Crossing Cultures

We're maybe a month into the Year of the Rabbit, and it's been a good year for beer so far. I wasn't able to find a Chinese beer for my New Year's dinner, but a good Japanese lager did the trick.

Koshihikari Echigo - A golden lager for a prosperous year.

Japanese lagers tend to be pretty light colored - they're the color of pale gold, with a lot of grain and sugar on the nose. This one, Koshihikari Echigo, was no exception - I was hoping it would be a little more bitter, but there was a lot of rice and malt sugar that kind of threw off the balance a little bit. Usually, a sharp beer can cut through the oily finish of a Chinese stirfry and lift the more fresh, vegetal notes of steamed dishes. Without much of a hop presence, Echigo struggled with that second task, but its aggressive carbonation and crisp flavor shone through admirably.

And then, of course, there are the two most American celebrations this side of July 1: the Superbowl, and President's Day. The Superbowl is an event generally marked by its quantity and not its quality - its watchword is excess, and its patron saint just may be Animal House's Bluto. At the Superbowl, I cracked open another one of the Flying Fish Exit Series: Exit 4.

Flying Fish Exit 4. A taste of the turnpike.

Exit 4 is an "American Trippel," whatever that means. What I interpret that to be is a recipe that has its roots in Belgium, but which is then heavily inflated by American excesses. Kind of like rugby vs. football. Oh yes, I went there. As with much of NJ, this beer had two distinct phases: when ice-cold, this was a beautifully balanced beer, with wonderfully complex hop notes competing for prominence while imparting wonderful pops of bitterness and depth. The head was full of the aroma of resin, citrus, and all-around deliciousness. Unfortunately, once it warmed up, Exit 4 became sweaty, odiferous, and pretty nasty. The hops turned from fresh citrus to stale sourness, and what malty sweetness there had been was overwhelmed by an oddly acrid stench. Ladies and gentlemen, New Jersey. Ew.

Finally, President's Day: a day in which we celebrate our Presidents by buying automobiles. Makes sense to me. As good a time as any to break out the Sam Adams "American Originals" variety pack.

American Originals. Sarah Palin nowhere to be found.

From left to right, those are the Irish Red, Scotch Ale, Revolutionary Rye Ale, Noble Pils, Boston Lager, and White Ale. So Irish Red and Scotch Ale are American? Whatever. The ubiquitous Boston Lager hardly deserves a mention, and the White Ale was already a part of the Winter Sampler. For President's Day, I had a nice Revolutionary Rye Ale, which was a good deal redder than I had anticipated (I forgot to take a picture, but trust me). It had lovely orange and rye bread aromas, but I didn't really taste the rye on the tongue. Perhaps it's my proximity to New York and its caraway-studded rye loaves, but I'm a lot pickier about rye flavor than I used to be. I guess I wanted more sweetness, depth, and complexity. I also think I wanted more difference from the standard Sam Adams, and I missed that too. It's not a bad beer, but it's not different enough, I think, to be called Revolutionary.

East. Far East.

Well, I've been a little preoccupied with the day-to-day routine of my job, though that has a lot less to do with the demands of the position and a little more with the snow that keeps getting dumped on Newark. For real - it's snowing again tonight.

Over the past couple of weeks, I've started into a new job and moved into a new apartment, and the one thing that saddens me the most is that I don't have a local bar near my place. Actually, the thing that saddens me the most is that the heat in my apartment is controlled by the elderly owner of the building, and I think she's trying to get us all to grow tropical fruits in our bedrooms. It's 77 degrees in my apartment right now. So beer helps with that.

Like drinking banana-flavored pancake syrup.

Today, I'm drinking the Ginga Kogen "Silver Bottle" Weizen. I'm a little concerned that the bottle isn't silver - it's dark blue. But the label is silver, and I suppose that's what they mean. There are antelope on this label, and I was heretofore unaware that there were antelope in Japan. This beer is very pale, with an aroma of sour hoppiness that I wasn't a huge fan of at first. The head disappeared quickly, and what's left has a sort of unctuous quality on the tongue. Initial flavors of citrus melted into a very sweet core of banana esters, with a hoppy bite that clears the palate at the end. It sits rather heavily in the stomach as well: something about being so thick and yet so stingy with the carbonation, I think. Ultimately, the sweet banana flavor and syrupy texture will take a lot of getting used to, and I just don't think I'm willing to make that effort. Delightfully, the Ginga Kogen website also doubles as a tourism shill for the region.

Hello? Hello taste? Where are you?

Bonus Beer: Yebisu Premium. This was a very thin lager with very little in the way of hops, depth, or backbone. Instead, what I got was honey and sweetness. Yebisu is marketed as an "all-malt beer," and while that's just fine, there was none of the caramel sweetness that I have come to associate with malt. Instead, it was a very one-dimensional sweetness that I didn't quite care for. Yes, I tend to be a dark-beer snob, but I have absolutely enjoyed a good many lagers. This just wasn't one of them.