Category: Beer
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Orizaba Beer
I was reading the last chunk of Against the Day a few weeks ago, freshly home from Mexico, and I found a passage containing a couple of drinks that I’d entirely missed recording on The List. Page 990 brings us to a cantina called “El Quetzal Dormido,” where Frank is drinking “either maguey brandy from…
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Stale Ale
Early in their American period, after an afternoon with an unexpectedly scatty Benjamin Franklin, Messrs Mason and Dixon head on Mason’s suggestion to a tavern by the name of the Fair Anchor. It’s a bit of a dive, just how Mason likes it: And withal, when they show up at The Fair Anchor that Night,…
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Imported German Beer
On page 986 of Against the Day, Frank Traverse has just recently put his engineering skills to use rigging a train with an imperial fuckton of dynamite and now finds himself in the Mexican Capital. (Why the Capital is Capitalised isn’t clear to me. Was Pynchon working on Mason & Dixon at the same time…
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French Beer
French stuff gets a good run around here. Usually wine, occasionally brandy, now and then absinthe. Never before a French beer though. Beer doesn’t really register on the Franco-radar. According to this book Farmhouse Ales I happen to have sitting on my shelf though, the French have a “little known tradition of beer appreciation” and…
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A six-pack of Coors
Shall we add writing tasting notes for an American macro lager to the accruing ridiculousnesses of this blog? You already know it’s a cold crisp refreshing uncomplicated thing. Does anyone really want to hear about it if there’s a hint of corn, a touch of carbonic bite? Way back when I drank Rolling Rock, I…
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Opium Beer
I sit drinking this opium beer on my roof, and Australia’s current apocalyptic choke of bushfires has certainly leant the scene an opium den-esque smokiness. But that might be as close as we come to actual opium here. On Googling “opium beer”, one mostly uncovers tales of homebrewers getting arrested and genetically-modified morphine-producing yeasts. The…
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An abominable imitation of Munich beer
On page 203 of V, two fellows named Godolphin and Mantissa who I will not pretend to have any memory of meet in a German beer hall in Florence. The place serves, of course, krugs of genuine Munich beer. That delight I will save for a later date. Twenty-five pages later, the good stuff is…
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A huge can of Australian beer
That most significant international day of celebration has rolled around again — happy Pynchon in Public Day all. This drinking is happening on PIP Day Eve on my relatively unpublic roof, but I assure you all tomorrow I will be brandishing Mason & Dixon more publicly than any of my colleagues or fellow commuters are…
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A six-pack of Dos Equis
Vineland hasn’t gotten much of a run around here, I think because I can barely remember what happens in it. Something to do with Reagan? And ninjas? Clearly a reread is in order sometime soon. I do remember Pynchon’s sympathies for Family as a potential seat of grace and humanity and a bulwark against Their…