Know Your Styles: Excitement

October 12, 2009

Excitement. Thrills. Anticipation. Pleasure. Is there a beer style called “excitement”? Should Michael Jackson have included it in his various books? Should the online rating systems make it part of their databases? Excitement. The name of a beer you want. The newsletter advertising something you have never heard about. The newsletter or website advertising something you have heard so much about. The mysterious and always present ISO.  The need to finally be a Rate Beer Daily Devotee (I am still 0 for every day I’ve been a member).  Is the energy or vitalism that runs Web 2.0 merely the feeling of being excited?

Cigar City Improvisación. In the age of extreme and hype, a beer that claims to be an Oatmeal Rye Indian Brown Ale must excite. Categories blended together in order to overcome the dominance of tradition everywhere. We excel in our perceived rebellion. We like to resist “the man.” The three in one. Monster beers (or what Deleuze called, theory).

Russian River Damnation Batch 23.  Oak age a beer, and I am excited. Somewhere, such an aged beer has sat content in a barrel, taking on flavors and sometimes even live creatures. It changes. Like a superhero. Or like fermentation in general (the fermentation undergoes even more changes….morphs…..starts telling a new story about itself….makes a Marvel comic nuclear accident seem trivial in comparison).  I want to know what has happened in that barrel. I want to know how the beer story ends.  Of course, labels and names play a role too. Russian River. I will write it again: Russian River. There is that moment in The Simpsons when Homer thinks of a beer, says to himself “beer…..” and then drools. I can do the same Pavlovian trick. Only – I need to say Russian River.

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