Beer, like best things in life, deserves to be shared, hoarded
Down the Hatch
Published: April 6, 2006
Last Modified: October 19, 2006 at 05:52 AM
Sometimes life tastes like a frothy mug of golden sun, other times it tastes like the dregs of an old cask. Sometimes the cup brimmeth sweetly over; other times the kettle over-boils and leaves a terrible oatmeal film on the kettle walls.
Lately, my kettle has boiled over and over and over. Sometimes ale is what you drink, other times it's how you feel.
While I was on a brief and sorrowful trip to Indiana during spring break, someone dropped off a case of bitter tonic. The box of Bell's beers had everything from golden ale and three kinds of stout to a 20th anniversary beer. The beer appeared out of kindness and disappeared in kind.
It's easy to think of the country's best beer regions as Colorado, the Pacific Northwest and Alaska, but good beer shows up everywhere. Sometimes it shows up at your doorstep, other times you drive for miles and miles and miles.
This case of Bell's beer required none of that. I've tasted Bell's beers before and have even gone to the tasting room in Michigan, but I never knew till now that it's the oldest craft beer maker east of Boulder. Bell's distributes throughout the Midwest and, with its original brewery and a 50-barrel brew house nearby, can produce 60,000 barrels of beer a year.
In any business, growth requires the right ingredients, but the product matters most, and Bell's makes great beer. The brewery's Sparkling Ale is a triple-style beer fermented with Trappist and Belgian yeasts. The flavors come as a surprise, full and tart and laden with a pleasing fruitiness. But a brewery is usually judged by its flagship beers, and Bell's holds its own: Third Coast Ale, Two Hearted Ale, Kalamazoo Stout and winter varieties like double cream stout, cherry stout, java stout, brown ale, white ale, old ale -- all of them well-crafted.
Sometimes I think we have the best beer in the country, other times I wish we had more. I imagine the refreshing joy of going to a local brewery and hand-picking seven, eight, 12 different beers from the cooler and loading them into a box, all of them good, all of them in small, single-serving bottles so that I can drink one alone and still get something done.
I suppose that's why we buy cases of Sierra Nevada at Costco or mix and match six-packs at Yukon Spirits or go to Midnight Sun Brewing Company to stock up on big brown bottles that appease those with more friends and bigger appetites.
But still, I imagine.
I have a few bottles left from that case of Bell's, but I'm loathe to polish them off. I kind of like the idea of seeing a bunch of beers from the same brewery loading up my refrigerator's top shelf and in a way, Michigan seems a little exotic up there, right next to the apple sauce and leftovers.
Sometimes you share the treasures you find, other times you hoard them. That's the way it is in life and beer -- sometimes this, other times that.
• Daily News reporter Dawnell Smith can be reached at dsmith@adn.com.
