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A recent Saturday edition of The Toronto Star newspaper contained a bar story of a different sort. Inspired by a gentleman whose goal is to log visits to 1,000 taverns, bars, pubs and other assorted places of refreshment before the end of 2005, and chronicle it all at thousandbars. blogspot.com, a reporter named Raju Mudhar decided to pay a call on 25 such establishments in a single work week. A noble quest, to be sure, and one that I’m sure I’ve unwittingly done myself in more than a couple of places. But since Mudhar makes it clear from the outset that his focus was to be more on the bars than the beverages, and more on his endurance than the bars, I wasn’t expecting any compelling insight to emerge from the article.
Still, he does name one of the city’s premier beer destinations, Smokeless Joe’s, as among his favorite bars, and accompanies the story with a colorful photo taken at beerbistro, the beer cuisine restaurant and bar I co-own. So there’s hope, I think. Then I come to his Tuesday report.
In describing beerbistro, Mudhar says his first impression is that it’s "a little highbrow in its appreciation of that lowbrow drink, beer." He qualifies the statement later on by saying that the restaurant "pulls it off well." But it’s not because of beerbistro that I’m offended. What I want to defend is that supposedly "lowbrow" drink, beer.
Here, once again, we see a great beverage, one that is historically the drink of kings and the common man, of nobility and slaves, reduced to "common as muck" status simply because of its North American associations. Years of T&A beer ads, college chugging contests and unabashed "frat boy" marketing have conspired to position beer, not as the dignified social elixir it is, but as a poor cousin to the glass of wine and the dry martini. If beer were a movie star or politician, it would sue Anheuser-Busch, Miller and Coors for slander and degradation.
Which is not to say that I believe beer is or should be some sort of elitist drink supped only "in the finest places." Quite the opposite. One of beer’s great strengths, the thing that separates it from the alcoholic beverage herd, is its lack of pretension. You don’t need $85 apiece stemware to appreciate a beer, nor should you be clad in an Armani tux. (You could do either, of course, but neither is essential.) Good beer levels the playing field, letting construction workers chat up business suited CEOs and plating hamburgers alongside truffles and caviar.
Case in point was a Beer and Chocolate Dinner I recently enjoyed in San Francisco.
The place was the Cathedral Hill Hotel, one of a mercifully growing number of hotels offering their guests more than just the standard, boring array of massmarket brews. But Cathedral Hill is about more than just good beer; its kitchen, under the direction of Chef Bruce Paton, also gets into the act with a regular series of well-attended beer dinners held in the hotel ballroom. (Visit Chef Paton’s website at www.beer-chef.com for details on upcoming events.) The Beer and Chocolate Dinner was one such event.
Hosted by Chef Paton and "Cocoa Pete" Slosberg (née "Wicked Pete"), the dinner featured both dishes and beers that could hardly be considered "lowbrow." Unless, that is, your idea of lowbrow is pan seared skate with Sonoma foie gras and chocolate balsamic brown butter served with the impressive tripel Karmeleit from the Belgian brewery Bosteels, or slow roasted Kurobuta pork tenderloin with creamy truffle grits and chocolate port wine reduction accompanied by Chimay Grand Reserve.
(Kurobuta pork, in case you’re wondering, is an extraordinary meat that comes from the celebrated Berkshire pig, also known as the "black pig." And while I would ordinarily balk at pairing pork with any of the Chimay line, much less the most robust of the trio, the Kurobuta is such a rich and flavorful meat that the marriage worked beautifully. Truly, this is one remarkable pig.)
Yet despite the elegance of the menu, the composition of the crowd cut across all sorts of demographics —affluent and working class, sports jackets and t-shirts, male and female, young and old — and the feel of the night was decidedly casual. In fact, when you think about it, even the menu had a bit of a populist feel to it, combining skate wing with foie gras and what’s been called the "kobe beef of pork" with lowly grits.
Fast forward to the next morning and judging is underway at the annual Barleywine Festival, put together by San Francisco’s seminal beer bar, the Toronado. Serious stuff, this, with judges according every sip the solemnity it deserves, and two panel tastings of every beer right up until the final round. Slap suits and ties on this crowd and put Reidel glasses in their hands, and by the looks of concentration etched on their brows they could easily be judging at VinExpo or VinItaly.
But neither myself nor any of my fellow judges were wearing suits this day. It was strictly a t-shirt and jeans crowd judging impressive barleywines like the British-style 2002 Casked Barley Wine, the ultimate winner from Schooner’s Grille & Brewery in Antioch, California, the bourbony Midnight Sun Arctic Devil from Alaska, and Hawaii’s surprisingly spicy Kona Old Blowhole.
So maybe by a Toronto Star reporter’s standards, we were all "lowbrow," in attire, and perhaps he would accord similar status to the room we were assigned for the judging. But the ales we were assessing were as stylish and complex as any vintage Champagne or single malt whisky, and there was not a person in the room who didn’t understand that fact.
Like the dinner the night before and so many other beer events I have attended, the barleywine judging wasn’t about being highbrow or lowbrow. It was about respect for the art of the brewer and the elegance of the drink, and the enjoyment of the experience. And truly, that’s what beer is really all about!
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