Wolaver's Oatmeal Stout

Brewery: Otter Creek Brewing, Middlebury, Vermont, USA

Wolaver’s Oatmeal Stout (organic), 5.90% ABV, 12oz (bottle)

Color: This stout forms a coffee, hazelnut colored head when poured, with a very dense distribution of bubbles. The beer itself shows seemingly imperturbable ebony, but a hint of red appears if observed through a light source.

Tasting Notes: The nose emits pleasant odors of coffee, earth and a hint of chocolate buried deep. The body is oh-so-smooth probably due to the addition of oats, almost silky and velvety. Moderately thick waves of roasted malt, cocoa and chocolate sweetness constitute the main flavors, while coffee bitterness and hop crispness take the back seat, more like a backdrop to the brighter flavors, as they gently interact with each other. The finish is clean, crisp with a residual chocolate sweetness and grain overtone. Quite pleasantly drinkable!

Comment: I think this is perhaps one of the best stouts for beer drinkers who are just beginning to venture into darker beers. Wolaver’s Oatmeal Stout destroys the bottled Guinness Draught in almost every aspect. It’s balanced, not too heavy-handed on the roasted, smoky flavors and coffee notes, while providing an incredibly mouth-feel and smoothness. Being slightly on the sweeter side of porters and stouts also helps, as it is not dry or loaded with extra hops. Personally, I would pass this baby if other bulkier porters or stouts are around, but there’s a laid-back, elegant characteristic about this stout that makes it so appealing…almost in a feminine kind of way. Yeah, I’m so politically incorrect, but these are my taste buds anyway.

12/20/08

Main St. Blues, Pt.3

My Korean ex-girlfriend Kim (I think her last name was Kim too, so it’s uber-Korean) – who acquired an MBA here years ago – once said: living in Seoul was an interesting Hell; living in America is a boring Heaven. She dated me, a flushed-out-townie-white-boy since it was probably a rare source of amusement for her in this desolate purgatory-heaven. Conversely, I initially found her very fascinating. But I don’t know precisely why we split; it’s either because I thought this country was definitely no heaven, a boring hell or I couldn’t stand the smell of Kimchi. At first the scent on her was faint. But it grew stronger and stronger as she closed toward the completion of her degree, and she prepared the dish more frequently when I went to her apartment. Deliberately or perhaps absent-mindedly, she chewed the spicy bok-choy loudly in front of me every meal: crounchcrounchcrounch. By that point nothing she did mattered to me, though that’s different from saying she didn’t matter at all to me. Sometimes she would pause and stare at me, straight; as if her caricatured actions were attempts to catch my attention. But she never admitted anything or allowed room for interpretation, and said other absurd things instead.
“…Want some more rice?” She asked. Knowing I was only halfway through the bowl.
“Later.” I clumsily picked up some Kimchi with my chopsticks and stirred it into my bowl. Stirring lightly, stirring.
“More seaweed soup?” She was persistent.
“I’d like a raw egg.”
I cracked open the egg and let it slip into my bowl, stirring, stirring until red, white and yellow converged. Absent-mindedly, I let my chopsticks stand upright in the mass of food.

She ate on silently. I ordered a double-pepperoni pizza after I drove home. I wasn’t even hungry, and at most could only swallow a piece of pizza or two. It became a routine after I dined at Kim’s every week. To this day, I have no understanding over this bizarre behavior.
During her first years here she was relatively receptive towards American fare, but by the time I saw tiny red dots of pepper powder emerge from her face, she ceased to dine outside, not at Park’s, our local Korean restaurant, nor at the Grouch’s or any other Asian restaurant. During our intimately detached moments, when I touched her face, my fingers burned, blistered. When I kissed her, my tongue and lips swelled. Southampton can do odd things to you, doubtlessly, and transforming one’s physical composition is just one of the many effects. Then it all naturally came to an end. Without expressing a thread of desire to stay or work in this boring heaven, I quietly helped her pack, drove her to the airport and said farewell. At that point I couldn’t even hug her, let alone kiss – she would set me on fire. No regrets, no sadness, no feelings of relief, no lingering longings – it was a parting in its purest form. She had seemed so alien, so inert and unknowable to me by then. So lifeless she was to me as I was to her, perhaps: all the more emphasizing the life burgeoning in the Sodomizers. That very day, I drove back to our rented practice space above a derelict downtown commerce center. No regrets.

This is how we start a session. Sound check, one, two: Crimson, and Clover, Over, and Over…I sang, into my microphone for backup vocals. My Fender Telecaster lay comfortably in my lap, as always. It’s time to give the new Maxon OD808 overdrive effects pedal a field test. Stomp. Pedal on.

Dun-dun-dUN-dUn-DUN! The C chord sounded warm, bright and aggressive. CTSUN! CTSUN CTSUUUUUUN! The power chord E5 was dark yet not too brooding for my liking. Dwan-da-da-da-Dwan-da-da-da-Dwan-da-da-da-do-do-dom wheeee~~~eeee! Cheesy blues picking and pitch harmonics responded finely too. I start to goof around, while
Gavin repeatedly plucks the low E on his Ibanez bass.
Bom-
bom-
bom-
bom.

Bom-
bom-
bom-
bom.

Bom-
bom
Boooooom.

That elegiac riff from a Tool song was his favorite warm-up passage. So quiet, yet violently rhythmic. Bom-bom, bu-bom bo-bum bo-bum bo bo bo bo, Bom-bom, bu-bom bo-bum bo-bum bo bo bo bo. This menacing groove greatly contrasted with Benson’s hyperactive drumming:

Dun-talala-dun-talala,
ta don-dom-dum-dem-demdemdem-bobobobobo ta shing!
Dun tse tat-se, dun dun tat-se, dun-tse tat-dun dun dun tat-se (shing)
dun-tse tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-talalat-tat tsing!
Sharp as always, Benson’s skin-bashing skills: neither the most artful nor forceful, his drumming was sensitive, like a whetted knife, unpleasantly unhinging, quirky.

The chaos always seizes when Jill opens her mouth, it all gets sucked into that bottomless hole, then regurgitated from a queen’s mandibles – yes, the fleeting moment of transcendence, that made me feel just being, not being-something, Being. On solid ground yet in the skies simultaneously. Nothing circumspect nor reckless, neither rooted nor rootless, just being in this tumultuous, ever-flowing physical solidity that is downtown Southampton. Here was a valley covered by trees and grass thousands of years ago, bursting with wildlife and clear springs, yet I am here. I will be a grain of sand in its history, yet I’ll always be here, even if I’m gone.

She closes her mouth.

Newcastle Brown Ale

Brewery: Newcastle Federation Breweries LTD, Dunston, England (UK)

Newcastle Brown Ale (bottled import), 4.7% ABV, 12oz

Color: The ale forms a thin, bubbly head after poured and dissipates swiftly. The color is a handsome dark brown, reminiscent of ice tea or cola diluted with ice (after it melts, of course).

Tasting Notes: The nose is crisp, hinting subtly at notes of malt, hops with a metallic tinge; it is rather nondescript for an ale known for its cult-ish following (I think Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones declared it his favorite beer, and Keith Moon of The Who loves it too). What it lacks in the nose, the “dog” compensates with smoothness – the feel on the palate is wonderful – the body is roughly medium but quite creamy. On to the flavors: hmm? What flavors? This puppy doesn’t run like a beagle, it fawns to you like a Maltese; only some malt, an earthy, yeasty (some reviewers call it “skunky”) hop taste presents itself. The finish is perhaps the most off-putting aspect it bears upon me. There is an intensely artificial, sugary aftertaste of caramel that lingers on the tongue. According to the website Beer Advocate, the fine chaps at the brewery inject corn grits and liquid sugar (syrup) into this dog. Eww.

Comment: In retrospect, Newcastle Brown Ale is honestly one of the first beers I came to appreciate (most likely due to its lack of bitterness and smoothness). I first tried it in the summer of 2006, in Boston when I was going to summer school at a rather nefarious university and subletted a room from my old-time buddy Kevin. I would drink it with my meals – and guess what, it tasted fabulous. However, it’s always fascinating to look back upon early infatuations once those taste buds become more nuanced and refined. You also tend to see things in a radically different light. This beer, if I ever happen to stumble upon it in the future, shall always remind me of Kevin – of 2006 – who is about to get married this coming December. His circumstances of the marriage may not be the most ideal, but I wish him the best nevertheless. Cheers. (gulps beer) That saccharine residue just won’t go away, huh.

11/29/08

Main St. Blues, Pt.2

Welcome to Main St. U, S and fucking A, just another small town in another state with the exact same name as an-other. There’s the same old McDonalds, Burger King, KFC and Shell, with few pedestrians and plenty of Jeeps and SUVs – it’s quiet and broad, yet the serenity on Main St. is terse, tense, pumped full of tension, flowing in staccato. Exact same happenings, they would also argue, those city dwellers. But for me it’s unrepeatable, it’s all too real – like when you stare into the mirror and the brutal reflection disperses any delusion you harbored about yourself. Ugh, not another patch of acne, another squishy pimple. We have plenty of pimples on the surface of Southampton: dilapidated, crumbling houses interspersed with solid brick ones, sometimes only a street away, staring each other down the eye. Nice chimney smoke rises from the million-dollar homes during winter season, while funky smoke emanates from the shoddy buildings all-year-long. If I was Santa, I’d be heading into the latter to puff the magic dragon and shoot up “sugar” instead of getting milk and cookies on Christmas Eve. But life’s too real and I’m too old to believe in Santa, let alone become him. It’s all too real – a statement that could go multiple ways. The nose-tickling, burnt-rubber like sizzling asphalt combined with flame-boiled burger scents wafting on a moist, searing summer day is too real. Sitting in front of his apartment, the man chilling on the sidewalks with a can of Bud Lite and no job is too real; the man that walks and mutters unintelligible whachulookinatjaysuschristaintyouknowtheendisnighthosemothafockasneverlisten curses or blessings or whatever is too real. Pushed around and rustled by the wind, cracking, un-raked autumn leaves dancing – tornado-like – in the streets is too real. Almost surreal. But not unreal. So are the random acts of violence near the strip of Main St. between Birch and Charles: an old man stabbed by a gang of middle-school brats in front of supermarkets, or townies beating up college kids over a disagreement related to the Patriots and the Giants. Gushing rigorously, sucking warmth and moisture, the malicious winter snow, the bearer of static-electricity is too real. So is its companion, the winter air by 2:00 AM, that thin, razor like air so sharp, you can taste it on your tongue while it cuts your nostrils, simultaneously invigorating and enfeebling. Fast-forward to 2 past midnight in February, and you open the window – whoooogh, whoooogh goes the wind– can you taste it now? Take. A. Deep. Breath. Now breathe out, quietly, gently: what comes out from that whisper?

(The Southern Tier Sodomizers was unreal.)

Neither Gavin, Jill nor Benson were unreal. They were, and are, little ants of the crumbling hive that is Southampton, each marked as workers by their pheromones. I am no exception: we are too real, too fragile, too insignificant. Semi-condemned to a life of Sisyphean labor so the princes and princesses may fuck-in-flight, the glide of their lives, apparently, we can only watch from the ground as their ecstasy takes them further up, defying gravity until they reach a climatic explosion – A singularity. A black hole comes into being. But when the four of us gathered to make music, there was something in the sound, like a chemical signal, that triggered Jill’s transformation into a queen from a worker. Whether the duration was 1/1000th of a second or 60 minutes, the maximum length of our sets, it didn’t matter. Metamorphosis occurred. Well, what about the other two, you say? Gavin, Benson and I were high-school classmates, a good-for-nothing gang of three. Head-banging in the cafeteria to air guitars while spilling people’s food trays. Throwing tater tots at the principle’s office window. Smoking into the bathroom vents. Stealing the school’s fancy-schmancy guitar amplifier for the Jazz band – they had a 30 Watt Marshall, not a weapon of mass destruction like the JCM heads & stacks, but something for rock, not jazz, nonetheless. It was a brilliant purchase by clueless music teachers, who were out of touch with the real world beyond school gates. High-school music teachers do seem to be the most stuck-up, self-restrained, tense bunch of musicians: their vigor and passion, if there were any, had long been doused and domesticated. Oh, peeing on Mr. Hermann’s trombone case was also a blast. That was Southampton High School. While I had the fortune (or misfortune) to attend HIGH-er education, the two hustled on in life. Benson was a car mechanic, quirky, emotional and uptight, while Gavin, a pothead with the occasional penchant for harder drugs, hauled ass at Wendy’s. The three of us met her – ah, if my memory serves – here, in The Selmer, the beginning of the end of the beginning of all, in my senior year of college. Our gang of three was good at nothing, not life, not school, not music – we were all fairly skilled instrumentalists and individually adept, but 1+1+1 doesn’t add up to three, it regresses into negative infinity. The desirable connection needed lubrication, magic, or an aphrodisiac. We drowned our frustration over pints of Yuengling: no, not pints, but kegs. Another groundhog week, another Selmer night; that night, when we were almost done with our kegs of misery, we heard her sing – in drunken elation, Bacchus fueling Athena. O hail the Olympian heathen gods. Maybe not the hypersexual father that is Zeus, though. Some perverted deity he is, having a reverse zoophilic fantasy and the power to make it come true, but that’s irrelevant now; Jill’s voice comes crashing through, that’s relevant. Loaded on Jack Daniel’s, her preferred source of inebriation, her melody vibrating through the smelly, crowded bar, drowning out the silly party rap:

WHO LET THE DOGS OUT? WHOOT? WHOOT? WHOOT? And so it is, WHO LET just like you said THE DOGS OUT it would be…WHO? The shorter story, WHO? No love WHO? No glory…No hero in her skies! I can’t take my eyes off you. I can’t take my eye-------------s off-you. I can’t take my eyes off you

I can’t take my eyes off you…this came from Jill, another uncharacteristic worker, who was the perfectly average girl walking down the streets of Southampton, never warranting another look or a whistle. When her rendition of Damien Rice punctured my ear drums, I hurried into the bathroom, convulsed and puked at least five minutes straight. All that Yuengling, all the regrets, they had to leave my system if we were to propose a musical conjugation, a new start. Gavin and Benson apparently didn’t wait for me to complete my esophagus-immolating catharsis, and asked her right away, while I sprawled myself over the toilet. She agreed instantaneously. The Sodomizers were born in that very instant. It didn’t mean anything to the quantum universe, but it was Our Big Bang, a privatized black hole, singularity occurred. If I remember correctly, Jill had scraggy dirty blonde hair and perennially under-slept eyes. She wore cheap, washed-out jeans and black nail polish; nothing special really, compared to my Ex. The Sodomizers started kicking into full throttle around the time I broke up with her.

Bowmore 12yo

Distillery: Bowmore, Islay, Scotland

Bowmore 12yo, OB +/- 2005, 43 %, 750ml

Alright, ladies and gentlemen, let us welcome another Islay legend, this time in particular the old bottling of the Bowmore 12yo a.k.a. "soapy/perfumy" malt. Deriders of this bottling have labeled the eccentric soap-like aromas "French whore perfume", or "sulphuric residue", but I personally found it quite interesting. Not the most conspicuous of the Islay distilleries, but one whose flavors are finely balanced between Northern Islay (Bunnahabhain, Bruichladdich, Caol Ila) and Southern Islay (Laphroaig, Ardbeg, Lagavulin). I wonder how the new distillery, Kilchoman, will upset this geography of palates?

Color: 深金/橙褐色，一看便知有待過雪莉桶。
Nose: 前段是尖銳的泥煤與海風，中段則有清淡的水梨香和惡名昭彰的肥皂味，後段是不算厚重、有些薄的雪莉氣味。
Body: 酒體中厚，口感溫和。
Palate: 甫入口，滿滿的橙皮味溢出，緊接著是有些嗆鼻的肥皂味。與肥皂分不開的海藻與之交纏著，然後如Nose所聞，尖銳的泥煤往舌根襲去。若缺乏雪莉甜和黑巧克力般的苦平衡，這小子嘗起來應該就只是瓶藥水。
Finish: 吞下之後，香皂和泥煤在鼻梢上揮之不去，舌上略感溫麻，有點像Talisker但威力遠遠不及。


1/22/08

Main St. Blues, Pt.1

A short story of mine completed recently.

Main St. Blues

The violence in this town can be hysterically absurd at times. Like right now, when Benson’s fist comes flying at me in slow motion – vuuuuup – and the scent of beer from the mouth tries to blot out whatever the nose is picking up –







Crack.







It’s surely not the end of my world. Perhaps it’s the beginning, damn right, of a momentous awakening of the beast we all try to cage. Shuddering, my nose, squinting, broke, squirting a warm flow of red mixed with hops, I’m laughing, cracking up involuntarily while pinching my nose hard, as if that’ll stop the bleeding. No time deferred, something signals to the beast as my right arm swings out mechanically – with joy, at Benson’s small, rectangular French fry of a nose. Here goes another night at the Selmer’s into the shithole, and a friendship possibly. But at this moment I don’t care. My oversized fist collides with that French f-f-fry glurk.

Some say it’s just small town drama. Nothing compared to the metropolitan anxiety, glamour and grotesque that unfolds there constantly. Deep down I know it’s not. It’s a center of gravity, a singular compression of blackness, sucking you down, down, down; though I won’t deny that it’s a vicariously lived TV show. Beverley Hills 2000 formatted to Southampton, Sex and The City acted out with Abercrombie and Obesity instead of Gucci, Prada and Barbie like physique. Same industrialized, flat, monolithic shopping mall that serves as the teenage Mecca – Gamestop, Hot Topic, Sears, and oh, Macy’s is for the elderly. No one goes downtown because it’s a pretty skeleton, deserted by the gods of capitalism, rusting in its nostalgia, crawling with down-trodden flesh-bags we call homo sapiens. Some business owners stay there to duke out their perseverance, hoping to “restore the pride”, as written on the city pamphlet for tourists. For every wage-slaving, back-breaking baby boomer, there’s a drug dealer born in the post-Vietnam generation operating in a run-down house with shoes tied to the streetlights.

Oh, and don’t forget the small Chinese restaurants with permutations of a vocabulary pool for their names – Red Dragon, China Magic, Kung-Food, it’s the same difference, like the General Tso’s Chicken they serve, those mutated McNuggets drenched in sweet n’ sour sauce. I’m old enough to remember the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and the green radioactive goo they sold with the toys; you know, the ICRT gel that transformed them into humanoids? Dip some deep-fried, gluten-wrapped chicken in that and you get General Tso’s. It’s all-American food. And I’m lovin’ it. What’s better than the food are the clerks. They’re likely to be gloomy women in their late twenties to early to mid-thirties – always sporting a weary look, loudly yelling in Mandarin or Cantonese or Thai or whatever to the chefs in the kitchen. From their accented English, they’re probably immigrants (legal or not) that arrived recently. Uprooted, longing for a distant home despite all the hardships that drove them here, where the sole asset lies in relative economic stability – something constantly put on knife’s edge. If you’re lucky, when you dine at these joints, you’ll be greeted at the counter by someone trying so hard to smile, trying desperately to combat a gnarling homesickness, material lacks and the insecurity of being in a nation with a long history of racism that it breaks the pumping thing called a heart, given how sensitive you are. Too bad, the lady at the place I frequent is the grumpiest thing alive: put her in a trash can and you have the Grouch in Sesame St. What I literally thrown into the trash once were the dumplings (or were they pot-stickers?) they made – unapologetic nuclear waste. Good thing it happened at home, otherwise the Grouch would’ve screamed at me.

Anchor Steam Beer

Brewery: Anchor Brewing Company, San Francisco CA

Anchor Steam Beer, 4.9% ABV, 12 oz

Color: The beer is highly carbonated, and forms a thick, bubbly head if poured quickly (properly). The color is a solid amber/orange, akin to ice tea, much darker than an average lager.

Tasting Notes: Nose emits a pleasant string of apples, malt and hops, intertwining tightly to form a coherent, inviting yet somewhat demure impression. Body is medium to full, simultaneously smooth yet volatile and crisp. On the palate, apple is upfront in the nose, while a slightly metallic coolness accompanies the malt & biscuit flavors. There is an instant where these flavors combine to show outdoorsy roughness – a fleeting moment of retrospection – into the olden, adventurous days of the Frontier where “steam beer” was brewed (Jack London, anybody?). The beer finishes with gentle citrus notes and slight hop bitterness. The balance is truly quite astounding. The sweet and the bitter waltz each other into perfect harmony.

Comment: A legendary microbrew product, Anchor steam won the praise of my visiting aunt and uncle, whose son is living and working in Germany (Binghamton’s scarce choice in activities didn’t seem to affect them much). It is perhaps the most accessible, well-rounded yet flavor-packed beer I’ve come upon so far; its tight combination of flavors and its roundness makes it highly memorable. Again, I write these words reminiscing the past week I had, not without connotations of loneliness. My aunt is a great cook – she made me a good amount of comfort food such as dumplings, rice noodles and meatballs, all which I am not knowledgeable in cooking. My uncle (her husband) is of Sichuan descent, a hearty, somewhat fiery yet amiable man, who prefers a spoonful of hot sauce to anything he eats (and he eats quite…loud). Both of them add up to an astounding amount of noise and warmth in this spacey, cold room, which only two days after their departure, I dearly miss already. Whenever I drink an Anchor Steam again, either from bottle or tap, their days spent here are surely to arise from the recesses of my mind.

10/20/08