Eat the City(57)

IN a studio space for artists on a strip of old brick warehouses in the Gowanus section of Brooklyn, judges for the Brooklyn Wort home brewing competition are preparing to taste thirty beers. Their table is graced with yellow and white roses, a pitcher of pens, scorecards, and palate-cleansing Poland Spring mini waters. Local amateur brewers have entered the biannual homebrew competition by paying fifteen dollars and submitting five gallons of beer for the chance to win one thousand dollars in prizes.

The judges—all brewers—sit in faded jeans and T-shirts and plaid flannel work shirts, sequestered in a hallway. They hold up the first round of glasses to the light to see the clarity and color of the brew. Peer. Sniff. Sip. Swallow. The sense of bitterness, a defining aspect of beer, is at the back of the tongue, so unlike with wine, you have to actually drink in order to taste.

“The first beer’s always the hardest to judge,” says Kelly Taylor, brewmaster of the Heartland Brewery and his own Kelso. “It’s got some birch, like a root beer spice.”

“It’s playing funny with the hops, smelling one way—playing another,” says Ben Granger, a partner in Bierkraft, the Park Slope emporium. He sniffs and gazes into his glass at the same time.

As well as the panel of judges, members of the public can taste and judge the beers for a thirty-dollar ticket. Clatter and chatter travel in from the crowds in the next room, where people are packed so tightly that they can barely move from table to table and beer to beer.

Beer one is cleared and beer two arrives before the judges: darker, foamier, stickier.

“It really lingers on the tongue,” says Danielle Cefaro of Brooklyn Homebrew, who is judging along with her husband and business partner, Benjamin Stutz. “Yeah, it hangs out,” agrees Ben Granger.

Danielle, who has russet hair and an armful of tats (including a pig marked with a butcher’s diagram missing one leg and leaning on a crutch), positions her nose over the glass and keeps it there. Mostly the judges sip and write in silence, but sometimes they go back and forth to suss out the essence of a beer. “You get that tinny, metallicky—” begins Kelly. “Green apple,” suggests Ben. “Yeah, green apple, right at the beginning,” says Kelly. “It’s a candy apple.” “Yeah, candy caramelly apple,” says Ben. “In a can,” says Kelly. “Yeah in a can,” says Ben. Finishes Kelly: “It’s not bad—it’s just interesting.”

“Number four,” says the bearded server, setting down the next round.

A woozy smell begins to fill the room, the aromas of many kinds of beer rising and mingling. The judges sip through a quick succession of beers and issue their assessments. It smells like a Band-Aid, it tastes slick, it has “an earthiness, almost like dirt.” “I like that soapy dryness,” “that aspirin/Tylenol bitterness,” “like some gourmet store on the Lower East Side … a bit of dust on it.” It’s like chocolate, like nail polish remover, like the plasticky smell of bubbles you had when you were a kid. “Smells a little oxidized or papery or something,” someone says. “Smells like they burned the bottle,” someone responds.

Danielle is tapping her pen on her iPhone in time to a Fela Kuti song. Benjamin picks up the same rhythm and taps his end of the table. Ben, sitting across from him, begins to tap his fingers too.

Beer twenty-one smells like peanut brittle. Beer twenty-two is reddish, very sweet, unfinished. “I hit a wall,” says Danielle. “I’m getting there,” says Ben. Beer twenty-three is the same light, golden, hoppy beer again. “Smells a little vegetal,” says Ben. Beer twenty-four tastes like “Worcestershire, definitely Worcestershire,” says Ben. “Sam Adams Triple Bock with soy sauce.” By beer twenty-eight, the judges are complaining of cottony tongues. “It smells like spent fireworks,” says Ben. Everything smells like spent fireworks. Beer twenty-nine arrives with more fanfare than flavor: Someone reaches for a glass, someone else knocks it over, and the whole thing spills onto Ben, seeping foam into his pants.

Finally, beer thirty. “Interesting amber aroma,” says Kelly. The others, glassy-eyed, tapping the table in rhythm, have little to add.


FEW people were better prepared to fight the temperance movement against alcohol than Jacob Ruppert Jr. The Colonel was short—five foot four inches—but charming, and tough. He remembered everything, spoke quickly, and even walked with an “aggressive step.” He was endlessly rich and could call upon his onetime colleagues in Congress. He often displayed a twinkling, distant smile, exuding the cultivated privacy of a man who grew up in the public eye, protected by his social stature, and knew how to reveal nothing. He was bold and confident. And he was accustomed to winning.

The temperance movement had been organizing since long before he was born in 1867. His father happened to have purchased the land to build the Ruppert brewery from the widow of Bible printer Daniel Fanshaw, a sober man who opposed tobacco and alcohol. In Fanshaw’s time, the mid-nineteenth century, there had been uncertainty about where precisely lager stood on the ladder of alcoholic evil. In 1858, when a Brooklyn brewer and beer garden owner were brought to trial for violating the city’s Sunday drinking law, his lawyer argued that lager was not intoxicating. Witness after witness testified to drinking stupefying quantities of beer—fifteen glasses before breakfast! a hundred and sixty quarts in a day!—with no ill effects. A reporter from the New York Times reasoned, “If it takes a pail-full of bier to make a person drunk, and the same person could get drunk on an eighth of the quantity of rum, then lager is not an intoxicating drink, but may be a wholesome beverage.” The judge agreed, and the brewer was acquitted—but the legal battles continued.