Alright, alright - I almost
always drink beer. But man cannot live
on liquid bread alone, & this time of year especially finds me venturing to
other pastures. Mine is not primarily a
beer family, & in visiting the houses of kin over the holidays, if I don’t
bring the good beer, it usually isn’t there.
Which is perfectly alright – I’m not too insistent, & it gives me a
chance to veer off my well-beaten path.
My mother’s side of the family is full of wine drinkers, my dad’s is
more spirit- & cocktail-centered, & my in-laws are pretty much a grab
bag of whatever. And holidays or no,
sometimes I just get burnt out on beer (I know, perish the thought), or don’t
want the bloat, or whatever.
Even when venturing out of my comfort zone, I have found that my appreciation for
other kinds of drinks is enhanced if I can connect the dots back to my beloved
home base. Beer offers such a broad plurality of tastes, it’s easy to find
bridges to other flavor profiles that might not seem glaringly obvious. Or, if there’s not a bridge, I can at least
see across the chasm & wave to the other side. I don’t claim to have much knowledge about
these beverage families, but here are a few of my favorite beer alternatives
(“Malternatives”? Uh, maybe not.) &
their beer-adjacent qualities:
Bourbon. Duh.
Whiskey is distilled beer,
& of the whiskey varieties, I find bourbon has the strongest family
resemblance. The heady, dense sweetness,
with notes of vanilla, coconut, cinnamon, oak, honey – it’s no wonder that the
wood-aging trend started with bourbon barrels.
Sure, oak barrels had been used to house beer for years, but as far as
the recent practice of filling second-use spirit barrels intentionally to
impart flavors, bourbon fits like a glove.
Drinking bourbon barrel stouts, barleywines, & Scotch ales (arguably
the best partner, in my opinion), paved the way for my appreciation of this
fine American liquor, a taste my dad was very happy to see me acquire.
Islay Scotch. Scotch puts hair on your chest. That smoky, grainy taste combined with a
stiff alcohol will show you what you’re made of. Among the Scotch varieties, known for their
signature smoky character, the Islay single malts hold a special place, the
most peaty, briny, complex, & challenging among them. I remember my first Laphroaig, thinking it
resembled a glass of housefire, AFTER the hose trucks had put it out – smoky,
musty, organic, salty, astringent, funky stuff that burned & made me come back
for more. It evoked like no other drink
I’d had, like an abstract painting in a tumbler. Scotch holds an obvious kinship to rauchbier,
but I liken the Islays to traditional lambic or other funky, wild ales, not so
much in the flavor itself (there’s no sour to be had), but for its
unpredictability & straight up weirdness.
Big, dry red
wines. I’m going to sound like a
total plebe because I know next-to-nothing about wine – I can’t even keep the names
straight. But if someone offers me a
pour, I go for the tannic, oaky reds, the more of both the better. The acidity, the dryness, the sharp fruit
flavor – you can easily connect the dots to Flanders reds & dry kriek
lambics. As more sour beers are finding
incubators in used wine barrels, more vinous genes are intersecting with the
world of beer. The first time I had
Russian River’s Consecration, you could’ve convinced me it was a wine. I also think there’s some parallel between
the intense reds of California & the power of west coast hop bombs.
Port. Okay, so there’s one style of wine I know by
name. Believe it or not, we do get a
good many oenophiles at the bar, & while talking once with a wine-loving
young lady, I mentioned that my wine knowledge is practically nil, with the
exception of port. “That makes sense”,
she replied, “It’s the wine that’s most like beer.” And she was right. Sweet but deep without being cloying, with
notes of leather, a little meaty, even, a tawny port can overlap plenty with a
Belgian quadruple, or an English barleywine.
When beers age, natural, subtle oxidation can turn them port-like &
smooth. A great sipper for dessert.
Ginger ale. Somewhat on the back of the craft brewing
surge, there are some cool artisanal sodas being made nowadays. When my wife got pregnant with our first, I
vowed in solidarity to abstain from drinking…in her presence. While this gave me a hell of a jones, it also
presented the opportunity to check out some craft soft drinks. I’ve always liked ginger ale (ginger’s kind
of a weakness of mine), & going through the selections at some of the
better grocers around opened me up even more to the variety & nuance in
this classic pop. I saw a parallel to
pale ales & IPAs in their use of hops, squeezing so many different flavors
out of a versatile seasoning – some were drier, or spicier, or sweeter, or
sharper, or bitterer than others.
Speaking to the craft beer connection, my favorite – Thomas Kemper,
honey-like with a touch of smoke – used to be owned by Pyramid Brewing.
Coffee. People are serious about coffee. I’m not one of them. I’m just as happy with the cheap stuff, I use
cream & sugar, & the nuances of Sumatran vs. Ethiopian vs. Kona or
whatever are lost on me. I came to
appreciate the flavor through dark beer.
Cutting my teeth on Guinness (including for breakfast, on occasion), it
was not a far leap to come around to dark roast & the earthy, friendly
bitterness it imparts. Coffee finds a
natural home in porters & stouts, but can play a really interesting role in
an amber (like Peak Organic’s), or other anomalous style (like the black coffee
saison we had at last month’s Top Shelf Thursday). I’d like to work up to just tasting it black,
to really get all the subtleties, but have a ways to go. It’s comforting.
Surprise – this is getting long! There are plenty of other neighboring
territories of libation whose surface I’ve just barely scratched. Mead & cider seem to play sister to beer
a lot, though their forms seem much closer to wine. Sake is fascinating, though I’ve yet to try
one that didn’t taste like bile to my neophyte palate. The idea of blending herbs & teas seems
to hold vast potential (even hop tea).
And there are many more craft distillers creating all breeds of
inventive liqueurs & spirits these days, & mixologists using all sorts
of cool ingredients to build some far-out cocktails. So much creativity going down, it’s hard not
to peek over the fence once in a while.
