As the days shrink and afternoon tee times are moved up to get the round in before twilight, there’s no denying another summer has burned off and harvest time has come, with the leaf rule in full effect. Enjoy the brisk approach of fall; it’s no time for dark moods, but somewhat darker beers may well be in order. Rather than bobbing for apples at the Halloween party, fill that metal tub with ice and stock some richly malty lagers and ales for autumn.

There’s a solid 200-year-old precedent for this. Oktoberfest, the party, began in Munich in 1810 as a celebration of the marriage of Crown Prince Ludwig I and Princess Therese. It has been going strong ever since, always beginning in mid-September, a fortnight before the first Sunday in October. It always begins the same way, with the Lord Mayor of Munich tapping the first keg of beer at noon. But this year’s anniversary is being called a Jubilee Year, and so festivals-goers will have one extra day to cram in as much sausage and pigs’ knuckles as possible.

Oktoberfest, the beer, is actually a style called Märzen (or Vienna lager), that no self-respecting former apple-bobbing tub should be without. So here are some suggestions, in good company with other seasonal picks. Some are more regional than others, but most should be widely available in better beer shops:

Ayinger Oktober Fest-Märzen (Germany, 5.6% ABV (Alcohol by volume), merchantduvin.com) In pre-refrigeration days of the mid-19^th century Bavarian brewers began producing full-bodied, malty beers in March (Märzen) and then lagering them in cool caves until it was time to celebrate Oktoberfest. The style has existed ever since, and this interpretation from the town of Aying represents exporting at its best.

Rahr’s Oktoberfest Celebration Lager (Rahr & Sons Brewing Company, Texas, 5.5% ABV, rahrbrewing.com) A snow-induced roof collapse this past winter has slowed down but not stopped Fritz Rahr of Fort Worth, who decided to sponsor a September 25 Rahr Oktoberfest 5K Run to benefit the local Habitat for Humanity. Lederhosen race togs are optional, but the post-race beverage should be interesting.

Hoptober Golden Ale (New Belgium Brewing, Colorado, 6% ABV, newbelgium.com) A bit lighter in profile if not strength is this August through October seasonal from the makers of Fat Tire, packed with barley and wheat malts as well as oats and rye. Five different hops contribute a citrus note. Those closer to Colorado can look for the Fall Wild Ale from the Lips of Faith series, a malty dubbel at 8.5% ABV spiced with schisandra berries.

Harvest Ale (Long Trail Brewing Company, Vermont, 4.4% ABV, longtrail.com) It’s an apt year for the beers from Long Trail, since its namesake, the oldest long-distance hiking trail in the U.S. is now celebrating its centennial year, although work continued on the 273-mile Vermont Long Trail until 1930. Running from the Massachusetts line to the Canadian border, the Trail meets up with the Appalachian Trail for 100 miles, and just thinking about all that walking deserves a few bottles of this malty brown ale tribute.

Poperings Hommel Ale (Brouwerij Van Eecke, Belgium, 7.5% ABV, brouwerijvaneecke.tk) Don’t let the pale golden color of this ale fool you; it packs a wallop, and is loaded with about twice the bitterness of other Belgian beers, which are not big on hops. But the city of Poperinge was once the hop capital of the country, and still has a gala hop festival every three years. Tickets still available for the 2011 blowout.

Pumpkinhead Ale (Shipyard Brewing Co., Maine, 5.1% ABV, shipyard.com) What would the fall be without a pumpkin beer? Shipyard has two, the more widely available Pumpkinhead wheat beer replete with pumpkin pie spices, and the Smashed Pumpkin in the Pugsley Signature Series (named after brewmaster Alan Pugsley). The latter is a bigger, sipping beer at 9% ABV, with subtler spice flavors. Visitors to the Shipyard gift shop in Portland can get Smashed in a year-old cellar-aged limited edition.

Saison Dupont Vieille Provision (Brasserie Dupont, Belgium, 6.5% ABV, brasserie-dupont.com) Okay, this is a bit of a holdover from summer, but saisons are fine year-round refreshers, fruity and dry, and this corked beauty was dubbed a world classic by the late, great British beer writer Michael Jackson. Concocted in a Belgian farmhouse brewery and conditioned in the bottle, Saison Dupont will cellar well and grace any dinner table, matching nicely with fish or fowl.

Double Bastard Ale (Stone Brewing Co., California; 10.5% ABV; stonebrew.com) “Warning: Double Bastard Ale is not to be wasted on the tentative or weak.” It’s tough to compete with the copy on the Stone beer labels, but this hop monster takes the brewery’s popular Arrogant Bastard Ale one arrogant step beyond. It will appear November 1, just in time for San Diego Beer Week, which also goes a step beyond by lasting ten days, November 5-14.

Ommegang Zuur (Brewery Ommegang, New York, 6% ABV, ommegang.com) Baseball’s Fall Classic is threatening to linger into winter, and one can hope the same for this offering from Ommegang, a Belgian-owned brewery as American as cherry pie, since it’s in Cooperstown, home of the Hall of Fame. The Zuur is a collaboration, blending two beers from Liefman’s in Belgium including a kriek (beer with cherries), resulting in a Flemish Sour Brown ale with a cherry on top. Bring on the pies!

We may have to make TEOTBWAWKI a regular feature if people keep doing weird beer things like the crazy Scots at BrewDog, or like Mark Zable of Texas.

Zable has made it to the finals of Big Tex Choice Awards Cook-off at the Texas State Fair in Dallas each of the last three years. In 2008 it was with his Chocolate Covered Strawberry Waffle Balls. While roundly appreciated, his Schweddy–rather, his waffle balls, did not take the blue ribbon. He fell shy of glory again last year, though not for lack of trying with his Sweet Jalapeno Corn Dog Shrimp.

But Zable has his eye on the big one this year, with his latest inspired concoction: Fried Beer. Actually, that should be Fried Beer™, since Zable has a patent pending on the process that creates what looks like a ravioli, though it’s more pretzel dough than pasta, with a liquid beer filling that remains liquid even after the morsel is lowered, briefly, into a fryer. The beer used so far is Guinness Stout.

Sounds good to me, and certainly not too bizarre for the Texas State Fair, which has been going strong for more than a century, and where the corn dog was introduced in 1942 (although called a corny dog there). Last year’s Big Tex winner in the “Most Creative” category was the seemingly redundant Fried Butter.

Fried seems to be the key to victory in the contest, which has been held since 2005 and is open only to the concessionaires at the fair. Winners in recent years have included Fried Ice Cream, Fried PBJ and Banana Sandwich, Fried Coke, Deep Fried Latte, Chicken Fried Bacon, and Deep Fried Peaches & Cream.

Zable has been experimenting with the beer process for three years (apparently even while frittering away his time on waffle balls and corn dog shrimp), and now he feels ready for the judges–his time has come.

Zable has some history at the State Fair, since his father, Norman, began the Belgian Waffle Concession stand there almost a half-century ago, and the young Zable was gradually kneaded into the family business. There are now two Zable concession stands, and beginning in late September (the fair runs from September 24-October 17), the public will be able to eat Fried Beer™ there for the first time. The judges will have an earlier crack at it and announce the cook-off winners on September 6.

That is, presuming the judges and members of the public who request it are over 21, the legal drinking age in Texas. Since the alcohol is not cooked off in the frying process, Zable had to have the product cleared by the state Alcoholic Beverage Commission, and buying customers will be carded.

My sister first tipped me off that there was now such a thing as fried beer, outpacing NPR, which ran a feature on Zable yesterday. But this story should quickly go viral; Zable already has a website running and he’s gearing up to license concessionaires at other fairs.

My guess is that Zable’s ship has come in. I’m at least sure that Fried Beer™ is going to outsell bottles of beer stuffed in animal pelts.

To wit: The entry for July 19 asks the trivia question: Who is the only pitcher with 100 or more career shutouts? After guessing wrong with Cy Young, I went into the record books, to discover what is really an astonishing record, and one that will certainly never be broken until the day cyborgs begin pitching—the Big Train, Walter Johnson, threw 110 shutouts.

His nearest competitor, Grover Alexander, had 90. Only 20 pitchers all-time have 50 or more, the more recent being Nolan Ryan and Tom Seaver (61), and Don Sutton (58). The most recent active player, Randy Johnson, “only” had 37.

The leaders of current active players? Roy Halladay of the Phillies with 18 and Chris Carpenter of the Cardinals with 13.

The way the game is played today, pitchers will be lucky to have 110 complete games in their careers. Actually, Randy Johnson had exactly 100. (And for a likely Hall of Famer with 303 career wins, had only three 20-win seasons.) Halladay is the current leader with 56. Johnson had 531. Young, 749.

Which suggest a new trivia question to complement the one we often trotted out to writers at the beginning of golf fam trips, letting them stew it over for a few days before spilling the beans. That one was: What ten players with four or fewer letters as a last name, hit at least 40 homeruns in a season? Actually, there are now 14 such players.

Even more impossible is this one: There are seven pitchers with five or fewer letters in their last names with 50 or more career shutouts. Who are they? Well, you already have Ryan, and you could probably guess Cy Young (76) and Warren Spahn (63). But it could be tough coming up with the other four without resource to references. But go ahead, I’ll give you a few days.

Walter Johnson in 1924 (Library of Congress)

Rest easy, Scotland.  In the high alcohol arms race that has been brewing between BrewDog in Scotland and Schorschbräu in Germany (see my previous post and comments here), the irreverent Scots have responded, and have seemingly reached the end of the road in their experimentation with sky-high ABV beers. BrewDog has produced 12 bottles of a 55% ABV beer costing £500 each and wrapped in dead animal skins: The End of History.

It doesn’t appear to be a joke, as the brewers suggest at the BrewDog website (brewdog.com) that the beer is a blond Belgian ale infused with nettles and juniper berries.

Yet they display it all jokingly. As the website says, each bottle “…comes with its own certificate and is presented in a stuffed stoat or grey squirrel. The striking packaging was created by a very talented taxidermist and all the animals used were road kill.”

This has already set off criticism from animal rights groups in Scotland, and comes on the heels of a BBC News report that Scots drink 25% more alcohol than other Brits.

No word from Germany yet.

I responded to a comment on last week’s post that Belgian Scotch Ales may be more of an interpretation of a style than a style in itself, but there are enough of them (Gordon Scotch Ale or McChouffe–“the Scotch of the Ardennes” from La Chouffe) to make one wonder.

Historically, ales from Scotland have tended to have higher malt and lower hop profiles than English ales, one argument being that it’s colder in Scotland, so a more warming beer fits the bill. Another argument is agricultural–that as styles emerged there were ample hops in England and plenty of malt in Scotland, so there you have it. (It’s surely more complicated than that, but we’ll let beer historians wrangle over it.)

The varied strengths of Scottish beers were priced accordingly–60/, 70/ 80/ ales, an ale going for 90 shillings likely to be a whopper called a Wee Heavy, coming in somewhere between 7% to 10% ABV.

There has long been trade between Scotland and Flanders, but Hainaut is in western Wallonia, the French-speaking part of Belgium, although but a few miles south of the Flemish border.

But according to the Van der Haegen family, which has been brewing in Silly since 1850, the Scotch ale was decidedly Scots-inspired. A Scottish regiment was based in the town after World War I, and requested a beer be brewed that would be to the soldiers’ liking. After many back and forth tasting sessions, a recipe using Kent hops was born in 1919.

That’s the same basic recipe being used today, with some sugars added to prompt a secondary fermentation in bottle or keg, meaning the beer could stand up well to some aging.

Certainly, Scotch Silly (sometimes called Scotch de Silly), is a worthy representative of a Belgian Scotch Ale or any Scotch ale–although perhaps we should call it Belgian Wee Heavy de Silly, even if it has marginally less body than last week’s Reunion ’10 beer, which also seemed a tad sweeter.

Mahogany in color, with a mild tan head, Scotch Silly has an estery toffee nose amidst the alcoholic vapors, a coating mouth feel, a bracing malt sweetness but a drying bite and what seems to me to the slightest touch of peaty smokiness. But that might have been some of my cigar residue.

This is a good beer to pair with a cigar–sturdy and warming, one that might well be best suited for days cooler than mid-July. Still, that I had but one 11.2-oz. bottle seemed like the only silly thing surrounding the entire enterprise.

Name: Scotch Silly
Brewer: Brasserie de Silly, Belgium
Style: Belgian Scotch Ale
ABV: 8%
Availability: Year-round, about 23 states
For More Information: silly-beer.com

“I signed up the first two dozen states,” said Shapiro, and Pete’s Wicked was off on a heady ascent (if not one ultimately sustained).

Shapiro’s colleague, Virginia MacLean, worked in marketing for Pete’s, and the two remained fast friends, even though Shapiro went on to work for Merchant du Vin, and now heads his own company, SBS Imports in Seattle, distributing De Proef Brouwerij beers from Belgium, and Batemans Brewery ales and Aspall Suffolk Cyders from England. Pete Slosberg sold his brands to the Gambrinus Company in 1998.

Dr. James Berenson

Though under the cloud of Virginia’s diagnosis with myeloma, a cancer of plasma cells that attacks and destroys bone, the three old colleagues reunited in 2007. While fighting her own ailment, Virginia wanted to help raise funds for the Institute for Myeloma & Bone Cancer Research, headed by Dr. James Berenson, the very doctor who treated her.

And so Reunion beer was born, named by Slosberg, and the first, 2007 installment was an organic Imperial version of the original Pete’s Wicked recipe, a brown ale. “Virginia was with us at the first release party for the beer,” said Shapiro. “But she passed away in June of 2007, four months after the beer came out.”

Slosberg and Shapiro have continued the annual release since, giving over 100% of its gross margin to the Institute and raising over $130,000 to date.

The Bison Brewing Company in Berkeley has been aboard for all four batches. The 2008 beer was an organic version of Pete’s Wicked Red, with the addition of rye and caraway. In 2009 a quartet of brewers turned out spiced double wheat ales–the Terrapin Beer Co. of Georgia, Pizza Port Brewing of San Diego and Elysian Brewing of Seattle joining Bison.

Terrapin and Bison are back for this year’s effort, a Belgian-style Scotch Ale in honor of Virginia’s heritage. Both brewers use the same basic recipe, said Shapiro, and “The bottles taste pretty similar. But there may be some difference in ABV because Spike [Buckowski of Terrapin] used a Rochefort yeast that ate a lot of sugar, while Dan [Del Grande of Bison] used more of a Westmalle yeast. But the beers are pretty close. Between the two of them they made about 180 barrels–a couple thousand cases.”

I had the Terrapin version, which pours out a deep brown with a light tan head. The Belgian yeast is beguilingly evident in the nose, as is an ample raisin and malt note. The flavor is malty rich as a Scotch ale should be, with a faint peaty/soapy quality, some spiciness, a mild hop bite and marked alcoholic heat. No one element overpowers another; it’s a smooth, velvety drinking experience.

One hopes Virginia MacLean would have liked it. It’s really quite delicious and, all things considered, a lovely beer.

Name: Reunion ’10–A Beer for Hope
Brewer: Terrapin Beer Co., Athens, Georgia; Bison Brewing Co., Berkeley, California
Style: Belgian-Style Scotch Ale
ABV: 8.5% or 7.0%
Availability: Terrapin in nine eastern states; Bison in five western states, for a few months until supplies run out.
For More Information: reunionbeer.com

My schedule fit this indolent mood like a velvet glove. I’d been invited out to sample the pleasures of CordeValle, a Rosewood Resort, and there turned out to be quite a few.

I’d barely driven through the stylish gates when I was conveyed to the resort’s full-service Sense Spa for a two-hour treatment called the Gentleman’s Rejuvenation.

This was, hands-down (or hands-on, I suppose), the best massage treatment I have ever had. The first hour was spent in a wet room, complete with steam and a Vichy shower. Experiencing the latter is a little like being indulgently conveyed through a car wash, or taking a shower lying down. Either way, it feels good.

A young masseuse then put me through the paces—an exfoliation with some pumice-like rub, a Vichy rinse, more exfoliation with loofahs, rinse, and then off to a dry room for a full-body, deep-tissue massage.

After two hours of this it was hard to tell whether I was rejuvenated or approaching coma. But there was daylight left, so I went over to the extensive practice area at the golf course and put time in in the bunker, around the green, sixty yards out, and on the range. I was very relaxed.

If I’d had any kinks left when I finally settled into my room, I could have wandered outside to the fenced-in wing of my villa and used the private hot tub and outdoor shower, or I could have lounged on the back patio and just taken in the not-inconsiderable views of the golf course, surrounded by the still-green hills of spring.

It was classy stuff. Not cheap, although there are always special packages to be found (beginning at the website).

The property is part of the Dallas-based Rosewood company, established in 1979. CordeValle opened 20 years later, and has always had an intimate, rural, yet upscale emphasis on wine and fine dining. The added attraction is that CordeValle has vines right on the property; home sites bordering the golf course each have about two acres of grapes.

Clos LaChance

The homes are removed enough from the course that there is little chance a Titleist will wind up in the crusher, but the grapes will eventually be harvested and used by the adjacent vineyard and winery, Clos LaChance.

Indeed, CordeValle’s initial permitting process required that part of the land be utilized as vineyards, and the relationship with Clos LaChance developed. While separate entities, the resort and vineyard are a tasty blend. A studious moment with the label of the in-room wine bottle awaiting guests checking in reveals it’s CordeValle Cuvée, estate-bottled by Clos LaChance.

The winery overlooks the sixth green of the course, and my last evening at CordeValle coincided nicely with a Spring Release Wine Dinner at Clos LaChance, the wines paired nicely with a seafood menu. It was pleasing to sip a sparkling wine on the Italianate terrace before the meal, contemplating my sins of the previous two days, egregiously perpetrated on the par-5 hole.

Players will usually find (and can always request) that impromptu wine tastings break out on the seventh tee during a round. It’s a sophisticated touch, though obviously a debatable game improvement strategy.

Clos LaChance will be the official winery of this year’s Frys.com Open October 14-17, since the PGA Tour Fall Series tournament will be played at CordeValle.

All this said, it will come as no surprise here to realize I’m more a fan of the barley than the grape, and the beer selection could be a little more capacious. But there’s always a decent Sierra Nevada available, or a bottle of Chimay Bleu, one of the finest Belgian Trappist ales going. Pilsner Urquell is a constant on tap, and other beers rotate bimonthly through another handle.

Playing Through the Foothills

It’s always nice to play an unfamiliar course twice to get a better feel for it. I meant to play CordeValle once from the 6,703-yard tees and once from the 6,096-yard tees, but on the second day I was paired with a twosome playing from the longer tees, so who was I to hold up progress?

As I soon enough discovered, Robert Trent Jones Jr. has fashioned a visually splendid layout that is sneaky tough. It looks wide open, but shots that stray from the fairway can dribble into the proverbial meandering creek, seemingly coursing throughout the property just to gobble up balls.

If not the creek, then patches of dense grasses or groves of sycamores and live oaks suffice. My scorecards are pockmarked with notations about lost balls and penalty strokes. My first day I ran out of ammo, exploding from a bunker behind the eighteenth green directly into the pond fronting the green. No more balls, game over.

In spite of my travails, I loved the course, which shot right up the best-in-state rankings since opening. (It’s currently number 7 on Golfweek’s Best-in-state list for California public access courses, after such stiff competition as Pebble Beach, Spyglass Hill and Pasatiempo, but ahead of Torrey Pines South, the Links at Spanish Bay and others.)

I enjoyed the look, strategy and variety of the rounds. Though rated 73.4 with a slope of 136 from the green tees I played, the challenge is usually self-evident, except when some off-kilter tee balls set up blind second shots.

The mixed bag of yardages keeps the brain working on the tee, instead of blandly reaching for the driver on all the non-par-3s. But club selection can also be discussed with a caddy. CordeValle is eminently walkable, and the best way to take advantage of this is through the caddy program. The resort contracts with the company that trains loopers for resorts nationwide (like Pinehurst) or, indeed, internationally (like Doonbeg in Ireland), so they’re well-versed with the terrain.

And the local knowledge is particularly helpful on the greens, where more adventures await at CordeValle—they have plenty of movement in them, and are cut to roll fast. Beginning with a good read is a strong point in favor of the caddy program.

But so is the ability to just enjoy the walk unencumbered by one’s bag, while taking in that strange and curious air.

It was not an American beer, but Belgian. My habit of drinking imports on the most iconic American holiday stretches back to my younger drinking days, when there weren’t that many American beers around of any great interest. To try anything somewhat different, something with a little more impact than the typical watery lagers of the day, imports were the way to go.

I was taking beer hunting fairly seriously early on–the drinking age was still 18 then (I’m talking late ‘60s-early ‘70s in suburban New York). But there weren’t a lot of big finds to be found, beyond obscure German lagers. To unearth a dark beer was a coup; a Belgian oddity would have seemed like something from another planet. Still, before the Fourth I’d head to the local beer distributor and stock up on whatever was new and unfamiliar.

I was a lucky kid growing up. My family belonged to a pool club–five families split the expenses originally, though the number grew over the years. The luckiest part was that the pool was in our backyard. I learned to swim there, and spent many a Fourth right there: playing baseball or volleyball as the day went on, downing countless hamburgers, hot dogs, ears of corn, slices of watermelon, while swimming for hours, sunning, contracting skin cancer….

The wonder is I never lost an eye or went deaf or blew off a bodily appendage from all the fireworks we set off as evening fell on the Fourth. We put on major illegal fireworks displays in those days, all fueled by our day-long ingestion of fairly potent beery imports.

True, the odd bottle rocket would sometime go screeching into the assembled crowd, sending a few of the timid diving off their lawn chairs for cover. A patch of lawn might catch afire from time to time, but that only suggested another fine use for all that imported beer.

All was well as long as we followed the four-word mantra of the fireworks-obsessed: Light fuse, get away. Those were the concise instructions right on the pack of firecrackers, cherry bombs, ashcans, Roman candles, fountains, or whatever ordinance we were torching. Sometimes the translator of the Chinese (all the fireworks seemed to be Chinese) aimed at a slight literary note: Light fuse, retire quickly. Or the always helpful: Do not hold in hand after lighting.

Those Fourths were among the most thrilling and satisfying days of my life, and I think I say that without undue nostalgic haze.

This Fourth was a bit muted after my wife pulled a muscle (or something) in her back. Lynn and I were supposed to march in Brattleboro’s Fourth of July parade in support of Vermont gubernatorial candidate Peter Shumlin, but that as well as an evening party had to go by the boards.

But there was still the beer! If Belgian, the Kasteel Rouge is just about as American as cherry pie, since that’s pretty much what it tastes like. Well, a spiked cherry pie, anyway.

The brewery site in West Flanders was a monastery in 640, succeeded by an eleventh-century castle, and the present building, dating back to 1736 but maintaining the Middle Ages cellars. The Van Honsebrouck family bought the castle in 1986, and maintain an outdoor café and indoor beer cellar for those looking to try the various brewery lines–Kasteel, St. Louis, Brigand and Bacchus.

The Van Honsebroucks have brewed in Ingelmunster since 1900, giving them clear entry into the non-profit Belgian Family Brewers association, a group which requires that members have been brewing beer in Belgium non-stop for at least 50 years. Wetten Importers of Virginia distribute the Van Honsebrouck beers in the U.S.

The brewery suggests that the Rouge would pair well with barbecue, so that worked for the Fourth of July. It pours out garnet with a red-tinged head and is thankfully not overly sweet, but would surely serve as an aperitif or dessert beer, too. There’s a sophisticated swirl of flavor, spice and depth to the Rouge, but there’s no question that tart cherry dominates the experience.

Cherry Bomb Vortex, by E.V. Day

The base of the beer is Kasteel Donker, a brown ale of 11% ABV left to mature for six months on sour cherries, and then cherry juice is added as well, which probably accounts for lowering the ABV to 8%.

But at 8% ABV, this is no half-inch firecracker. Nonetheless, it was a hot day, it was the Fourth of July, so after I popped the cork and lit its proverbial fuse, I took great satisfaction in retiring the Rouge rather quickly.

Name: Kasteel Rouge
Brewer: Castle Brewery Van Honsebrouck, Ingelmunster, Belgium
Style: Fruit beer
ABV: 8%
Availability: Year-round, about 33 states nationwide
For More Information: vanhonsebrouck.be

Thanks to E.V. Day for use of Cherry Bomb Vortex, 2002, Red Sequin dress with monofilament and turnbuckles (192 x 240 x 240) in the Exploding Couture series.

Still, it’s not likely to overtake Bud Light in sales anytime soon. Any Bud Light fans who innocently uncap (and then uncork) this beer for their first taste of a lambic should be prepared–their heads will soon be spinning like tops.

The singularity of the flavor is shocking to the uninitiated, and eye-opening enough even for those well-versed in the eccentricities of Belgian brewing. For the former, the briefest of primers:

Faro is a subset of lambic beer, an appellation reserved for spontaneously fermented beers from the Lambic region around and in Brussels. (Such beers brewed elsewhere are usually just called wild beers, which certainly works.) Lambics are made with a generous portion of unmalted wheat (often 30% of the total grain bill), lightly malted barley and aged hops (for their preservative rather than bittering character).

The koelschip at Brouwerij Lindemans

After a long boil (four to five hours) called a turbid mash, the wort is poured into a shallow open fermenting vessel called a koelschip (coolship). Then the fun begins. Brewers basically just leave the windows open, usually for one cool October to May night, and let the wild yeasts–Brettanomyces bruxellensis and lambicus–take over. No yeast is pitched; it’s all, well, spontaneous, the pure magic of nature diving right into the brewing process and producing results that are only roughly predictable.

Detail from "Peasant Wedding Feast" by Pieter Brughel the Elder, c. 1567

The day after the night of consummation the wort is put into oak casks or tanks with oak chips for fermentation and up to one or two years for maturation. Lambics are sometimes served straight from the barrel in earthenware jugs, just as they are in those old Breughel paintings, particularly in Brussels cafes, but more often different years are blended in a form called geuze (in various spellings), or in fruit versions. Lindemans offers a geuze called Cuvée René, and the typical kriek and framboise lambics (cherries and raspberries). But it extends the line to pomme, cassis, peche (apple, black currant and peach), all imported by Merchant du Vin.

Lindemans Faro typically adds dark Belgian candi sugar to the mix of young and old lambic. The dark green bottle offers no suggestion that the beer will pour out amber, with a mild head, but an aroma that breathes Belgium: fruity–apricots and apples, reminiscent of a cider–with a touch of vinegar.

The palate is simultaneously tart and sweet (in truth, a bit too sweet for me), and does a real dance in the mouth. There’s a moment of velvety coating on the front of the tongue, but the overall effect quickly becomes puckering and finishes sour–in a good way.

Yes, it’s an acquired taste, but it’s no hardship to acquire it. For all its impact of flavor, Faro is actually a fairly mild beer, one that works well as an aperitif, but equally well as a dessert beer, especially with a fruit dish, and certainly a refresher in any season.

Name: Faro
Brewer: Lindemans, Vlezenbeek, Belgium
Style: Faro
ABV: 4.0%
Availability: Nationwide
For More Information: www.lindemans.be

Clearly, I need to get to Maine more often, since I’ve never been to any one of the three Gritty McDuff’s brewpubs in the state (in Portland, Freeport, and Auburn), although I’ve long been a fan of the company’s Black Fly Stout and its label art, depicting that nefarious gnat is all its swarming glory.

Gritty’s has been around since 1988, when partners Richard Pfeffer and Ed Stebbins opened the Portland brewpub, making it the first in Maine since Prohibition, and the third in New England.

Portland is a swinging beer scene these days, quite in contrast to its earlier history as the site of one of the first temperance societies, founded in 1815. And in 1851, Portland’s mayor, Neal S. Dow, talked Maine’s governor into signing a statewide prohibition act. It became known as The Maine Law, and it outlawed the manufacture and sale of alcohol except for medicinal and mechanical purposes. I’m not sure what the latter refers to. Seems to me downing a brew after mowing the lawn would qualify as a mechanical purpose.

Neal Dow, the Napoleon of Temperance

In any case, by 1855, suspicions arose that Dow himself, the Napoleon of Temperance, had a cache of medical and mechanical goods stashed away. It all came to a head, so to speak, in the Portland Rum Riot on June 2, when Dow had the militia fire in a crowd of a few thousand thirsty rock-throwers, killing one and wounding seven.

The Maine Law was repealed the next year, and Dow’s reputation firmly on the downward path.

But times have changed for the better, and no one in Portland need be thirsty for long anymore.

For some reason, I confess, I had no great expectations for this beer, since summer beers (if usually lagers) are often timid ones, brewers hoping to capture those imbibers stuck in the mass market beer rut. And knowing that Gritty’s bottled beers are contract-brewed at Shipyard in Portland also put some unwarranted doubt in my mind. (There’s absolutely no reason this should matter.)

Net result was that I was pleasantly surprised to find this a quite tasty beer, well-positioned indeed for the season. But it will be best fresh. When I had a few bottles direct from the brewery there was an appealingly toasted grain nose (perhaps aided by a touch of wheat malt), a hint of the Cascade hops, a nice touch of malt sweetness and a decent bite in the finish (the Saaz hops?). A fine summer refresher.

Saving my last bottle for today, more than a couple of months, wasn’t a great idea, as the aroma and finish were holding on sturdily, but the palate had thinned out considerably. Which suggests a Vacationland idea to me–get behind the wheel, head for Maine, and pop open a bottle to sample side by side with a pint on draft at a Gritty pub.

Name: Vacationland Summer Ale
Brewer: Gritty McDuff’s, Portland, Maine
Style: Blonde ale
ABV: 4.9%
Availability: April through August; seven northeast states and Florida.
For More Information: gritty.com

(Neal Dow photo courtesy of Maine Memory Network)