Counting my beer blessings, yearning for more in new year
Down the Hatch
Published: December 29, 2005
Last Modified: October 19, 2006 at 05:52 AM
New Year's Day is bittersweet. Regret and sorrow mix it up with joy and triumph in the parking lot, self-confidence bucks up against doubt on the dance floor and hope tries to pick up on introspection while self-delusion shouts bad jokes from the bar.
When all is said and done, New Year's Day comes to the door like a legislator wielding two-tons of righteousness and a couple dozen consulting jobs on the side. We can moan, weep, argue and cry about it, but we can't stop the day from coming, any more than we can stop the next. Headache or not, we still have to clean up and go to work in the morning.
New Year's Eve jives to a different tempo. Although the birth of a new year comes in a fleeting moment, sublime in its brevity, we pop corks and crack bottle caps anyway. Yes, New Year's Eve is just a day before a day, a quick passing of a calendar page, but it beckons like a wishing well, full of promise and immortality.
So I'm going to throw in a few pennies in a well and see what comes of it. I always do. But first I'll count my blessings and do the beer year in review.
We have a lot to be thankful for: a thriving brewing industry, plenty of beer on tap in pubs and bars, a theater pub and an endless array of locally made beers ranging from the tried and true (Fairweather IPA) to the outrageous (Midnight Sun's chocolate pumpkin stout).
More to the point, we live in a time of good beer, and here's proof: Alaska's brewers broke a state record at September's Great American Beer Festival in Denver by coming home with six medals, the most in a single year. Alaskan Brewing Co. of Juneau got gold medals for smoked porter and Boogie Bitter, plus a silver for ESB.
Several breweries in Anchorage did well too. The Moose's Tooth Brewing Co. ended up with two bronze medals for Prince William Porter and Pipeline Stout while Midnight Sun Brewing Co. made its mark with a bronze for Arctic Rhino Coffee Porter.
Most important to me, Arctic Rhino came out in bottles; now I can find it at a liquor store near me.
Plus, the Moose's Tooth Brewery got its floors fixed just as the Tooth's pizzeria ramped up the last stage of its remodel. Parking problems follow the Tooth everywhere, but at least the place will look spruced up and maybe even have a little more room.
Yes, I know that I am truly blessed, but as my boys remind me with every passing day, human beings are built to want more. We lose something every year -- hope, loved ones, opportunities, innocence, youth, memory, Legos, reading glasses, pet gecko and so on -- and we naturally want to balance the scales of woes and joys. We seek treasures, make inroads and wish for the impossible.
So here are my beer wishes for the year:
• Home delivery.
• Timely e-mails to let me know about all the rare, one-time beers at local watering holes.
• Growlers at the Moose's Tooth.
• Variety cases of locally made beer at Costco.
• The resurrection of the 4th Avenue Theatre as a pub with live, late-night theater like cabarets, rock operas and poetry slams.
• A giant bonfire built from beer magazines that put blond chicks on the cover with pints of stout and sparkling beer vats. At that bonfire, I want music, jugglers, poets and clowns. And beer.
But mostly, I want not too much and not too little, so in a sense, I'm doing just fine. Yes, that's what I want. More of the same, more of everything.
• Daily News reporter Dawnell Smith can be reached at dsmith@adn.com.
Drink up
The Moose's Tooth will release Darth Delirium, its evil, award-winning stout of extreme sensory soulfulness this week, maybe even on Jan. 1. Later in the month, on First Tap Thursday, the Tooth will also tap its chocolate stout called Mini D, a scaled- down version of the Darth.
