Starlight in a Glass Home-Brewing Beer as an Existential Journey, a Narrative

Opening Missives....This is a full-length book I wrote, enjoy a little here. Some of it is true.

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Introduction

This book is for those who like to travel, travel in a broad sense of the word. It’s also a story for people who enjoy beer, not just drinking it but thinking about it, tasting it, and by somewhere through the first 25 pages or so, making it. Beer is a gift, it is a road, it is a highway….wait, is that a song? Beer is a live experience, which if considered carefully and respected properly, will bring many joys and special moments. For a moment considering utility only, I present to you a method to guide you through your first batch of beer. It may be the sweetest beverage to ever touch your lips. It may give you a coughing fit. Either way it turns out, feel good about it. It’s not just about the result, it’s about the journey.

Will you always be successful? Definitely not, impossible, and that is good news. You will learn and grow from your failures, and once you embrace that, you will be unstoppable.

This book is not about the beer formulas, drinking, and backyard heroics. Well, there is some of that. It’s a journey from which we learn about life, a medium and prism through which we may experience and observe all sign-post life events. So, find a comfortable spot, get a cool drink and begin your journey. Let beer brewing be your intimate and your guide.

I. The Suitcase

I started that summer trip with a suitcase under my arm. I’d never imagined it’d be my last suitcase. Beast-Light was the beverage of choice- Milwaukee’s Best Light- smooth when ice cold, it tasted like beer that I’d tasted with my dad as a kid, and dirt cheap, Old Milwaukee, Schlitz, things like that. I think I could get Beast on sale for $5.99 a case- 24.95 cents each. Come to think of it, the suitcase had been cracked the night before in anticipation of the trip, 6 or 7 shared with roommates before the tour; that tour being the 1992 Grateful Dead East Coast Summer Tour. We’d only go to eight or nine shows, not nearly enough in hindsight, but it gave a us a chance to get away from home and work, travel and kick back awhile. And that is after all a huge part of drinking beer, kicking back. You might remember the commercial from the late ’70’s, early 80’s, some guys up in Maryland I reckon, had gone out to check the crab pots, had a big riverside boil, and were stuffing gobs of butter-soaked crab meat in their faces, and the catch phrase was, “It don’t get no better ‘n this.” It had to be Maryland, not New England, due to that catchphrase alone, the dialect and the double-negative, and Maryland is culturally speaking, a Southern state. Having come out of the Piedmont of NC, I had a little of that Old Milwaukee in me. Hence the Beast, hence the suitcase under the arm, the cram packed day-pack in the other, with a change of clothes, a toothbrush and a book. Off to the shows. Those immortal words from the Old Milwaukee commercial have become the stereotypical country boy, even redneck phrase, depending on if you are being genuine, ironic, satiric or a mix of the three. The point was, as I drag myself to it, is that my beer tastes were laughable- I had none really, the less taste the better. I preferred beer dry, if it couldn’t be dry, sweet then, and if neither one of those, I’d pass. My transformation began about 6-19-1992, when Steve Fagan picked me up from the manor house in Weaverville. No, scratch that, he got me at my dad’s house, because I’d been to Charlotte and ended up meeting him later on our way to DC. Steve had not eaten meat in years, 5-6 years at least, and my dad says, “I made us some pot-roast for dinner, I been cookin’ it all day.” Steve says “Sure, I eat meat,” and he fell off the vege wagon that very moment, and tried not to fall off the toilet, as the beef fat went through him like a laser. I can’t remember what we were drinking, probably Miller Light, or maybe even a few of my beasts, but we were drinking to pass the time and wash down the chuck roast…mmmm, the tougher the better.

We traveled for about two weeks mostly throughout the Midwest. We skipped the earlier leg the Northeastern part, nor would we catch New Jersey, at the end. It was a Saturday evening in DC, very humid and about 89 degrees out. It rained heat onto us, you could barely breathe. DC wasn’t the south except in the summer. Then they were as south as you could get. We didn’t have tickets, I always worried about it a little, and Stevie never did. “Man, they always come along.”

-Now Jawness(Jonas), I want you to meet a friend of mine, the one I was tellin’ you about.

About 6pm. Pre-show, 6-20-1992, Jesus, I can’t do this, I thought, I’m fucking high, I don’t need to meet some dreaded out Irie dude brah, if anything I need to chill, the variegated voices and sounds jolted my head disconcertingly. The scene was reaching a frenetic pre-show crescendo.

-Yeah man, he sells vegan food with his brother and man he…..

Yeah, yeah I know, he goes to all the shows, so massive, he was so there man, does he even have any teeth in his head? I didn’t say it.

Sam Walker-Matthews stood there with a big smile, all 6’5”, 265lbs. I looked up as he reached out his large hand and grabbed mine firmly, shaking it politely, resting his left hand on top of mine.

-Jonas, hi, it’s really nice to meet you, Steve has told me about you, can I get you something to eat? I instinctually nodded, yes, it’s nice to meet you too,

-Oh no man, we ate a bunch of pancakes this morning, I’m so full, but I am thirsty, can I buy you a beer, gesturing my empty Beast can at him.

- I think I have something you might like, have a seat. Calmness, warmth radiated out from him, in the lovely chaos of the Grateful Dead lot, he invited me into his world for a moment, the permutable moment and reckless energy of the crowd dissipated and became a backdrop. He had three lawn chairs set up next to a hedge on one side, blocked off by cars on two. The noise was deflected, and it felt like a backstage area or some such thing. We sat down, and I was glad to be out of the noise for a bit, even mildly. The heat was not so bad this year, but the traffic had gotten bad on the way in.

-Robbie, let’s take a break, just sell out that last wok, it’s almost showtime, cool man?

-Yeah cool Sam, his brother Robbie said.

-So, Jonas, you live in North Carolina too?

-Yeah, I live in Asheville. My girlfriend and I go to school there.

-No kidding, man I live in Greensboro. Yeah. I think you’ll like this and reaching into his ice chest he pulled out a 75-cl. brown champagne bottle. I made this, it’s a Belgium Ale.

-Really? never had one, honestly, don’t even know what it is.

-Well, I can tell you, it’s alive, it’s good for you, and its 8% alcohol.

-Well I’m your man. I was actually a little nervous. I cared less for brown beer and the few homebrews I had were less than tasty; even my poor tastes could tell they were awful. I thought I’d drink a little bit and beg off, sure it was good, but too strong for my taste.

He pulled out 3 clean glasses, wrapped in a blue towel, from a pasteboard box, and poured us all a tall glass, me, Stevie, and himself. Sam was tall, barrel chested, with piercing eyes and character grounded in bedrock. He’d been frying noodles all afternoon. Honestly, I expected some grizzly dread-headed dirty hippy, with little to offer but oily skin and feckless anecdotes about this show, this scene, this buzz and I been to so many shows man…. But not Sam, we seemed to understand each other, no predispositions and an open eye.

We sat down a few minutes. Stevie usually played the role of wide-eyed reckless hillbilly, which aside from his fun-loving nature was largely a character he played. In this case, he was the professor. He pushed his glasses up on his nose, smelled the beer, held it up the light and took a long draught, not too big, but more than a sip.

-This has some real complexity to it Sam, fruity but a nice dry finish. I double-took as it seemed as if a doppelganger has invaded the body of my travel buddy.

- Yeah, I let it age out for three months, then I repitched during bottling. I didn’t even prime it.

I didn’t even know what this meant. And come to think of it, although I was ostensibly educated, I didn’t know much about Belgium or that they even brewed beer. The beer was caramel brown and had a lightly sweet smell to it. It was cold the first few minutes and deceptively dry. It was sweet to the taste, so I opened up to it a bit. I had been partying through most of the day, so I was elevated already in mind and body. I sipped on it as Sam and Stevie talked and caught up. I noticed there was a little residue on the bottom of the bottle. I wondered what it was and asked Sam about it.

-Don’t worry about it, that’s just a little yeast. It’s waking up a bit in this heat, but it won’t affect the beer. I nodded, having vaguely heard about that before. I remember sneaking a peak into a plastic fermenter as a seventh grader, that belonged to a friend of my mom’s. The fermenter had 6-8 inches of head space on it and the yeast had formed a protective barrier, a skin on the top of the beer to protect it from oxygen. And then something singularly strange did happen. A little tan speck broke off from the bottom of the glass, floated to the top, bobbed a moment, and then dove back to the bottom. I wasn’t sure if this was an aberration or what exactly, so I looked more closely. Throughout the glass, in 3-5 spots, yeast cells clustered and started swimming. I’d not seen anything like this before.

-Sam, what is happening here?!

-Oh, the yeast is just waking up because its warm out. Don’t worry though, it tastes pretty good. You’ve never seen that before?

-No, I usually buy whatever is cheapest, except on a special occasion.

-Well, the biggest difference between good beer, and the cheap stuff, is that real beer is alive. What you are drinking is alive!

-Wow man, far out!

Sam and I have been very close friends since that moment. Certainly, the beer was unique, tasty, and strong. More importantly, it was time, place and context. I never looked back.

Lots more crazy where this came from. Support! Thank you.

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