Proust! Or was it Prost?

Flavor is an amazing thing. While there is certainly something to the idea that smell is the most powerful sense (I seem to recall reading somewhere that the part of the brain that negotiates smell is conveniently close to the part that holds the deepest memories), it's also clear that the sense of taste is so closely related to smell that I'm going to lump it in there as well. Involuntary memory is pretty amazing stuff, really.

After all, while the tongue can distinguish perhaps six flavors (sweet, salty, bitter, sour, umami [assuming one believes in it] and hot), the majority of flavor distinction is found when the nose is involved. Block up the nose (hello allergies!) and food just doesn't taste the same.

So one of my great disappointments living in the tristate area is that I can't get Oberon, a lovely summer beer native to Michigan. I am told that it is available in Pennsylvania, but even I'm not willing to drive that far. Seriously - somebody get on importing this stuff to New York / New Jersey. During a long layover,* I had an opportunity to go back to Ann Arbor, Michigan and knew immediately what beer I was going to have first.

The color of a Michigan summer.

Oberon is a cloudy yellow peach color. Often, when poured aggressively, it develops a nice thick head. Our waitress was being trained, and I don't think she was willing to pour my beer with the right vigor. Too bad. Anyway, Bell's is a native Michigan company, and while I'm not wild about all of their beers, Oberon is a perennial summer favorite. The color, aroma, and flavor are enough to transport me back to the good days of law school (and some of the bad ones too).

There's a lot of wonderful citrus in this beer: grapefruit and bitter orange peel come through the aroma. The flavor, on the other hand, is overwhelmingly herbal: it starts out with grass and hay before moving to a floral sourness that refreshes. The one thing I found odd was that the mouthfeel was thinner than I remembered. And toward the end of the sip, I could have sworn I tasted some bubblegum.

Taps, glorious taps. Plus a huge selection of whisky and other alcohols.

Following a delicious lunch, my friend and I invoked yet another memory with a pint at Ashley's. I spent many, many afternoons and evenings at Ashley's, which is a lovely beer bar right on State Street in the heart of Ann Arbor. The place memories are fantastic - this is where we celebrated getting jobs, finishing exams, fatherhood, and friendship. A group of three of us even went to Ashley's in our caps and gowns on the morning of our graduation.

This is a happy place.

As you might imagine, the smell was exactly the same - a faint hint of smoke from when Michigan allowed smoking indoors, and the wonderfully inviting aroma of beer.

Edmund Fitzgerald, next to its tap. Note its front row status - very well deserved.

We toasted to old friendships with an Edmund Fitzgerald, from Great Lakes Brewing Co. I will be the first to say that I hate Cleveland (I got a flat tire there in the rain while moving out of Ann Arbor), but the Edmund Fitzgerald almost makes up for it. It's a near perfect porter, with all of the characteristics I would look for. Unlike the Oberon, this one was also perfectly poured. The flavors are wonderful: mocha, dark chocolate, burnt caramel, malt. The hops are present, but they work on the margins. Each sip is creamy, yet bitter; sweet, but refreshing.

It's been a long time since I've seen the bottom of an Ashley's pint.

It's honestly one of my favorite beers, and it was exactly as I remembered it being. This one, I'll drive to Pennsylvania for. Proust can have his perfectly dipped madeline - I'll have another Edmund Fitzgerald.

*incidentally, that layover was scheduled to be 4.5 hours. It ended up as 8. Awful.

Roast Beast

I love Fall. As a New Englander, I was raised on the magic of watching leaves turn fantastic colors and the smell of burning leaf piles across the suburban landscape. What I really love about Fall is that the lower temperatures make it less of a bummer to turn on the oven and roast. Summer grilling is fun and whatnot, but only a hearty hunk of roast beast brings back all of the warmth of home. I apologize for my absence - several large projects intruded onto my time. I won't let it happen again.

I should mention, by the way, that the warmth of home thing is a total fiction - as an Asian-American, the closest my parents got to roasting on a regular basis was, maybe, a turkey at Thanksgiving, and reheating a giant honey-baked ham for Christmas. Dad's steamed fish and a big pile of authentic chow mein - that's comfort food.

But yes, roasting. I've loved roasting things since my time in the UK, where I first made a personal friendship with my butcher and discovered that meat didn't necessarily have to come in flat slices from the supermarket. So when my girlfriend and I figured on dinner options last weekend, we decided a roast would be right to christen the season. And where there is a nice English roast (with Yorkshire pudding, natch), there must be dark English beer.

Fuller's London Porter - A delicious dark beer.

I've always been a fan of Fuller's London Pride - I find incredibly drinkable, and has been a favorite since my time in the UK. This time, I tried Fuller's London Porter, which was deliciously dark. It pours ink-black, with a very shy tan head. It's got a light aroma and a flavor of full bitterness that tastes almost of burnt sugar caramel. Its great malt foundation gives way to coffee and chocolate notes. It went beautifully with sharp cheddar, as it was like a slice of toast in beer form. Most porters are a little too smooth and sweet, but this had a very pleasant and refreshing astringency at the end of each sip. The whole package gets even better when the beer warms slightly and approaches a proper serving temperature.

Roast Dinner, with Nut Brown Ale

Of course, we ended up drinking the London Porter well before the roast itself was done, being as we are gluttons. Thankfully, we had purchased a backup in the form of a Samuel Smith's Nut Brown Ale. This is a prime specimen of an English brown ale, with absolutely fantastic malt flavors and wonderfully subtle bitterness. We could not have been more pleased. The yeasty ale was a perfect match with the delicious Yorkshire pudding, while the malty caramel sweetness worked as a counterpoint to the deliciously salty crust of the beef roast. I could say maybe that the peas and roasted potatoes and onions picked up the herbal grassiness of the beer, but that's total crap - it was just good eating.

Saison du Buff. Paid $3.45. Overpaid.

I should mention also that we tried a the Saison du Buff, a special beer collaboration by Stone (Escondido, CA), Dogfish Head (Rehoboth Beach, DE), and Victory (Downington, PA). A saison beer is generally low-alcohol and very refreshing, to reflect a beer that could be drunk as a mid-day refresher during the Belgian late summer harvest season without completely wrecking the imbiber, but modern Saison beers are generally around 6%, which this one was. "Buff" is an acronym, for "Brewers United for Freedom of Flavor," but for once, I wish that they had exercised some restraint. This is brewed with the haunting combination of parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme, but all I got was the sage. It's a cloudy golden beer, with a light fluffy head and a distinctly floral nose. The herbage comes through at the back of the nose, which is dominated by a musty passionfruit aroma and sweet citrus hop notes. Sadly, the flavor is entirely different, with a lot of sage and bitter hops. Wet sage really dominates, and it's not terribly attractive as a beer flavorant: sage is a wonderful herb, but when it's mistreated, it can smell almost moldy - that's a lot of what I tasted here. The thyme and rosemary disappear, and what's left smells like roses that have been left too long in the vase, or old lady. It's pretty gross, and I don't recommend it.