Sister Mother Mary Came to me…
It’s a well known fact that I love Brettanomyces and Brett based beers. To me, they are some of the most interesting beers in my world and offer all sorts of flavors and opportunities for expresssion. And, while I love these “funky” beers, they cause me to have some wild (some would say bizarre) dreams. The funny thing about these dreams is that they are incredibly vivid and I know they are coming when I find myself drinking these beers in copious quantities.
Two weeks ago, I was in Boston, MA for the Beer Advocate Night of the Funk. This is a specialty beer tasting that features about 50 beers all brewed with some manner of Wild Yeast. Mostly, it means that there are beers of every sort of ilk and imagination on the festival floor containing Brettanomyces and other creepy crawlers. Heading into a room full of beers like sends my imagination into a sensory overload that’s hard to put into words.
It’s an awesome night of drinking and one that I truly look forward to. Problem is, I know going into each Night of the Funk sessions that I am going to “experience” some incredibly vivid dreams that night. I mean we’re talking like acid trip crazy stuff. On Friday, I spent the evening consuming all manners of Sweaty Bretty Beers and found myself not really too concerned about the “dreamy” world I knew I was soon going to enter.
I drank some incredible Ithaca Brute and reveled in the imagination of the Allagash, Ommegang and Cambridge Brewing Company Beers. It was a great night of sampling and I found the world of Funky Beers expressive as ever. We capped off the night by heading to Deep Ellum after the Festival concluded where Max served us up a couple of rounds of Hop 15. I retired around 1 AM that morning and fell into a deep deep sleep.
Sometime around 3:50 AM, I awoke to a smattering of noise and infomercials on the TV. I grabbed a glass of water and charged back to sleep. And that’s when Sister Mother Mary came to me. I wish I could remember all of the deatils but many of them are not that important. What is important is that I found myself in the lobby of the Nunnery seated in a chair(sharing a glass of Wine) with Sister Mary somebody or another. Apparently, I had been called to assist the Sisters in their mission to bring aide to the poor working class citizens of a village in Mexico.
Over a bottle of Wine and some serious conversations, Sister Mother Mary and I plotted a course of action for the brewery and our charitable contributions to the poor and needy. At first, we would offer assistance in the form of man hours as I volunteered my employees time in Mexico to assist the villagers in building houses and shelters.Then, as we grew as a company (and became profitable) our olive branch of assistance would include more monetary assistance and aide.
When I awoke on Saturday, I opened my eyes and half expected to find a glass of wine or a note from Sister Mother Mary next to me on the nightstand. It was a very vivid dream and one that certainly had my attention. And while I didn’t find an empty wine bottle under the bed, I did however see the program from the Night of the Funk next to me on the dresser next to the bed. Apparently, I had fallen asleep reviewing the list of beers from Friday Night.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I LOVE Brett based beers, they are so amazing. If even Sister Mother Mary comes to me in my sleep. But if I have another one of these nights in the not so distant future and Sister Mother Mary returns with a bottle of wine, I might just have to swear off the Bretta for a little while. Dig?
