almost feel a sense of relief that only 17 of them are from North America. But I’m hardly shocked that 24 of the 25 are 6% abv or stronger, most much stronger (the average of the 24 is 8.5% abv).

OK, “a little surprised” might not be the best choice of words. Let’s try “appalled by such American arrogance.”

Question: What was my first American-brewed beer in more than three months?

Why not start with an 11% abv beer brewed with honey and cherries? What could be more American? When I saw it at Oak Tree Liquors in South Plainfield, N.J., a store definitely worth the drive, I knew it would be the one. We last had Mad Elf two years ago and quite liked it. A little boozy, but layers of flavor. Walked out of the store with more beer than we needed, but we may be back in a few days because Dave Hoffman of Climax is supposed to be delivering growlers of his legendary doppelbock.

And a second answer: Rosé de Gambrinus.

Question: What was our last beer in Germany (and Europe)?

It was spectacular. We finished with the Cantillon beer because when we were at the brewery in mid-September it was only recently bottled and they suggested we wait as long as we could before opening. Couldn’t do any better than the night before we flew home.

We enjoyed a more proper German sendoff the day before in Nurnberg during a very nice meal at Hütt’n (located a couple of hundred of meters from the Christmas Market and found with the help of Ron Pattinson’s city guide). They’ve got a long list of Franconian beers on the menu.

Daria and I finished (we were sharing) with Fischer Rauch, a little buttery but good with spicy Nurnberger goulash, and Gutmann Weizenbock, a dangerous 7.2% winter specialty. By a bit of chance, Gutmann was also my first weizen of the trip (September in Rothenberg), in this case the weizen hell, a delightful balance between fruit and clove. Had never heard of the brewery, but two impressive beers.

This is something I’ll start thinking about in a few days when we get on a plane to fly home. Right now I’m focused on what my next Franconian beer will be.

How am I ever ever going to get caught up on new beers and drink my favorite holiday beers? I’m not, particularly since we’ll still be “limiting” ourselves to drinking regional beers. So I think I’ll start with a simpler question: What should my first local beer be?

I know it will be a seasonal release, and I wouldn’t be surprised it its hoppy. It will be from the mid-Atlantic states, because we’ll be in New Jersey, where there are plenty of stores with excellent bottles choices (though not nearly as many great bars).

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