Beer Me

by Brian Howard

It's been a few weeks since I've written in this space. Excuse me while I shake off the sand and lean on that time-honored columnist's crutch — what I did on my summer vacation. I'm coming off seven carefree days of reading, World Cup soccer and Dogfish Head beer down in Rehoboth.

The reading: On a stony stretch of coast where the sun was hot and the water was ice cold, reading was the order of the day. I'd lugged a stack of books to the beach, but the most engrossing, and eerily timely, was Zeitoun. Dave Eggers' mid-2009 nonfictioner about a Muslim-American man's Herculean trials and heroism during and after Hurricane Katrina was, not unlike Eggers' What Is the What, impossible to put down. I devoured the inspiring/harrowing tome in three days. Yes, I was late getting around to it, but the timing, as Louisiana battles yet another heartbreaking stretch of staggering devastation, was sadly poignant. Though a hurricane and a massive oil spill are different kinds of disasters, just as panic and paranoia set the stage for gross miscarriages of justice in the storm's wake, the censorship of images and information from the cleanup efforts further threatens a region that's already plenty threatened.

The drinking: I've long admired the handiwork of Dogfish Head's Sam Calagione. While reporting a story in 2000 on the area's burgeoning microbreweries, he got me so hammered I could barely see, let alone take notes. DfH's flagship beers, the 60/90/120 minute IPAs, the ancient ales, the delicious seasonals (including the Drew Lazor-approved Festina Peche), the velvet hammer that is World Wide Stout, are fairly well known, but a trip to the brewpub on Rehoboth Avenue is like a pilgrimage to Candyland for beer geeks. I imbibed no fewer than nine beers I didn't know existed (including the brand-new GrainToGlass aged on surfboard cedar and the just-kicked Stop the Spill ESB, for which $1 from each pint sold went to the National Audubon Society) — and I'd been here last year. Now, as I quaff a glass of Fernonbrau Rye BrIPA while a fermenter-ful of my next homebrew concoction, Epic Pale, bubbles beside me, I dream of one day becoming one-tenth the beerman Calagione is.

The soccer: I caught every freaking Spain match at the DfH bar, and though I was pulling for Portugal and then Paraguay (I'm a sucker for an underdog), I could tell La Furia Roja was a juggernaut. Like most of the U.S., I'm no futbol expert (James Beale has more about America's newfound footy fascination), but Spain's lightning-quick, swarming style was abundantly evident, even through the beer haze.

The weird: A freaking whale beached one town down at Dewey while we were there. And a snap of warm water brought an infestation of kids toting around jellyfish the size of soccer balls. One tween girl spent most of an afternoon cradling an invertebrate as if it were a large baby.

(bhoward@citypaper.net)