Top Nine... Such as it Was.

 It’s Top Ninetime folks. Instagram’s micro-year-in-review of the photos that were captivating enough to stop the infinity-scroll and give folks pause for a like, or maybe a comment — if even just a “fire” or “praise hands” emoji.

As you’ll see, many of mine are from before Covid-19 began spreading in the United States. A lot of them have a care free tone that is a mix of the privilege I have and the vast contrast between the first two and a half months of 2020 with the rest of the year. For those paying attention, this year was a chance to see how many things, and just how many people, we need to start taking caring for with a renewed commitment.

But, this won’t be a year and review per-se, or a wrap up- at least that is not my intent. I want to take a look at each of these photos as a moment in time, and maybe see where I go from that moment into the new year.

My top nine posts from my Instagram @The_Beer_Consultant

So that’s my top nine. I’ve posted mine over at my profile @The_Beer_Consultant on Insta- but like I said, let’s look at each one as a moment in time and not as a best-of countdown. They aren’t even in chronological order, so maybe for the best for 2020…

August 23 — A Proper Pint.

For March through October, I was out of the house five days a week going to work at Arrowine and Cheese in Arlington, VA. However, my wife was able to work from home and our daughter switched to virtual school quite early on. So — beyond my trips out for work and for food (grocery or take-out) our home was on lockdown early on.

Then, in the middle of the 240 day long month of Smarch, Port City Brewing Company in Alexandria, VA opened patio service. They were ahead of the game on safety and precautions and were one of the first businesses to close there doors in March. I’m grateful to them for that to this day and was even more grateful for us to have a safe place to enjoy some of our favorite beers once they started distanced patio service.

We were fortunate enough to be able to extend past our reserved time, as neither of us wanted to leave. The weather was perfect, two or three of the brewery’s best seasonal beers were on draft — and the precautions the taproom took to ensure the safety of guests and staff made it a great experience. It was, by far, the most relaxed we were at any point during the pandemic.

Port City has an amazing team from the bottom to the top — if you see them on your store shelf, I cannot recommend them enough.

January 7 — It’s snowing… Where. IS. MY. P H O N E !?

When Sierra Nevada puts out an Imperial Hazy IPA that drinks like a Pale Ale in terms of boozieness, and has a fluffy snow white head… it’s gonna be a winter beer shot for sure.

This was one of the first beers Nick and I opened up for sampling at Arrowine after the Post-Thanksgiving remodel was completed. That remodel being the one that effectively opened the door for me at Arrowine.

Nick Anderson and I had chatted here and there before, but walking into the shop in late 2019 to more or less point blank ask for a job was something I went back and forth on in the parking lot. I’m glad I went in there- the brief time we got to work together will sit at the top of my favorite career moves for a quiet a long while I’m sure.

March 3 — IS THAT AN OCELOT?

From the first proper pint, to the last proper pint. After going hard 7 days a week in 2019- I really appreciated having firm days off at the start of this year. Now, other than one Saturday a month, those days off were definitely the industry weekend of Monday and Tuesday- but when you live near one of the two best breweries in the area… you make an afternoon of it.

I had really aimed on making “Tuesdays at Ocelot” my thing this year. Great Lagers and IPAs of course, a Dart board in the corner, and to top it all off, I could light up a cigar on the patio if I was there solo.

This post wasn’t from a solo excursion, my wife was able to wrap up work early that day so we headed on out there for a beer and a round of darts on a whim. I think that kind of spur of the moment beer is the one I miss most right now…

Yes, moar Ocelot.

Franconia is just a fantastic beer Ocelot brewed with Bingo Beer Co. out of Richmond, VA. I was elated when I saw we were bringing it in on tap at work.

Now we’re back at the start of the year, Covid-19 was far away as far as we knew (or were told anyway). I remember being pretty care free at this point. I had a good job that was engaging and fulfilling without yet becoming intensely demanding. My wife had finalized her next assignment with work and therefore, our next move at the end of the year. And our daughter was steadily marching towards graduation… I felt like I was on cruise control at this point.

So very few of these pictures come post April, by then I’d poured myself into my new role running the beer department at Arrowine and my energy was totally invested in staying safe and keeping that program running.

February 18 — A work of art

Virginia started seeing more and more Schilling this past year and if I recall correctly that started in earnest around the end of 2019 into 2020. It’s been a minute since I’ve had Modernism, but their Kellerbier Hanse was a reminder of how much I enjoy everything they do. They are easily tops on my travel list once we’re able to move about safely in 2021 and I am quite tempted to organize a road trip with friends I haven’t seen in far too long.

March 22 — Yes I do like that artwork in the background.

Other people seem to like it as well, I started using this piece of art as a background for beer photos and may well need to get back to that.

This piece has made five moves with us now, it’s a collaboration between two artists and has always brought color and vibrancy and a sense of… arrival to whatever space we’ve put it in.

We see it, and we know we are Home.

The move from Virginia to New York was one of the most nerve racking we have done in 10 years, but the friends and family we’ve reconnected with and the new friends we’ve made have provided for a soft landing.

November 28 — ‘Drive me three blocks’

Closer to present day. With the care that most businesses and people around us take, we were comfortable enough to do some gift shopping & support our neighboring small businesses in Long Island City and over the Pulaski bridge in Greenpoint.

I also wandered around enough on my own that day and found Brouwerij Lane for some beers and Paulie Gee’s Slice Counter not too far off. More often than not, I’ve felt like I’ve been exploring the city with one arm tied behind my back, but having great places like this nearby make it easier to explore without going too far afield.

January 5 — Oh, we’re fancy now huh?

Penultimate photo, all the way back to January. Pattinson Porter from Jester King. We made from scratch pizza that night, fresh out of the fridge this beer was great with pepperoni- drank almost like a red wine with some background acidity.

As it warmed up I tasted even more going on, so I stepped outside with a cigar and enjoyed it in the moonlight. I’ve smoked fewer cigars this year than in memory- what with once a week “Oh… is that **random slightly different observed bodily funciton** the Covid?” anxiety. Mostly I miss the camaraderie of enjoying a cigar with friends. In particular it’s one of those totems that excuse men to gather and talk and listen to each other.

March 16 — The Tipping Point

The algorithm saw fit to place this photo in the bottom right of the grid.

This was the first day I went in to work as voluntary changes in operations and outright state/city mandated closures were being announced. Having left a Craft Distillery and, most recently, a Brewery Touring Company I knew the choices my former colleagues and bosses were agonizing over.

Arrowine and Cheese was going through the same difficult conversations for what all of this would mean for a gourmet grocery. We’d stay open- and at the time of this photo we were allowing customers in and maybe still tasting, but so very much of what made that place what it was had to change, and quickly.

So I went in to work, put on my hat from One Eight Distilling and my tour shirt from City Brew Tours — and I put on as happy a face as I could with the world crashing down outside.

This was the last day I served customers in store. Doug Rosen and Shemsedin Hassen made a decision that weekend that undoubtedly saved lives and ended in-store shopping. It wasn’t an easy one to make, but I know from their character that it was the only thing they knew they could do.

The next five to six weeks were the among the most challenging in my life. The phones never stopped ringing, this was the big buy up. Case upon case of wine and beer moving out the door- all while we limited our staffing to be safe. I was down to two days a week. I wound up back at One Eight Distilling, thankful to be working and helping them produce hand sanitizer a few days a week. Nick and I more or less alternated days at the store — I went in on our slowest day and our busiest day, my wife could see the difference when I’d get home.

The more I look at it. There really is this photo, and the rest of the year. I’ll do my own “looking back” on my own time- I hope you do the same and use it to move forward with me.

I know tomorrow, January 1st, 2021, is just another rotation on the Earth’s axis, but never has turning the calendar year over felt like both a relief and a heavy measure of responsibility to make the next 365 rotations better.

Happy New Year Folks — Take care of each other.

Takes you back, don't it?

 Originally published July 17, 2020 by ARLnow.com for Arrowine and Cheese’s “Your Beermonger” Column

I’ve been thinking — when you can’t go places in space, you can still go places in time. Beer is a lot of things to a lot of people, and call me sentimental or overly nostalgic, but I’ve always seen it as a time machine. It slows down time, it steals away time from tomorrow if you have one too many and at it’s absolute best, it takes you back.

In Tasting Beer, Randy Mosher talks about the neuroscience behind taste and smell and the double redundancy of the nerves transmitting that sensory information to our brains. He explains how beer hacks directly into that hardwiring. It’s a connection so potent you can hold it in your hand every time you open a bottle. I love beers that bring you back. There are a lot we have in the store right now that fire synapses for me immediately — but there’s one beer that I can never get in store or ever again...

It’s Fall, 2007. Chicago.

About 11 at night and eleven friends and I are walking out of a theatre around Roscoe Village after having talked our way into a sold-out show called “The Magnificents,” presented by the truly amazing House Theatre Company. Twelve theatre majors in town for auditions near the midpoint of senior year, high on a show that lived up to its name, en route to a bar around the corner called The Hungry Brain.

The night air is cool and damp as an evening thunderstorm rolls in. We turn the corner from Western to Belmont headed towards the lake. The wind and rain pick up, and we huddle together, walking faster and laughing at the timing of this cool shower during our five minute walk.

The Hungry Brain is familiar and new all at once. I lookover the beer tap markers expecting to make a comfortable choice — Miller Lite, Old Style, probably Bud Select around that phase of my drinking career — but I pause a moment on a distinct telephone tap handle; it’s calling me. I take my first sip of Goose Island 312 and am blown away by how different it is from what I’m used to. Fruit, lemon peel and light pepper notes with an aromatic sensation I’d only picked up on hikes and walking along midwestern prairies — earthy, floral, piney even.

I snap out of my beer inspired reverie and a friend asks what I’m drinking. To date, my go-to beers hadn’t required much description, so lacking any beer-centric vocabulary I holler, “Dunno, but we’re drinking it all night!”

The Human Brain ca. ??? — as hazy and unfocussed as memory can be.

We take turns bringing pitchers of that unfiltered wheat ale back to mismatched leather couches. Playing quarters, laughing at jokes that made more sense freshman year and putting on songs we’ve listened to before, but not in this place, not in this time.

We talk about what, where and who we will be after graduation, and we hold on to what we are now.

We all have stories like this one, “Fall 2007. Chicago” — a memorable experience paired with the perfect, memorable beer. These beers turn into time machines in miniature, they take us back to moments when all we needed was the pint in front of us and the people around us.

Opening up a 312 was dialing in “Fall, 2007. Chicago.” no matter where I was. The smell of fall leaves on the sidewalk, a thunderstorm coming in, the electricity of friends going from one incredible experience they watched as an audience — to another they lived as a community of twelve.

I can’t dial up that time machine ever again, at least not easily. There are worse things a brewery can do than get bought out, but that doesn’t change the fact that the scaled up recipe for 312 is different, and the flavor profile hasn’t been right for me ever since. It took six batches of homebrew to zero in on something that “hit” like the original, and I just don’t have the energy for that anymore.

And, to throw salt in my wounds, the Hungry Brain as I briefly knew it closed in 2014.

What I can do is crack open a Corruption IPA from DC Brau and be taken back to stocking that beer in my fridge at multiple overseas posts and finding fellow beer drinkers that quickly became dear friends.

It was also our cheese and bacon fridge- priorities

I can pour a Troeg’s Nimble Giant into a tulip glass and laugh about the night we flew back to the U.S. via JFK International and the absurdity of my wife and I losing contact with each other when her cell phone died on the way back from dropping extra bags off at her sisters’ studio while I was buying toothpaste at the bodega closest to our AirBnB and she was the only one with our rental information and “boy I guess I’m gonna buy this loose tall boy I haven’t had before” while this bodega cat stares at me (it was a night).

Best recommendation from a cat I’ve ever had

Let’s all look forward to that next pint we raise with friends and dear ones — hopefully closer together and sooner than later.

Until then folks — to your health.