Scott Willis demonstrating the power of yoga (courtesy of Timothy Thrasher, Thrasher Graphics)

In the year of his grieving, 2001, Scott Willis would hop in his car and just drive south from Brattleboro, Vermont, on Route 5, the back road through Guilford, into Bernardston, Massachusetts, Greenfield, Deerfield, as far as he needed to go until his equilibrium returned. Then he’d turn around and head home. His father, Ed, had died that June, and then the shock of 9/11 just compounded the dislocation.

Golf had been a big part of Scott’s childhood in Walpole and Keene, New Hampshire. He would caddy for his dad and mom, he and his dad would play together occasionally, and the pair would frequently watch golf on television together. For a time hardly a spring or summer day went by when Scott and his friends weren’t playing or caddying out at the nine-hole Hooper Golf Course in Walpole. But he essentially quit the game after ninth grade, to concentrate on baseball, music, girls.

By 2001, he had barely played a half dozen times in 35 years. Then one day, motoring between Bernardston and Greenfield, he decided to stop at Sammy K’s driving range and hit out a few balls. Another day he veered over to the Northfield Golf Club, went to the practice green in a medium to pouring rain and just stayed out there, putting. “It felt good,” he recalled recently. “I liked it.”

He played a few times at Northfield in 2002, then joined in August. The next year he signed up at the Brattleboro Country Club, where he is still a member. “Not long after I resumed playing I realized it wasn’t a big step from there to putting my two loves together.”

The other love is yoga. After a varied career path as a musician and academic counselor, Willis took his first yoga class in 1987, when he was 35, “And it all immediately felt so good, physically and emotionally.”

It still does. The way Willis puts it to his students–he has now taught yoga since moving to Brattleboro in 1992–is that, “Yoga is like a well I can always go to to get water. And for me, golf is yoga outside.”

Be the Ball

From the Sanskrit root, yuj–to bind, or unite–yoga is the ancient means to unite mind, body and spirit. How this is done can be interpreted in a bewildering number of ways, not a few of which Willis has studied. “Yoga is about postures, breath work, meditation and philosophy. I think of it as a practice of three things: gratitude, loving kindness and forgiveness, mindfulness in daily life. There is a spiritual component to it; I encourage people to connect to whatever that means to their deeper selves. “

Be the Ball

But his classes–particularly his Golf Yoga classes–are laid-back and easy-going, conducted with a sense of humor, urging students to go at their own paces, to the comfortable edge of a stretch or yoga pose.

“I tell students yoga is an oasis of time where they’re not responsible to or for anyone else, with no need to impress anyone in class or the instructor. Pretty much like a round of golf.” Willis finds golf such an opportunity to really focus that he has occasionally put together “Meditation in motion” foursomes that play for nine holes in relative silence.

He doesn’t teach golf technique. The Golf Yoga classes he conducted over the last four years consist of six dynamic stretches and nine static stretches–some classic yoga postures like Warrior, Dance, Willow with golf club in hand–all at a relaxed pace. In place of meditations that might begin and end typical yoga classes, Willis plays taped excerpts from the likes of golf psychologist Dr. Bob Rotella, and might wrap up a session with a Jim McLean video.

Scott holding the coveted Be the Ball Scramble trophy

Ten weekly sessions culminate just about the time the golf season opens in Vermont–and then it’s time for the Be the Ball Scramble for all current and former students.

Does it help? “Using myself as an example,” he said, “I was a 24 handicap when I started playing again. I’m a nine now.”

But he’s not stopping there. He suspended the class in 2010 in favor of giving private lessons, going a little deeper into the sports psychology angle, but he’s taking them up again early in 2012.

“The idea is to maximize the enjoyment of the game. It’s like Bagger Vance says (in Steven Pressfield’s novel)–through focusing one can experience levels of awareness deeper than usual.” If we play to the level that our subconscious lets us play, then we need to convince the subconscious to let us play better. And to that end Willis has created methods for players to become more factually aware of their games, and affirmations that help them visualize playing better.

In his own case, he’s created a precise scenario that has him shooting a 68 on October 15, 2013, thereby lowering his handicap to four. He won’t promise this will happen, but for now he’ll admit no doubt about it, either, merely commenting: “Check back with me then.”

———————–

More information on Scott Willis and his Golf Yoga classes can be found at www.Solarhillyoga.com; he can be reached at Scott-willis@comcast.net, or (802) 257-1926.

The Yoga Center at Solar Hill studio, Brattleboro, Vermont

How golf and yoga went down in the desert during the Golf Road Warriors Scottsdale trip, “The Golf Yoga Connection” here.

Twenty-six new governors are taking up the reins of power this year, and the excitement arrived here in Vermont this week. On Wednesday the Governor-elect, Peter Shumlin, came to Brattleboro for a home county celebration; he took the oath of office at the State House in Montpelier on Thursday and it was party time again on Friday at the inaugural ball.

Sam Brownback

No Vermont brewer had the wisdom to stir up a special batch for the 81^st Governor of the fourteenth state, like the Blind Tiger Brewery of Topeka did for incoming Kansas Governor Sam Brownback. Kansas is the wheat state, so brewmaster John Dean (hmm), created a brown Brownback Wheat Beer.

Out in Colorado, new Governor John Hickenlooper used to own the Wynkoop Brewing Company in Denver, and it seized the day by producing Inaugurale. The 6.8% ABV beer fell somewhere between a strong brown ale and a winter warmer. According to the brewery blog, it was “a reach-across-the-aisle creation.”

Another Colorado brewery, Oskar Blues, was the first to put craft beer in cans with its Dale’s Pale Ale in 2002, but more recently it produced Gubna Imperial IPA, which is a strong, highly hopped beer it bluntly calls a “hop grenade in a can.”

So without a beer to call his own, I decided my mission was to get a can of Gubna into Governor Shumlin’s hands. I would have two opportunities, as Lynn and I were going to both the Wednesday and Friday events.

We’ve been Shumlin supporters for quite some time, regularly returning him to the statehouse in the 90’s, where he eventually became President pro-tempore of the Senate.

Something strange happened in Vermont in 2002, when Republicans won the races for Governor and Lieutenant Governor. Shumlin’s loss to Lieutenant Governor Brian Dubie was, he thought, the end of his political career, and he was prepared to turn back to private life. That lasted until he returned to the Senate in 2006, when he was again selected to serve as the President pro-tempore.

Lynn, who served as the chair of the Windham County Democratic Committee in that period, kept pestering Shumlin to run for Governor. When he finally did, so did four other strong Democratic candidates. So first we sweated through a primary campaign (which ended in a Shumlin victory, but with the vote close enough to prompt a recount, which I took part in). Then Shumlin went up against Brian Dubie again, this time for the top spot.

The race was too close to call until the morning after election day, when Dubie conceded, and relief mixed with celebration.

Shumlin speaking at the Brattleboro Museum

It was all smiles and celebration Wednesday night at the Brattleboro Museum. Shumlin spoke briefly, mainly by way of saying thanks to his local supporters, and then he spent hours pressing the flesh and posing for pictures.

I finally had my chance, and held out the can of Gubna to him: “I’m going to present you with your first ethical dilemma, as to whether you can accept this gift or not.”

I also invoked Hickenlooper’s name–Shumlin had recently run into him at what he called “Baby Governors’ school,” a weekend seminar for Governor-elects led by their predecessors.

“Interesting guy,” said Shumlin. Then, having a laugh at the beer’s name, “Oh, I’ll absolutely take it.”

“It’s a strong one, so drink it carefully.”

I probably sounded more worried about how he would treat the beer than about how he would run the state government. Which I have no worries about at all.

It’s almost not fair to say that Gubna has a mammoth hop nose, since a prominent proboscis is one of Gov. Shumlin’s most quickly evident features–one he once actually employed as a silhouette on a campaign poster in 2002.

During the campaign last year Shumlin joked about a radio broadcaster who said he had won the primary by a nose: “If I’d won by my nose it would have been by a hell of a lot more than 197 votes.”

Nonetheless, the Gubna aroma is immense, citrusy, with a touch of sweet hay. Others might call this onion. The beer is made entirely with Summit hops; cruising the interwebs in search of information about the hop produces the usual mishmash of fact, fancy, misinformation and strongly held opinions, but it’s safe to say that many perceive an onion component when the hop is used too late in the boil. Others have suggested Gubna smells like garlic, marijuana, an unfinished pine dresser, nail polish, or a tropical fruit bowl.

A more berry like fruit aroma does come through as the beer warms a bit. If it never does warm up, you’re drinking it too fast for a 10% ABV brew. Pour this one into a snifter and take some time with it.

(Who’s working on the study that says 12 ounces of microbrewed beer in a can is polished off more quickly than the same beer poured from a bottle?)

One might expect the palate to be astringent, but it’s surprisingly caramel sweet, though a high-pitched hop bite lurks around the corner and lingers on with a wash of alcohol.

There was a new Governor but no Gubna at the Inaugural Ball Friday night, at the Sugarbush ski resort in Warren. It was all-Vermont night as it should have been, with Vermont beers, foods, and members from various groups around the state forged into the Vermont All-Star Band.

Gov. Shumlin dancing with his daughter, Olivia, at his Inaugural Ball

They earned the title–Dave Grippo, Brian McCarthy, Russ Lawton, Ray Paczowski, Bob Wagner, Lowell Thompson, D Davis and Jon Rogone were rocking and the dancing went on for hours. The covers were heavy on tunes by The Band and Bob Dylan, which suited us just fine.

The new Governor may be forced to do some budget cutting this year, which won’t be easy. But he demonstrated out on the dance floor that he sure can cut a rug. I may never find out if he liked the Gubna. Then again, this being Vermont, I just might.

But along with all the other celebrants at the ball, we knew the answer when the chorus of “Like a Rolling Stone” came around. How did it feel? It felt great.

Name: Gubna Imperial IPA
Brewer: Oskar Blues Brewery, Longmont, Colorado
Style: Double IPA
ABV: 10%
Availability: Year-round, 25 states
For More Information: oskarblues.com

When in Pennsylvania, drink Keystone State beers. My friend and MOTO Research Team member Prentiss Smith was afraid there wouldn’t be any suitable brews on hand for me when we arrived Friday night for the opening bash in the weekend festivities celebrating the marriage of his son, Prentiss Smith Jr., to Lauren Katz, so he went out and somehow managed to score a miscellaneous six-pack of local beers. This was no easy task, considering the state’s bizarre laws, which usually require buying beer a case at a time.

The rehearsal dinner was as sumptuous a gala as many weddings themselves, a Mexican-themed evening at the home of the bride-to-be’s parents, Connie and Sam Katz in the Chestnut Hill section of Philadelphia.

Sam Katz made three unsuccessful runs for Mayor of Philadelphia, each time as a Republican, though he began his political life as a Democrat. He switched parties more to gain a place on the ballot than because his convictions had changed, and the rumor is afloat that he is now contemplating another shot at the post, this time as a registered Democrat. But he gamely refrained from discussing politics during the wedding weekend.

The only hitch in the program was that recent torrential rains had created massive traffic tie-ups, and a bus bringing most of the out-of-town guests from a downtown hotel–normally a short ride–took about an hour and a half, delaying the festivities and the arrival of the prized six-pack. But I dallied pleasantly enough with the Negra Modelo on hand.

Prentiss had chosen wisely, with beers from the Lancaster Brewing Company, Victory, Yards, and Stoudts. With a massive cold, I figured I’d be lucky to taste anything, so I made my choices based on whimsy and bottle art. Who could resist something called Amish Four Grain Pale Ale? The label suggested, perhaps redundantly, that this Lancaster Brewing Company beer was “Brewed Naturally–Without Preservatives.” It said nothing about the use of electricity or distribution of the beer via motor vehicles.

The beer does include oats, rye and malted wheat along with malted barley, comes in at 5.3% ABV, is a deep copper, and I was able to discern a toasty character, and some floral hop aroma thanks to dry-hopping with Saaz hops.

Lancaster was home to our fifteenth and, some say, worst President, James Buchanan. I’m halfway through his biography, as I continue on in my self-assigned Presidential reading project. This one, by Philip S. Klein, is not badly written, but I’m still yearning to get to the next President–it’s been a bit of dry run of late with Taylor, Fillmore, Pierce and Buchanan in numbing sequence.

Perhaps with that in mind, my next choice was one of Yards Brewing Company’s Ales of the Revolution, General Washington’s Tavern Porter. The others in the series are Poor Richard’s Tavern Spruce Ale and Thomas Jefferson’s Tavern Ale, all three said to be based on recipes our founding drinkers used themselves to concoct brews, though whether George, Ben and Tommy did any of the actual brewing themselves is open to historical debate.

The Tavern Porter label claims the General had the recipe brewed, “to satisfy his thirsty field officers,” but there’s no debating that it’s a sturdy dark pleasure, coming in at 7% ABV, with a strong hint of the molasses used in the brewing.

Prentiss Smith Jr. and Lauren Katz, the night before their wedding

We stayed with old friends Will Doak and Andrea Botts, who live appealingly close to Downingtown, home of the Victory Brewing Company. As mentioned in the entry for Victory’s Golden Monkey back at TAP Beer of the Week 10, Will and Andrea are accomplished beer nuts in their own right, so there was no question that we’d be visiting the brewery on Sunday.

It turned out that Victory was sponsoring a fall festival that day right in downtown Downingtown, packing the streets with food and craft booths, and the new Victory Brewpub On Wheels, basically a mammoth rolling beer dispenser. The B.P.O.W. is the subject of the company’s first-ever commercial, and a funny one at that, showing what might happen if the B.P.O.W. made the rounds of the neighborhood like an ice cream truck.

The cast of the commercial is made up of employees or friends of the brewery, including co-founder and owner Bill Covaleski, playing the crucial part of Man w/Suitcase.

Bill was trying to direct some of the human traffic in the streets the day of the festival, and I reintroduced myself as the guy he sat with in the Flat Street Pub one night during the Brattleboro Brewers Festival in May. No need–he even remembered I was drinking Victory Hop Devil that night, an impressive feat of suds recall.

The overflow street crowd had the same idea we did–go over to the brewery and brewpub. So we had to wait a bit for a bite and some beers, but that gave us time to choose our sampler beers from the bulging list available.

Once home, I decided it was time to tackle the V-12 my brother gave me back in January. If the Golden Monkey is a triple, the V-12 is a quadruple or maybe a quintuple. It’s big.

But considering the 12% ABV at bottling (it’s liable to keep climbing as a bottle-conditioned beer), it goes down like the Monkey–all too smoothly, with warmth but little alcoholic burn. There’s a vigorous malt backbone and an energetic play of flavors–spicy, fruity, yeasty. I’m sure I was lucky in that I had help drinking it, but it was disappointing nonetheless when I poured out the last of it.

The label noted I had a March 2, 2009 bottling, with the recommendation that I drink it before five years had elapsed. Done.

Name: V-12
Brewer: Victory Brewing Company, Downingtown, PA
Style: Belgian Quadruple
ABV: 12%
Availability: Year-round, 30 states
For More Information: victorybeer.com

Well, it was hard not to be happy–the weather was beautiful and so was the bride, everything went off without a hitch (except for the conjoining couple), and the site was the Holyoke Merry-Go-Round at the Heritage State Park in Massachusetts. Shortly after the ceremony was over, the carousel rides began.

Having been given the portfolio for beer for the nuptials, I was as fearful of running out as my wife was of running out of food at the rehearsal party she was cooking for. Lynn is of Italian descent, so her irrational fears are ingrown. I had only my credentials as Minister of Beer on the line to prod me into grossly overestimating just how much drinking was going to be done.

How much beer? was actually the second question, following What kind of beer? Not everyone is a beer snob like me, or as much of a hophead. At a local distributor Lynn had run across a great deal for mixed cases of Belgian beers, including Leffe Blonde, Hoegaarden White and Stella Artois, a mix that could have pleased anybody. She cursed herself for not buying ten cases on the spot, because when I called a few days later the deal was off the table for the simple reason that all the beer was gone.

I was cursing myself because I had somehow frittered away the time to brew a beer for the wedding. I had been thinking: Let’s see, if I try a test batch two months before the wedding, I’ll still have time to make one for the day itself. Then it was: Okay, forget the test batch, I still have three weeks to produce a drinkable ale. Finally, I had to admit there was no way to put a Prothalamion Ale on the tables in a week’s time.

I brewed over 100 batches of beer in my day, but that day was quite awhile back. The last batch of beer I brewed was for the wedding of my son, Mike, to Carline, and they now have three children, the oldest (Nate the Great) now nine. The label, as almost all of my beer labels, was created by Jen. (For those wondering, a prothalamion is a nuptial song, or poem, as is an epithalamium.)

When I finally came to grips with that bungle, I set my mind on bringing five gallon logs or a half-barrel keg (15 gallons) to the wedding, and felt I didn’t have to look much further than McNeill’s in Brattleboro, just down the road a piece.

Ray makes a beer once called Big-Nosed Blonde, now called Blonde Bombshell. I’m not being uncharitable (especially since Jennifer herself mentioned it), to say that either name might have applied. Both Jen and her mother have proud Roman noses. And Jen was never more of a blond bombshell than on her wedding day.

The only problem was that Ray didn’t have any in the pipeline. His ESB would be too much of a hop attack for many; I had to go a little more middle of the road. He gave me a bottle of Ruby Ale to try to see if I might want to go with that, but I settled on a five gallon log of the Dead Horse IPA for the Friday night rehearsal dinner, and a keg of the Firehouse Amber for the post-wedding festivities.

Ray had told me, “In a perfect world, there will be 40 pints in a five-gallon log, and 128 in a keg.” His caveat–that it’s not a perfect world–led me to the error of bringing some more bottled beer to the rehearsal party and, having scored a case of Blonde Bombshell bombers at the eleventh hour, putting a bottle of that on each table at the wedding.

In short, for fewer than 80 people, there was no lack of beer. What there was, after the last merry-go-round ride, was an ongoing no lack of beer.

Mike with the Dead Horse IPA

Mike had taken the Dead Horse to his hotel room on Friday night, and I gather he and my nephew, Doug, had a good go at it. But there was still plenty left over.

Setting them up from the everlasting keg

The keg situation was even more ridiculous. Though I was personally pumping some out after the (lovely) ceremony, I still needed help lifting the thing into the car at the end of the night, and used a luggage trolley to get it up to Room 317 in the hotel.

“Come get a beer in Room 317,” was the mantra for the night, and after a rather lengthy session in the hotel bar a few hardy souls did, until Lynn kicked them out so we could go to sleep.

I had until the end of the week to return all the beer hardware to Ray, but what about all the software–the leftover beer? Our old friends Joan Rockwell and Eric Singer stayed with us for three days after the wedding, and Eric and I had our share, along with leftover sausage and peppers we happily ate for three days running. Nephew Chris Allen came over to fill a few pitchers. But it was the softball team that really helped, since I took the keg to both days of a state tournament we played in.

Particularly after we were eliminated, the Mocha Joes (and members of a few other stray teams), put a good dent in the gallonage. The only requirement for filling one’s glass was to toast Jen and Glenn, whose marriage should now be heartily well-blessed.

The bride and groom, having fun

Name: Firehouse Amber
Brewer: McNeill’s Brewery, Brattleboro, Vermont
Style: Amber ale
ABV: 5.5%
Availability: VT, NH, MA, NY
For More Information: mcneillsbrewery.com

Dancing with the bride

They’re largely content to stand on the cider’s virtue’s alone, and ciders will definitely have a presence at the May 22 Brattleboro Brewers Fest–Farnum Hill of New Hampshire and J.K. Scrumpy from Michigan are scheduled to appear, and as our tenth featured company leading up to the day, Woodchuck, the largest selling U.S. cider maker.

The Vermont cidery started out humbly enough in 1991 in Proctorville, with Greg Failing, creator of the original recipe, topping off bottles by hand with a turkey baster. The current Middlebury plant is now a major player in the beverage world, turkey basters long ago replaced. But not replaced has been Failing, who remains the cider maker to this day. He began his fermentable life as a winemaker in upstate New York but began making apple wines in Vermont in 1986.

Five years later, Failing’s recipe for Woodchuck Amber Cider hit the market. (For those not in the know, a Woodchuck is slang for a native Vermonter, versus carpetbaggers like myself, known as Flatlanders.) Another Failing blend, Dark & Dry, is now known as 802, for Vermont’s area code.

The 802 was shipped off to the Great American Beer Festival in 1994, and judges couldn’t figure out where to place it into any of the regular beer categories. But in those earlier days of GABF there was a popular vote People’s Choice Award, and the Dark & Dry brought that trophy home to Vermont, beating every beer at the festival.

Cider doesn’t beat beer for me; I’m not a big fan for two simple reasons–they’re generally too sweet for my palate, and as long as I’m drinking something I’d just as soon have a beer, thanks.

Sampling three Woodchuck products this week, I found the flagship brand, Woodchuck Amber, does little to sway me for just that reason–too sweet for me. But the Granny Smith offering is a dryer, and therefore more palatable blend that many a beer (or wine) drinker could probably cozy up to.

Of the three I most enjoyed the limited release Summer Cider, with a bit more tartness to balance the sweet, and that agreeable “hint of blueberry” promised on the packaging. My wife actually thought the flavor was closer to peaches and pears than blueberries, but it’s ripe and juicy fruit either way.

The aroma and flavor actually reminded me of hard candy bon-bons, the kind with a soft fruity center, which I happen to like. And I liked this, too.

Name: Woodchuck Draft Ciders
Brewer: Green Mountain Beverage, Middlebury, Vermont
Style: Hard Cider
ABV: 5%
Availability: Year-round plus seasonals, nationwide (Hawaii excepted)
For More Information: woodchuck.com

And if ever there were two breweries that seemed simpatico, these genre-busters are high on the list. Both seem intent on breaking down barriers, whether in terms of brewing, marketing or established beer styles.

BrewDog is notorious for brewing the world’s strongest beer, Tactical Nuclear Penguin, which came in at an astounding 32% ABV. This blew Samuel Adams Utopias out of the water. The Boston brewery had claimed the record at 27% with the 2009 vintage of Utopias, packaged in a bottle that looks like a mini-copper brewkettle and selling for (at least) $100.

But then in February of this year Schorschbräu in Gunsenhausen, Germany, had the gall to brew a Schorsch Bock, at 40%.

BrewDog partners James Watt and Martin Dickie considered this a shot across the bow, and soon responded with Sink the Bismark at 41%, coming soon to a gas station near you.

There’s also a pretty funny video about all this on the BrewDog website and the beer arms race may not be over soon, so stay tuned.

King Baasha of Israel

I’ll have more to say on Stone down the road, since I’m visiting the brewery in San Diego in June, but it’s fairly well-known nationwide these days, with the in-your-face Arrogant Bastard Ale, a beer so hoppy the label even says, “You probably won’t like this beer.” Actually, everyone seems to love it, even if they’re not worthy enough to drink it.

The limited release collaboration brew was made in Scotland, and there’s a video about this as well (both BrewDog and Stone are master marketers), chronicling some of the outsized fun the principals clearly had in the process. No one has particularly come clean on what Bashah actually stands for, although one blogsite speculated that it meant “King,” after the ancient King Baasha of Israel.

Stone co-founder Greg Koch (pronounced Cook) seemed to debunk this theory when he commented on another blog that the name wasn’t a word at all, but an acronym. This was as far as he took it, leading one reader to suggest it stood for “Black as Shit, Hoppy as Hell.”

It is all of that, with a quintet of exotic hops in the mix–Hercules, Magnum, Warrior, Centennial and Amarillo. Beyond that it’s hard to judge on any known stylistic spectrum–probably just the way these breweries like it–since I don’t really know of any other Black Belgian Style Double India Pale Ales. It could just as easily been called a WTF? Beer, except that that name was more or less covered in March by Lagunitas, with its seasonal “Malty, Robust, Jobless Recovery Ale” called Wilco Tango Foxtrot.

One thing Bashah does not seem to have much of is any Belgian character, although it was surely made with a Belgian yeast. It may be that it’s just overwhelmed by other characteristics, rare as it might be for yeast to take a back seat.

At 8.6% ABV Bashah is like a beer with training wheels for BrewDog and Stone, but it packs a punch nonetheless. The brew pours with a thick tan collar, is a deep mahogany, and gives off aromas of a booze-soaked fruitcake. Then the hops come rushing on, along with a touch of cedar in the nose.

The flavor–bitter chocolate, black malt, molasses, licorice, all totally involving. There’s an extremely bitter finish which turns puckering and somewhat unpleasantly chalky. But I bought two bottles of this high-priced number, and no matter what it’s called, I have to say I’m looking forward to Round Two.

Would that I could look forward to what will be an even more limited release of an already limited release, aged in whisky casks and spiked with blackberries, tayberries and black raspberries. This version should be released sometime in June, but I have doubts whether it will even make it across the pond.  If you see any bottles with this label (above), grab them.

Name: Bashah
Brewer: BrewDog, Fraserburgh, Scotland; Stone Brewing Co., San Diego, California
Style: Well, it’s called a Black Belgian-Style Double India Pale Ale.
ABV: 8.6%
Availability: Good luck; about 14 states
For More Information: brewdog.com; stonebrew.com

Ray McNeill and cello

Will Ray McNeill play the cello at the May 22 Brattleboro Brewers Festival? With Ray, you never quite know. He’s a classically-trained cellist, but given to wearing t-shirts emblazoned with his motto, “Beer is the reason I get up each afternoon.”

Ray, his pub, his beers, are all indispensable institutions in Brattleboro, Vermont, all trailing colorful histories. The pub is a no nonsense, funky and unpretentious hall usually replete with students and a noisy mixed crowd reveling at long tables or kibitzing by the dart boards. Ray has owned the bar for over 20 years now, from its first incarnation as Three Dollar Dewey’s on South Main Street, to its current location in the old Elliot Street firehouse, which he moved into in the summer of 1990. Brewing began the following year, after Ray did an internship at the late and lamented Vermont micro, Catamount.

In the early years, some of the beers were as wild as Ray’s tied-dyed fashions, since toned down. But the range of beer styles was and remains a hallmark. There are usually about a dozen McNeill recipes on tap, including a few cask-conditioned ales, many of which have won regional, national and international awards, not to mention sweetly scenting the air of the great metropolis of Brattleboro (actually a town of about 12,500), with malt aromas on brewing days.

When the town built a parking garage near the Elliot Street facility it literally cast a long shadow over the brewhouse, cutting off the passive heat and playing havoc with production for a time. Ray solved that by moving the bottled brewing operations into larger facilities out on Route 5, although he said starting that up was a nightmare: “Whatever could go wrong did go wrong.”

McNeill’s bomber bottles were missing from local shelves for a mournfully long time, but all is well once again, and production has increased; McNeill’s fancifully named and labeled beers (including Blonde Bombshell, Dead Horse IPA, Pullman’s Porter, Professor Brewhead’s Brown Ale and my go-to favorite, McNeill’s ESB) can now be found in six states. Sales have recently begun in New York City and according to Ray are going like wildfire, exceeding the combined sales for the beer in the other five states where it’s available.

Ray’s relatively new Warlord, the fifth in our imaginary 12-pack from brewers represented at the festival, will be poured that day, as will a special beer brewed especially for the occasion. “We haven’t started brewing that one yet, but it may well be a pale ale with Amarillo hops for bittering, finishing and dry-hopping.”

The Warlord uses equal parts of Chinook, Cascade and Centennial to balance a rich malt character. Indeed, the beer is sweet, not unlike a barleywine in character, although probably too bitter for that style, Ray said. Indeed, it’s so hoppy that it makes me sneeze every time I initially take a sip. But that assault past, I settle down for the ride, which turns out to be smooth and satisfying. It should pair nicely with a Bach unaccompanied suite for cello.

Name: Warlord
Brewer: McNeill’s Brewery, Brattleboro, Vermont
Style: Imperial IPA
ABV: 8.5%
Availability:  VT, NH, MA, RI, TN (east), NY
For More Information: mcneillsbrewery.com

Tim and Amy Brady hold the tastings every Saturday evening in the cozy pub of their 12-guest B&B, where they usually have two beers on tap and others in bottles.  Since most guests are from out of town, the couple rightly emphasizes Vermont beers, but they’re more concerned with serving up seven different styles for a one-hour crash course in beer diversity.

Amy and Tim Brady

The thirty-something young couple left their professional lives in New Jersey to take over the B&B at the end of 2007, and they’re energetic converts to and boosters of the charms of southern Vermont.  But they’re also beer nuts and evangelists for the best in the brewing arts.  They’ll travel just about anywhere to try an unfamiliar brew, and then they’ll post a video about it at their blogsite, Here for the Beer.  (I wound up in one, “Tim and Tom Talk Trappist,” a riveting essay on monastic ales.)

They’re also key players in the first Brattleboro Brewers Festival, which will roll into town in late May, with two evening pub crawls on Friday and Saturday nights, May 21 and 22, the festival itself playing out from 1 to 5 pm on Saturday.

There were ten of us for the tasting this past Saturday, four couples staying at the B&B–three from Massachusetts just visiting for a getaway, and one from New Jersey, newlyweds as of the previous evening.

We started off with a hefe-weizen  and rolled right through to an oatmeal stout, five Vermont beers, two German, a nice trip. I’d had all the beers before, but hadn’t sampled the Pinkus in a long time.  It was a pleasant reacquaintance.

There are a few novelties surrounding the beer.  The brewery, founded in 1816, is the only one of 150 breweries left in Munster, still family-run to the sixth generation.  It was the first to go all-organic, beginning in 1980, and is one of the few with a female brewmaster, Barbara Müller, at the helm.

And you don’t see an unfiltered pilsner every day, either, since cloudy beers still give some drinkers the willies.  But it may be the beer’s visual resemblance to a hefe-weizen that lends a zesty quality to the brew, not to mention the snap of the Tettnanger hops.  There’s a surprisingly fruity nose to the beer, redolent of apricots, and the overall impression is of a sturdy, filling and yet refreshing beer, suitable for any tankard.

Name: Pinkus Organic Ur Pils
Brewer: Pinkus-Müller Brewery, Munster, Germany
Style: Pilsner
ABV: 5.2%
Availability: Year-round, in all but five states (AL, MS, NH, SD, WY)
For More Information: merchantduvin.com

Tim talks beer at Forty Putney Road