Salvator Daily

I enjoy drinking German beer during the winter months. Monk-brewed, face-slapping, lederhosen-staining, oompah-farting doppelbock. Imagine a Bavarian burgermeister with a barrel all to himself, sitting in front of his roaring fire, dreaming of pigtailed milkmaids while waiting for the April thaw, only stirring from his reveries to carve another side of spit-roasted wild boar.

Well, that's not exactly how I celebrate beer o'clock in modern Boston, but it's as near as damn it bearing in mind that I wield no executive power over my fellow townspeople and an entire wild boar is prohibitively expensive these days, never mind rental of the spit-roasting equipment. So I'm confined to merely ordering the dog around and tearing strips off a rotisserie chicken from the supermarket. I also have central heating, which is far more convenient than a roaring fire although obviously not as picturesque. Still, after three or four doppelbock Salvators in my pewter stein, I soon forget about these minor deviations from the Deutsch ideal.

Come early Spring, however, my malted fantasies turn their attention to traditional English pale ale. A similar copper color but not as strong or heavy on the stomach as its German cousin. 'Hail fellow well met.' Imagine the local squire in his tricorn hat and cloak, toasting lambing season with a pork pie and an overflowing tankard. Both dandy and rake, he occupies my favorite armchair until October when the Burgermeister reappears. Because I'm not drinking any of that yellowy lager they sell in the summer. The beach bum in flip flops is not a role I wish to play even if his beer is cold and refreshing on a boiling hot day.

Comments

[John]

I enjoy drinking, in Latin America, Latin American beer. Must be an "atmosphere" thing: in all such countries, the brews themselves are merely OK. Never great, but never bad either. Poured into a glass and sipped at a table outdoors - those details are important - they do communicate a mannered, constructive leisure, as opposed to a bored, loafing one.

Last week I bicycled past a Mexican brewery. To my knowledge, no south-of-the-border beer is called Coahuila, so I presume the output gets whatever labels have been paid for by various distributors. The installation also had either smokestacks or distillation columns, neither required for making beer as far as I know. I should find all this off-putting, but I just don't. A self-termed "beer company" on a railway siding in a Mexican desert is a million miles from both a German winter and an English spring, but the industrial-scale facilitation of good living is, still, the facilitation of good living. It seems, in such a country, an achievement (as a Mexican microbrewery would seem an absurd pose).

[stephenesque]

I shall attempt a Mexican beer fantasy this summer (perhaps after one of my infrequent cycling jaunts along the local bike path). I just need a think of a suitable role for myself. All I can find near me are various products of Grupo Modelo but I'm sure a thorough search of specialist liquor stores might uncover something that evokes the required South American pre-siesta mood.