Category: Beer

• Barcelona Beer (Estrella / Moritz)

  

  In the epilogue of V., Stencil’s headed off to lunch or something with Maijstral when he’s intercepted by someone who seems to be “a Greek Pope or parish priest.” They abandon Maijstral and proceed down an alley, and the priest pulls off his beard and skull cap, revealing himself as Demivolt, one of Stencil’s spy compadres from…

  mjhorn

  April 3, 2015

  Beer, V

  Demivolt, Spain, Stencil

• Guinness Stout

  

  V. reaches its apex in Chapter 16, in Valetta, Malta, where the crew of the USS Scaffold are “getting liberty.” Stencil and Profane show up later in the chapter, but it starts out with Pappy Hod and Fat Clyde heading ashore amid sun-showers and “even a rainbow.” They made their way through the dockyard. Around them…

  mjhorn

  November 5, 2014

  Beer, V

  Fat Clyde, Ireland, Pappy Hod, Stout

• Cachaça with beer chasers

  

  Well I really lived up to that ‘Drunk Pynchon’ moniker on this one. Cachaça, it turns out, goes down easy and goes down fast and then may or may not come right back up again. A few days later now, I think I’ve just established enough distance between myself and the event to write about it. That’s contrary to my…

  mjhorn

  October 7, 2014

  Beer, Gravity’s Rainbow, Inherent Vice, Other spirits

  Brazil, Coy Harlingen, Doc Sportello, Mountain Goat, Sagatiba

• Canadian Ale

  The Kenosha Kid episode is something of an early milestone in Gravity’s Rainbow, I’d say. Sixtyish pages in, playful and bizzare, it might well mark the dividing fork at which a new Pynchon reader either hurls the book at the wall or really starts to settle in for a good time. Slothrop’s doped up on sodium amytal, dreaming variations on…

  mjhorn

  August 17, 2014

  Beer, Gravity’s Rainbow

  Canada, Montreal, Pale Ale, Slothrop, St Ambroise

• Rolling Rock

  A week or so ago, I had the unexpectedly excellent experience of visiting the Anheuser-Busch brewery in St Louis. The brewery complex was opened in 1852, and it has some terrific architecture to show for its long history, even if the beer itself is perhaps less exceptional. I was of course curious as to what Pynchonian alcoholic…

  mjhorn

  July 18, 2014

  Beer, Bleeding Edge

  Bars/Places, Driscoll, Horst, Lager, Maxine, Pynchon, Rolling Rock, USA

• Boilermaker

  Whiskey and Alement hides its vast whisky stores and careful beer selection behind a curtained door in a dead pocket of the Melbourne CBD. It’s a Pynchonesque place, in its way. Hardly lit, full of insiders to its secret and outsiders to the surrounding world. Stocked with mysteriously titled–or just numbered–bottles (“Sing along with Julie Andrews”, “Glamping…

  mjhorn

  June 14, 2014

  Beer, Inherent Vice, V, Whisk(e)y

  Bars/Places, boilermaker, Brooklyn Brewery, Bunnahabhain, Doc Sportello, Pynchon, Roony, Sauncho, Scotland, USA

• Pilsner Urquell

  CORRECTION: On my recent rereading of Gravity’s Rainbow I discovered that this post from back in 2014 is gravely in error. There I am down below rattling on about Slothrop drinking Pilsner when he is in fact barely involved in the scene in question at all. The character in Bad Karma drinking the beer is actually Ensign…

  mjhorn

  June 7, 2014

  Beer, Gravity’s Rainbow

  Czech Republic, Pilsner Urquell, Pynchon, Slothrop