Tecate Get You Into My Life

I was hot. The beer was cold. It was there. So was I. It was left at my place after a party, by a friend who didn’t like the idea of spending too much money on beers he wasn’t going to be drinking by himself. I sliced a lime, used a wedge of it, and let the rest sit until it rotted and I threw it out. The beer was free, and when I sipped it, so was I. All in all, I’m glad I let it climb my fence and steal the other beers in my fridge’s jobs for a night.

-B

Curmudgeon Conundrum

Recently we were at a local watering hole celebrating a friend’s accomplishment. This friend is Erich, and his accomplishment is that he achieved his dream: he is now being paid to make beer all day, every day. This is essentially what Erich does with all of his available free time, so his being paid for at least half his weekly beer-making is quite the accomplishment.

An odd thing happened in the midst of our celebration. I got a round for Marta and myself (her only instruction being to ‘get [her] something dark’; I ignored it and got a her a beer that I wanted to drink). I selected a Great Divide 17th Anniversary Wood-Aged Double IPA and got Marta a Founder’s Curmudgeon Old Ale. Both good breweries, both exactly the kind of style and alcohol content that I like.


Here’s where it got weird. When we sat down and started comparing, I noticed (and by ‘noticed’ I mean ‘was bludgeoned in the face with’ this): the beers tasted identical. Not similar, not stylistically reminiscent…identical.


So how did this happen? They have a similar ABV and they’re both aged in wood (which was the predominant flavor, along with delicious alcohol). But they’re not even the same style (the 17th Anniversary should have been bitterer, which it wasn’t). I was confused and sad and scared.

They were fantastic, too, and complex. This is not like Keystone and Natty Ice tasting the same. These were beers of the finest quality. IT DIDN’T MAKE SENSE.

Then I realized that the bartender probably just poured me two of the same beer.

Like a Harpoon to the Throat (Part 2)

I know I’ve kept you all in nail-biting, edge-of-your-seat suspense for the past week. I apologize. It ends here.

So where did we leave off? I was with friends and loved ones at the Friendly Toast in Cambridge’s Kendall Square. Jake and I split a bottle of Dogfish Head’s Fort (an excellent, excellent beer that I’ll have to devote another post too sometime). We moseyed over to Cambridge Brewing Co. and drank a tower of their beer (which was meh). Things did not get too crazy.


At around five the next morning, however, I awoke with the feeling that my chest and throat were onefire. I felt as if someone had poured kerosene down my gullet it and set it alight. I felt like I had been disemboweled and my throat replaced with a steam pipe. I also felt the need to vomit.

I did so. And the result was…not ideal (‘ideal’ and ‘vomiting’ are two concepts who are not well-acquainted). It was a torrent of blood. All right, it wasn’t a torrent – more like a mouth-full. But that’s enough to freak you out. Esp. if you’re me, who does not suffer jarring physical ailments well.

The internet said to go to the hospital, as hematemesis is considered a medical emergency. I wasn’t too keen on that, being away on a small vacation of sorts. What I did do, though, was not eat for the entire rest of the day (this was extra disappointing given that our trip to Boston had been a sort of tour of our old culinary stomping grounds).

My doctor advised me immediately that the intake of certain foods was verboten. Fried food, citrus…and alcohol. I was devastated, as you can well imagine. She (my doctor) also passed me off onto a gastroenterologist, who gave me an endoscopy. This whole thing took about a week. I was beerless…but not tearless.*

The endoscopy reported that I had (have, really), a hiatal hernia. What this means is that my stomach has slipped the surly bounds of my lower abdomen and is pushing its way into my chest cavity. This sounded pretty serious to me, but the doctor only shrugged. I guess it’s not a big deal if your organs aren’t where they’re supposed to be? I don’t know.

Anyway, the hernia caused the vomiting, which in turn was violent enough to cause a Mallory-Weiss tear in my esophagus. It looks like this:


It had healed by the time they did the endoscopy, so that’s cool.

A week after the initial incident I had my first beer. It was an Allagash Black, consumed with Erich at the Brooklyn Public House. It was fucking delicious. I might be biased – I can’t even really remember that much about it – but damn. It was so good to be back.


*That was terrible. I can’t believe I’m leaving it in.

Like a Harpoon to the Throat (Part 1)

I love brewery tours. I worked at Sam Adams’s brewery for a while giving tours and tastings in Jamaica Plain, MA. JP is a great neighborhood for a brewery tour because it fulfills one of the requirements that make them great: they have to be in a neighborhood that you would have otherwise no reason to go to.

Harpoon, also in Boston, fulfills that same requirement by being near the harbor in Southie. Despite living in Boston for five years and working at Sam*, I had never been to their brewery tour before last weekend. But, in Boston with Jake and Marta and other assorted close friends, I decided to go.

The tour was fairly standard; a pretty simple whirl around the brewery with plenty of free samples and not too many jokes. Plus some of the server girls were Boston-
hot**, which is more than Sam has going for it.

The best part of any tour is, of course, the free beer they give you. Harpoon starts you off early with a nice Harpoon IPA taste right at the beginning of the tour and then at various spots along the way they refill your glass. It’s a great strategy. Then, at the end of the tour, they give you free rein of their taps for about 30 minutes: as much beer as you can guzzle and get from the tastemasters. This is the second best set-up of its kind I’ve ever seen behind only the Abita brewery, where they put you in a room with a tap and a stack of cups for an hour. I’m not kidding.

Anyway, we got some solid and rare Harpoon brews, including a Rye IPA they were doing as part of their Hundred Barrels Series and a couple of Leviathans. I’ve been a huge fan of that line for a couple years now – they seem to knock all of them out of the park – and it was nice to try some things I hadn’t in a while. Namely the Harpoon Leviathan Uber-Bock (pictured, poorly), which was sweet and comforting and made me want to curl up in a corner of the brewery forever. " />



After seven or nine glasses of these, my friends and I wandered around Boston’s North End before meeting friends in the antiseptic Kendall Square Neighborhood. A good time was had by all.

But then…the following morning...disaster struck. Continued in Part 2.

*Or maybe because of working at Sam. Those two have a weird rivalry that you probably don’t realize unless you work there.

**Boston-hot is when a girl is hot by Boston standards, which…well, I’ll let you puzzle that out.***

***Lest I be accused of being anti-Boston, let me assure you that Boston-hot is way hotter than Philly-hot.