Vivisection of a Cask Ale

Georges-Pierre Seurat’s Port-en-Bessin, Entrance to the Harbor

Back in college, as a student in an art class that I ultimately and decidedly failed, I was given an assignment to go down to the MoMA and have a staring contest with a painting. For two straight hours, my task was to conduct an “extended looking” of any painting that struck my fancy, by writing down each and every thought that occurred to me while examining the piece. It wasn’t all that bad, and the piece, Georges-Pierre Seurat’s Port-en-Bessin, Entrance to the Harbor (pictured above), was busy enough that it took maybe an hour until I felt that I had examined pretty much every point in detail.

This is all to say that, while semi-excruciating, I found the exercise fruitful, and indeed I came to agree with the premise of the assignment, that there were certain elements of the piece that only started to emerge once a great amount of time had passed, or better yet, that the experience of drowning in a painting is not unlike that of taking a decent hallucinogen - maybe the world changes, maybe you change, but who’s to say which is which.

And so I decided to conduct this experiment with one of MacLeod’s beers, The King’s Taxes. Funnily enough, it strikes me now that this beer is the butt of a long-running joke I like to tell in response to someone saying that The King’s Taxes tastes better, or worse, or different than the last batch - that KT’s been exactly the same every time, and it’s we who change around the beer.

In any case, what follows is my account of slowly working through a pint, sip by sip.

Setting: MacLeod, in the old numbers man’s cave (lovingly referred to as the Green Room), having recently eaten a trio of Kogi tacos to the point where I’m about a cent past full. There’s a low, dull spice and warm, happy layer of animal fat coating my mouth - not typically ideal circumstances for a beer tasting.

The soundtrack is Billy Joel’s Streetlife Serenade

I fairly unthinkingly slug a few back, in part to reset my palate - the flavors peel back; the light bitterness is playing with the Larb-like freshness of the kimchi and lettuce

If it weren’t for the bitterness and chocolate-maltiness, I could be convinced that this were a very low carb fruit soda, which either ties into, or is influenced by, my conception of The King’s Taxes as a tasteful beer version of an egg cream

Though at cellar temp, it does strike me as cold - any complaints that cask is “warm” are ill-conceived, and there’s just no way I could drink a cold beer as fast (I tried a few hours ago, and dumped the glass half way through)

Time to don the thinking cap a bit. The bitterness is along the lines of over-extracted tea, a bit bitter-lemon-y, which chemically would be tannins and quinine, and is more likely almost entirely hops with a touch of dark (roasted?) malt astringency

The nose actually has a wafer-thin layer of funk, a kind of unkempt fruitiness. There’s a decided, if very restrained, caramel-raw sugar note, though stripped of all sweetness

I now notice a touch of black currant, processed, maybe dried, maybe candied

A bit of bouncy acidity, something like the level in a pineapple gummy bear; middle of the road. Probably in part carbonic

Upon slurping, I force out what feels at first like alcoholic heat, reminiscent of imperial porters, but I believe that to be, again, more a reflection of some strong roast character, not far from burnt toast. Subtle otherwise

There’s a familiar, vaguely fruity yeast character (I say that because I’m not sure whence else it would come - perhaps the hops), that, again, screams black currant. Certainly not any citrus or pome, possibly stonefruit, plum not peach

A bit of old penny on the nose now. Copper oxides. Though technically they may be present, I suspect it to be a synergistic malt effect

All of a sudden I’m reminded starkly of Panda’s Orange Chicken - soy sauce, cooked orange, copious flour batter

There’s a perfume-like quantity somewhere in the middle, akin to Rose Water in character but hardly at all in the details, i.e. it tastes not much like roses

The body is fairly light, but the carbonation, as it often does in these beers, rounds it out, acting almost like something gritty and granular, like pulp

It’s funny, there are enough layers on top of the base malt that I just now realize there may be some slight base malt character; I’ve had porters that’ve tasted more like Maris Otter; that’s not a complaint, but it is surprising; I think our bitters have that same effect, now that I think about it, and I can only think to “blame” the character malts, or Farbesmalz

A distant whiff of the glass gives an eggy note, which reinforces just the barest sulfur note, quite possibly a mirage, that I’ve remarked without expressing in words before this point

Contemplating the lingering notes on my palate, I notice perhaps grape jam, and the dull, pleasant burn of a fine tobacco

Indeed, a fresh gulp betrays a bit of grape jelly; that bitterness is increasingly unavoidable, even obvious. It’s not an overuse of hops, and again I posit the strong presence of some dark malt; I’ve not been copiously aware of it in other Scottish ales, but then I’ve seldom spent this much time thinking about one, and in most others the sweetness is more present; here, the sweetness is seriously subdued; it may be our driest cask beer, now that I think about it

With but a few gulps left in the glass, I notice little new. My thoughts redouble to the malt character

It strikes me that, beyond this beer, only in perhaps a whiskey, maybe even specifically a Rye, would this level of bitterness or astringency be a positive quality. I do find it pleasant, but it’s a very “adult” enjoyment - hardly an easy flavor, it challenges you with each sip. I’m personally more partial to more decidedly malty beers - years of therapy have weened me somewhat of the desire for strife - but we have regulars who’d put away multiple hectoliters of the stuff, so clearly there’s a market for self-punishment on a very tame scale. In a world filled with IPAs, this is extraordinarily mild, but I can’t help but think of children’s aversion to bitterness which is said to dull with age (since bitterness is usually a sign that something’s poisonous - quinine can with relative ease cause deadly cinchonism, as an example)

Indeed, my last sip has me craving a Munich Helles, or a malty (British) Brown Ale, though I thank the gods I didn’t choose to so carefully contemplate one of our hoppier beers! Masochism is where I cleanly draw the line

Cheers,

Adrian