What colour do you think that this beer is, I ask a friend and fellow
judge at the Dutch Beer Challenge (to give it some context we are are at Brouwerij Noordt in Rotterdam and drinking its Bok). I suggest the colour is
mahogany brown, but he says it reminds him of the teak coloured deck of a
sailing ship, which is perhaps an apt description, as the river that has made
Rotterdam is only a street or so away. And then I think of the connection with
the open sea — the beer is cold, 5˚C perhaps, a watch bundled up and shivering on the deck in
the Atlantic, and then I think of the great steel ships abed in the harbour, the ships I’d seen earlier in the day,
standing at anchor, their hulls a story of the travels that had taken them about the world.
Then I smell the beer, the chocolate and coffee on the nose of the Bok, which
suggests to me the emotional cargoes of Europe brought to the port, a history
of several centuries brought together in a glass. Then there is the alcohol,
7%, alcohol that combustible constant of civilisation. The beer is also crisp
and cold — a night spent on deck, keeping watch, crossing the Atlantic, and
then there is more coffee and chocolate, followed by a brisk carbonation and
finally a quick finish, as if this beer suddenly decided it wanted the BlueRiband. The tales that beers do tell.
