Good morning,
While sipping a particularly satisfying Cherry Porter the other evening, I paused to consider what draws someone to seek out a good craft beer. I thought about Proust. Now, I'm no expert on Marcel Proust nor do I claim to be an expert when it comes to beer. These are after all, random thoughts. I may be on firmer ground with beer. I've consumed much more beer than I've read Proust. In college I didn't even finish the selected readings my professor assigned by Proust. I instead drank quite a bit of beer. I digress.
Proust takes a bite of a bland cookie and immediately experiences a shuddering deja vous. His past memory invades his present reality and viola....epiphany! Think if he had only sipped a dopplebock or wittbier! Seven volumes of stream of consciousness writing wouldn't have touched the experience. So, whats the beer angle? OK, I'll try to tie this up.
When you like beer, good beer, and you've brewed beer, the first taste of a really well made beer is "Proustian". That first sip brings back the very first beer you brewed. The esters are immediately recognized as the pint presses your lips. The taste is "new", "raw", "bright", "earthy". It doesn't need a "born on date". Its birth stamps itself across your pallate. You know instinctively that your tasting something whose basic components haven't changed since it was first created. It is a deep hint of perfection and community........hidden memories of the Bacchanal. Persephone clawing her way from Hades. Adam no doubt brewed to taste once more the ghost-garden lost to him. In my personal mythology Christ, after rolling away the stone, (but before appearing before his quaking disciples) causually wiped the foam from his beard. Host partaking of Host! I hope you get my drift....I'm going to pull myself from the edge of the abyss and pull myself a pint of brown.
If you're in the mood for your own Proustian experience follow the link to Right Brain Brewery to the above right.....or here! http://www.rightbrainbrewery.com
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