This was brewed in early December after a series of conversations I had had with Jon Comer at Arbor; it was also inspired by a review in Beer Advocate of a beer called Hoponious Union. I kinda liked the idea of merging the clean canvas of colour that lagering brings to the bruising, one night stand of pungency that hops can come up with. So this was my idea but Arbor facilitated it and this is the result.
[clears throat, looks at the audience, acknowledges the pianist]
A burnished,
well-polished, buffed-up, sleepy-eyed chestnut in colour, the sort of wine-dark
sea colour that is suggestive in the northern European mind of chestnuts
roasting by the fire in the middle of winter; the nose is as shy as a young
child in a family snap, hiding but still wanting to be seen. Nose is almost
like what you would imagine an orange pie to smell like; an orange liqueur
perhaps; the straitened lace of toasted grain; the licentiousness of alcohol. A
moth might want to drink this, but it would be wrong to offer it to a moth, but
on the other hand how to bother this moth with a description? Here goes. The
soft brushed skin of ripe peach, the sweetness of the malt bill, the luscious,
lubricious touch of citrus on the tongue before it all tumbles down a dry,
dusty, sweetened ravine of a finish, the sort of gulch, ravine, whatever, you
will have seen in a Tarantino movie. It’s a bock in the sense that it’s sweet
and alcoholic; it’s been lagered so it’s released from the pain of estery
fruitiness so it’s a bock; but on the other hand the hops of which there are
many kick the beer into a newer sensory territory. Hey it’s an India Pale Bock.
Styles are like tomorrow’s parties at which you never intend to turn up.
