(Your attention is directed to this week’s installment of “40 Years in Beer”: Part 93: Beer, circus, and the Great NABC vs. Big Red Liquors War of 2003.)
As our schoolteachers gladly will attest, repetition is an inescapable element of their working lives.
Students in second grade this year may comprise different faces, but the lessons are the same as those taught to last year’s cohort. Level by level, building from the previous ones, we’re introduced to the basics, intended for us all, reserving more advanced concepts for those who show aptitude and interest.
And so it transpires that just about every year, I find myself repeating certain “Hip Hops” columns, as with the following essay about the annual appearance of Oktoberfest lagers and pumpkin ales, both typically brought to us stupidly, numbingly and needlessly out of season.
It turns out that there is no substitute for actual facts, even when gazing lovingly at an ephemeral Instagram post while hoping something might be gleaned by sheer osmosis. I have no interest in celebrating Oktoberfest in August via the proliferation of irrelevant costumery, and although my kitchen skills are passable, I lack the patience to cook the requisite Bavarian spread.
But making do is an attainable goal. Decent brats and kraut always can be procured, and a six-pack of Festbier purchased in early August is capable of being stashed until the weather cools to seasonal appropriateness. It’s all about the beer with me, and so I’ll be opting for the classic examples of what has become a three-way style.
As for the pumpkin ales, I simply refrain; all the more for those who actually like them, because I generally do not.
American consumerist modernity incessantly compels me to display my allegiance to its imperatives. But I differ, and my sense of self owes to principled resistance. That’s what conscience is all about, as well as pride, but none of this makes sense if we, as beer lovers, abandon education about beer.
The broader our base of knowledge, the less often we’re likely to be duped ― to be fooled again. Alas, beer education has become an almost desperate, rearguard action of the sort previously confined to Thermopylae and the Alamo.
Or, my favorite kind of hoisted middle finger.
The following Oktoberfest narrative requires neither lederhosen nor participation in a stein-hoisting competition. Read it in your underwear, and listen to K-pop if that’s your thing. I do not...Read more
