Tasting and Judgement!

"If memory serves me correctly..."

"We unveil the ingredient..."

"bang a gong, we are on!" 

"Who takes it? Whose cuisine reigns supreme?"

Various quotes from classic Iron Chef

Hey team, you know what Friday means: Art of Caesura!

I’ll come right out of the gates by saying that this is going to be a short episode…post…entry? Not for lack of content, but because what I want to talk about doesn’t really exist in a medium that I can share it. Sorry folks, smell-o-vision (and beer-o-vision) still aren’t things yet…or anymore. That’s right, this week is the answer to the question “how did Sabre turn out?”. And as a bonus for receiving my first viewer from Japan, we’re going to have loads of Iron Chef references!

With the excitement of World of Smog minis and wanting to introduce you guys and gals to Vlad and Portia, I never revealed how that beer I was brewing turned out. So this time I want to talk about that. But how do you talk about how awesome beer tastes? Well, there are a few approaches:

I could just start like a normal person and say that I'm really happy with how it turned out. It's a very drinkable English-style dark-bitter ale, lightly carbonated, and probably about 5.5% (to my shame I still haven't calculated the alcohol content, though I do have the initial and final specific gravities to do so!)

Or I could describe it using industry accepted adjectives:

Colour: ruby brown

Clarity: clear (super proud of that as it took 2 weeks of bottle conditioning just to make it “clear”)

Aroma (hops): citrus, floral, resinous, spruce, tropical fruit

Aroma (malt): burnt sugar, treacle

Fruit flavours: grapefruit, passionfruit, apple

Floral flavours: marigold, nettle

Roasted flavours: smoky, woody

Spice flavours: lemongrass, pepper

Sweet flavours: butterscotch

Alcohol flavours: bourbon

“Off” flavour and aromas: boozy

Mouthfeel: delicate, round, soft

I could use a narrative form as the judges from the original Iron Chef were wont to do:

Man, sorry, interjection. I just went back and watched that clip and holy shit was Iron Chef a great show! I used to watch it nightly in my teens, loving when Ota would pipe in: “Zacky-san, the Iron Chef is mincing the haddock eye-balls by hand…” and the chairman biting into that bell pepper at the beginning. Classic. Anyway the point that pertains here is that they would often have at least one female judge who was a big actress in Japan and she would describe the food in a hilariously narrative fashion. For Sabre, it would be:

It reminds me of the bubbling brook near my childhood homestead. The flavours dance and gurgle playfully over my tongue and soft palate. I am reminded of the lemon zest that mother would use to season our salmon. With playful hints of treacle.

Then the chairman would say “Sabre earns the people’s ovation and fame forever!”

Okay I’ve snapped out of my reverie to realise that I lied to you, it wasn’t a short blog entry after all. Turns out there is actually a lot to say about the taste of a great beer. I’m really looking forward to my next brew (which I should start pretty soon!) and I have my eye on Mangrove Jacks’ The Night Watchman Porter.

Thanks as always for joining me for The Art of Caesura!

Listening: Cleopatra – The Lumineers (I actually haven’t stopped listening to this and Ophelia for the past week!)

Reading: Back to 20 000 Leagues Under the Sea – Jules Vern

Drinking: Sabre – Ryze Brewery

Watching: It’s Such a Beautiful Day - Don Hertzfeldt 

Next week:

We'll pause from The World of Smog minis and look at the next minis that I'm getting in to. Spoiler: they're pretty wyrd...