No Brakes by Black Bridge Brewery

The anniversary is upon us again. Seven years of brilliantly and locally brewed beer.

As many of you probably know there has been a change of ownership at the brewery in the past year. While ownership changes can be detrimental, at time, they can also send a business off on a new trajectory that is satisfying and successful.

Here’s my belief: Tim Schritter started Black Bridge exactly the way he should have. He took British beers and made them more extreme. For example, he took British IPAs and made them happier and he made them with bigger alcohol content. He took barley wines using non-traditional hops. He made huge stouts, one with a ridiculous amount of hops (Locomotive Stout. Bring. It. Back!) He’s made a huge stout in bourbon barrels. He garnered attention with the extreme and outrageous beers. They were just what they were supposed to be: British and Scottish beers, next level.

Karry Hovig has been helping and brewing at Black Bridge from the beginning. Now he and Jesh run the brewery and Karry has taken the beers to a more German and Belgian tradition. He kept some of the IPA’s but added Belgian abbey’s and wit’s, some smoked beers, some sours. They were just what Black Bridge needed to keep it relative and exciting.

We are now at year seven and Black Bridge’s anniversary beer epitomizes the shift noted above. The beer is an imperial saison, which basically means it’s a funky farmhouse ale that is approachable and subtly powerful. Emphasis on subtle, in my opinion.

That Smell …

It’s earthy with hints of pear. Better noses than I stated there is banana as well.

In Appearance …

Lots of head, white, rocky, sustaining; a tawny, ochre tincture. Not quite as dark as I’d thought, not the rosy wine I’d hoped, but inviting nonetheless.

But The Taste …

First, it’s got a light body for such a strong beer. This is an imperial saison with an alcohol content of around ten percent. But you’d not guess that from the body. It’s light without being effervescent. Perfect. The alcohol presence can be discerned but it takes some attention. Pepper and oak blend into an ethereal essence on the tongue.

The Conclusion of the Matter …

Fantastic. It’s not in your face, but it is definitely flavorful. It’s a philosophical beer demanding you consider it’s many facets and ask the great question: what is beer? Brilliant. I salute their continued efforts.

They have not been stopped by a change of ownership, nor by the insane hysteria of this COVID thing, nor by anything else. Determined, unstoppable, intransigent. There are no brakes on the juggernaut of Black Bridge.

It’s available on Saturday, August 8. Starting at 9 am. Cheers!

Two Beery Things

Thing 1: Local craft beer adds an element of delectation to the joy of home brewing. During my current session of home brewing a Belgian pale ale I consumed a growler of Black Bridge’s Forbidden Red. Think of it as a slightly drier, thinner version of 80 Shilling, one of my perennial favorites. Forbidden has a malty aroma, appealing white collar and is limpid orange/red in color. Tasty without being distracting, perfect for brewing. Anyway, on to …

Thing 2: A professionally produced Belgian pale will soon be on tap at Black Bridge. It is their seasonal No Pricks Allowed brewed with prickly pear, at least the juice. It is the color of a fresh bruise and seems drier and more tart this time. Also, tasted some cactus and I wasn’t even trying.

And BeerSmith is cool.

Beer recommendations for this week: Belgian Pale Ales.

Coppertop Alehouse

A few weeks ago I was able to go to Prescott, Arizona with Karry from Black Bridge Brewery here in Kingman.  One of the places he was adamant about us visiting was Coppertop Alehouse.   It is on Montezuma Street, in the proximity of Whiskey Row, and it’s a tiny place, the proverbial hole in the wall.  A dozen people would crowd the pub.

Gaston and Scott are the brewers/owners/operators.  They are gracious hosts, so here’s a “thanks” to them both for an enjoyable couple of hours.  One of the reasons we went to Coppertop was Karry’s insistence on introducing me to their Belgian quad.  Since Karry knows his Belgians, I was amenable to this idea.   And he was right.

The quad was wonderful.  It hit all the markers in the style guidelines, to be sure.  Mid-range brown, like a cola or tea; it was sweetish, and had a definite dark fruit character.  (Evidently, they make their own candi sugar, too.)  It was a strong beer, no denying that.  But it did have that ephemeral hint of joy mixed in, just a delight of a beer.

But it was the tripel that I loved even more.  This was bright, yellowish-orange, moderate body, and hints of citrus. It was like drinking a sparkly wheat beer in Wonderland (I know, there’s no wheat; it just felt that bright and refreshing).  It is also strong beer, around 10%, but unlike the quad, brewer Gaston disguised the power of the tripel. It tastes and feels like a session beer but it is not.  Far too strong for that such things.

What a cool place!  A small 40+ gallon brew system, their own Candi sugar, their own spirits – vodka, gin and plum schnapps. It’s got a great local pub vibe, familial, comfortable, salubrious. Drop in, grab a chair, chat with the owners.  If I recall correctly, there was even some bartering going on there, fresh eggs for a small amount of a banner quad.  If political debate is your thing … well, stop by and talk to Gaston about that end of things.

And drink that tripel.  Crafted with such elan, just can’t say enough good things about it and the brewery.

The Mandela Effect and a Door to Hell

Like so many other Terrans, I grew up in a house. The house was located in Aztec, New Mexico. I even remember the name of the road, San Juan Ave. (My friend Royal can still recall my old phone number, a landline, connected to a yellow phone mounted to the wall in a hallway in the house; this was back in the ante-nomophobia era). There was a picture window. Some kind of floral pattern on the couch and chairs. There was a television.

In that house, via that television, I know that I watched a TV series. Yes, fine, I watched more than one, that is not the point of this anecdote. The point is that there was a particular series I watched, and I’m positive I watched it in that house in the late 1980s.

The series was Sliders.  Perhaps you remember this show.  A young genius type discovers a portal to various parallel, alternate Earth’s. He and his entourage travel through these parallel dimensions on a quest to return to their own earth.  Each dimension of Earth had some variation from the “reality” we experience.  In one episode, they tackled the subject of gender politics.  Women were running everything in that dimension and men were dealing with suppression.  One episode imagined what would happen if the Summer of Love had never ended.

Some time back, it became available on Netflix.  It claimed the show was from 1995.

No.  No, it was somewhere around 1988.

By ‘95 I had been married for three years and had a child on the way.  And I lived here, in Kingman, Arizona. It seems certain to me that I would remember watching that show with my nascent family if it had indeed happened in 1995.  My wife doesn’t remember watching it with me.  See?  It clearly happened in the late 80s, before I met my wife.

That blasted archive of all knowledge known as Wikipedia had the audacity to agree with Netflix. Sliders began, wrote the anonymous know-it-all-and-sooooooo-misinformed writer of the entry for this show, in 1995. The rest of the Internet, in keeping with its conspiratorial nature, agreed.

1995.

This was my first encounter with the Mandela Effect.

Tell us more of this enigmatic phenomenon named after a South African philanthropist, you say. I hearken to your clamor.

The Mandela Effect refers to collective memories that don’t jive with what many call reality. Some say they are false memories. One example is my experience above with Sliders. My mind clearly tells me when I watched, evidence indicates otherwise. So, which is right? My memory or the data “they” have collected?

Here are some other examples of this Mandela Effect:

• The most well known is likely the namesake of the memory anomaly: Paranormal researcher Fiona Broome evidently coined this term when she became aware that she and many other people believed that Nelson Mandela died in prison in the 1980s. He did not die until 2013, thoroughly tripping out Broome and her contingent.
• There is a group of people convinced that the comedian Sinbad made a movie called Shazam sometime in the 1990s. Why they would want to think this should be it’s own phenomenon.
• There was, maybe still is, a series of children’s books based on a family of bears, the Berenstain Bears – or was it spelled Berenstein?

There are doubtless more. Look up “Mandela Effect” on the Internets and have a ball.

That’s great, you say.  People’s memories are wonky.  Why give this issue a name?  It is because of the theories people have regarding why their memory is wonky.  They don’t believe in the wonkiness.  They believe there is something else happening.

Some contend that these alternate memories prove that portions of the world’s population are from another dimension, Ala Sliders, thus they recall these events as they occurred in their native dimension which is different from the way events unfolded in this dimension, the one wherein you are reading this blog post.   In my original dimension, Sliders was on TV in 1988;  Nelson Mandela died in prison.  I cannot express how thankful I am that the Sinbad thing did not happen in either of the dimensions in which I have existed.  How, exactly, some of us are transferring dimensions and others are not?

It may be a perfectly normal spacetime event that we have simply not observed empirically or otherwise as yet … or it’s CERN’s fault.  There are those who claim that CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, experiments have allowed this dimensional shifting.  They are seeking to substantiate the multiverse theory, after all.  Maybe they did it.

Here’s a description of one of their experiments.  “The neutron time-of-flight facility (nTOF) studies neutron-nucleus interactions for neutron energies ranging from a few meV to several GeV.”  I mean, if that doesn’t just scream, “we are opening a time portal,” well I don’t know what does.  Perhaps they have succeeded.  Shadowy figures are traveling into the past and rewriting history and that’s why certain things and events are slightly different for us.  Apparently, they are in beta-testing of this program and only doing inconsequential things such as renaming children’s books.  I’m glad to know that even in the future government funded science ops are still absolutely daft.  Hope blooms …

It is also possible that these memory problems are from glitches in the matrix.  The robot alien overlords like to dink around with their flesh batteries.  “Unplug them just a little so they think Sinbad was a superhero, tee-hee-hee.”  Jerks.

For anyone who has actually read this far, well, I salute you.  Go forth and buy yourself a treat of some kind and look in a mirror and tell yourself how bloody awesome you are.  Now I come to the point at last.

All of the above is due to Black Bridge Brewery and Tim, in particular.  I was there one eve, as is my wont (might’ve been an afternoon, actually … curse you, CERN!) and Mr Schritter happened to mention that he had a Belgian beer coming on soon that I would enjoy.  It was called Door to Hell.

I said, “Great, that was a good beer.”

He responded with something like, “You are a moron.  I’ve never had that beer on tap here.  It was a pilot brew that Fuller and I did.”

I just stood there aghast and flabbergasted and all those silly things and mumbled some kind of, “but I’m sure I had it.”  (And I did, see, in MY dimension).

Look, I even have photographic evidence of temporal or dimensional alterations:

It’s on the Glass, man.  It’s on the Glass.  Along with all the other beers made by Black Bridge.

Whatever.  In any dimension, it was a good beer.  It is a good beer.  All this shifting is demolishing my grasp on grammatical sense and tense.

Here are some notes on the actual drinking of Door to Hell, a Belgian Quad, in this current dimension.  And, no, I am sorry, I did not use a proper Belgian goblet.  I’m sure I should be punished for that.  Maybe I was, in another dimension.

The Smelly Parts
At first, there was caramel and vanilla.  And then some maple.  That melded into a grassy, resinous field.  It was spiky, if that makes sense.  Sharp, alcoholic notes rose from the field.  There’s a lot to unpack in the nose of this one.

The Optics
Condescendingly clear and a bit on the dark side.  A subdued brownish red with bubbly white head.  It looks completely unassuming but well put together.  Like Mr Bond, James Bond.

The Gustatory Dimension
There’s no escaping the dark fruit nature of this beauty.  You know, the figs, the dates and then there is bourbony caramel.   It’s also little dry, nicely crisp and juicy. Sugar and crystal, like sequins on a slinky dress.  It is sweet, rich and heavy.  Hops did not appear except in the aroma.

The Last Words
Approved.  It doesn’t have the fusty, earthy character of Belgian beers but does have a vinous quality.  It’s quite nearly Shakespearean, really, a confluence of influence, poetic palate, tragic if you drink too much at once for it is not wanting in alcohol quantity.

Gender Roles and Brewing

One of the first axioms learned in home brewing is Charlie Papazian’s Proverb:  “Relax.  Don’t worry.  Have a home brew.”  Two weeks ago I heard that refrain on the Brewing Patio at Black Bridge.  A Belgian Blonde was being brewed by two women, Rachel & Sharon.  They were both questioning temperature as the beer was being transferred to the fermentation vessels.  They were told to ‘not worry so much.’  Their response was, ‘we’re women.  We worry.’

The declaration made me wonder: do women, in fact, worry more than men?  What is the objective of their worry compared to men?  Are they concerned about their reputations?  Or are they concerned about the well being of those they serve? Or is it pointless to even make that a thing because, we are all, you know, people?  After all, let’s not forget it was a man who penned the above warning regarding worry.  Many men have read that warning and have had to remind themselves of it during a stressful brewday.

Before you continue reading, I feel I must warn you – there are no answers to the above questions.  At least, not from me.  Go forth, then, and have a full discussion of gender roles.

Traditionally women have been entrusted with domestic management.  They have always been concerned about how and known the way to take care of their family.  An important part of family life is centered around food and drink.  Beer – or wine, or mead, or alcohol of choice – has always been a part of human life; from ancient times women were usually bread makers and beer brewers. It was a home activity. Once it became a profession or an industry men arrogated it.  More women are becoming involved in the commercial brewing industry now.  Women may especially worry about their performance in this industry and others because they are working in what has now become a man’s environment and they feel they must prove themselves.  Whose fault is that?

The point?  Humans have brewed.  Humans are brewing.  Maybe we should just leave it at that.  Gender politics should not be a thing.  Therefore, I have mixed feelings on whether I should write this up the way I am. But here I am doing it.  Fine.  I’ll throw this in – one difference I noted in the Belgian brewday was the number of selfies happening.  I have no idea how that fits into the gender role discussion.

As noted above the beer being brewed was Belgian Blonde with additions of prickly pear.  That’s right, No Pricks Allowed has returned.  While the female brewers of the beer were different than last year there have been no other stylistic to the beer.  From what I recall, it was a beautiful beverage – outstanding clarity and bright purple color.  It had a light body and drank quickly and easily.  It’s Belgian-ness was not overpowering, nor was the prickly pear.

Here we are in the post-modern information age and still arguing over race and gender.  I’m simply going to argue that No Pricks Allowed was a good beer last time around.   And If I recall correctly, last year’s iteration of this beer encouraged Janelle to begin her own home brewing adventures.

Politics, gender or otherwise, may be a verboten subject at the brewery (yeah, I’m pretty sure that’s not true) but beer and brewing is always on the table so check for this Belgian Blonde in the coming week.  Raise a glass to the people in your life.