The Great American Saloon Series
Coyne, John R. Jr. & O'Lessker, Jr.R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr., Karl
THE GREAT AMERICAN SALOON SERIES as R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. f Karl O'Lessker I John R. Coyne, Jr. A Symposium on Beers The "Confessions of a Beer Snob, " by Aram Bakshian, Jr., published in our...
...Guinness is also brewed and served on tap in England, but beware...
...A Symposium on Beers The "Confessions of a Beer Snob, " by Aram Bakshian, Jr., published in our May edition, provoked an unpara/led burst of intellectual activity from all quarters...
...It's a pretty green 7-ounce bottle, shaped something like a small M-1 rifle grenade, with four horses carved on the glass...
...but here they only reveal their provincialism and their trendy anti-Americanism...
...But a man's got to do what he's got to do...
...Another Pennsylvania product--smooth, rich, a big thick head you can eat with a spoon...
...I'm sitting at the dining room table in one of the most dismal old houses in the world...
...The more bookishly attitudinized they were the more anti-intellectual I suspected them to be...
...Ever try to say that when you're half stewed...
...Each has a crisp, even sharp, clean and clear flavor, without a trace of that execrable sweetness which renders Stroh's and, to a lesser extent, Miller and Schlitz quite undrinkable...
...A lot of odor," says Pat...
...And what about the effect of pot...
...Hic...
...About 14 percent, and after a few quarts the Aussies and Kiwis would get into fist fights...
...Their euphemism for it is going to bed...
...Ours are not among the very great beers of the world, but a half-dozen or so are by no means to be despised, being quite capable of satisfying any but the cultist's or snob's palate...
...Maybe Heineken...hell...
...Helen's going to write a piece about diet beers and why women hate saloons...
...Great...
...The beer is Rolling Rock, brewed in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, the best of the Eastern beers, a lot like Coors--light, delicate, but with just a touch of that bitter bite that all good beers have...
...Rignes Bock...
...The temperature in this barn is unbearable...
...Dutch...
...Examples of the congeniality of Guinness and belles-lettres are sprinkled throughout the pages of literary history...
...Today the truly dignified and educational saloon--the saloon free of simian music, rutting "singles," and that gloomy lighting that Americans so often confuse with "atmosphere," is almost unknown...
...I smell, and I can't take a shower because the well's running dry...
...How many picnic lunches," asks O'Lessker, "have been ruined by a pretentious host's serving Heineken with cold chicken or a lobster salad...
...Awful...
...That's right...
...Work, work, work...
...This has been the most confused week of our lives...
...Good beer should always be taken with good friends whose tongues are eager to chatter even as their throats yearn for flash floods of malt...
...Tastes like homesteaders in Alaska smell," says Pat...
...No one ever set out from Tobey's Saloon to shout America into the New Age...
...They used to sell four quarts of something with a name like A-1 in the Eagles Supermarket in Iowa City for less than a dollar...
...Still, my critical interest in beer remains intense, and it is because of this interest that I should like to add a few reflections to Aram Bakshian's learned treatise, which appeared in our May number...
...But it's about 40 proof, and it beats Old Spice...
...Pat and Helen decide to pitch in and help with the research...
...Only Budweiser tastes good from cans...
...No great intellectual burdens are imposed by attention to this principle...
...But Germany is a veritable cornucopia of malt delicacies, though I should add that the beers of Munich are inferior to less popular German beers...
...He's asking the existential question," she points out...
...All alone now, trying to carry on my research...
...Many of Coors' critics object to the politics of the Coors' family or are ignorant of the fact that Coors, being the only nonpasteurized beer in the country, travels least well of all beers...
...In fact, ordinary American beers are superior to ordinary European beers...
...and so I generally drink with friends in private domiciles...
...That is why I favor the legalization--always by local option--of most drugs and of all forms of suicide...
...As for painted ladies, forget not the doleful fate of the patriot Hays...
...I have an octogenarian aunt who swears by it...
...There is only one distinguished middleweight* beer produced in the United States, and that is Pittsburgh's Iron City...
...2.6 per drinking--drinkable?--population," says Helen...
...It has charmed me many times during relaxing interludes spent along the Boulevard Saint-Germain, but after three glasses the stuff cloys--a feeling never to be encountered with Coors...
...Beer, like wine, should be selected with reference to the type of food, if any, it is intended to accompany...
...I speak of Guinness Stout, not the bitter, gassy stuff bottled for American consumption but the mellow nectar served from the tap only in Ireland...
...I pray for August Busch nightly...
...We're moving...
...Norwegian...
...Nixon's fling with national socialism and gained but one, Old Chicago, a new beer produced in Mayor Daley's paradise...
...offers an abstruse monograph, on which Dr...
...Of the exports every Hun can take pride in such glories as Beck's, Dortmunder Union, and my beloved Wurzburger...
...Journey to the West where the high standards of the Coors brewmasters remain prepotent, and enjoy...
...Four American light beers are pre-eminent (and geographically well distributed): Olympia, Coors, Harem's, and Schmidt's of Philadelphia...
...And this is another desideratum of beer-drinking...
...Not bad, just a bit like Rolling Rock...
...But hell, maybe it doesn't make any difference...
...It is served solely on draught, and best appreciated when quaffed from "frosty" mugs...
...Iron City is a unique and eminently praiseworthy beer...
...MacEwans Tartan Ale...
...I owe various people two speeches, two articles, two columns, and two books...
...I should not, myself, choose any beer to go with the more delicately prepared fish or veal dishes...
...If I could find out where it's brewed, I'd go get a U-Haul full...
...Pat has just read O'Lessker's piece...
...It is a truly hearty brew whose every swallow provides not only excellent flavor but also a tasty finale...
...There was an Australian beer called Abbott's which I drank in Korea...
...For me there was the time Von Kannon and I peered from behind pints of the brown stuff, watching a Kilkenny man in a remote pub read Dante's Purgatorio accompanied by his faithful pint...
...Nixon's wage and price controls barred little breweries from raising prices, they had feeble borrowing power at the banks, and when the more profitable national breweries smothered local markets with advertising many local breweries turned belly up...
...Schmidt's of Philadelphia comes to mind as does Waldech produced by Hamm's and Andeker produced by Pabst--though Andeker is a bit too sweet...
...It can be appreciated as much for its flavor as for its philosophical significance...
...The champion in this division, and--truth to tell--the title-holder over all American beers, is, in my opinion, Budweiser...
...The Rolling Rock is gone...
...But you can't get a lot of things here...
...Who but an envy-maddened and graceless female could, like "Bakshian," dismiss as "much over-touted" beers of the quality of Coors and Olympia...
...Pat's here now...
...But those lobsters...
...We've lived in the thing for three years now, and we're finally getting out...
...Now having declared my broad appre16 The Alternative: An American Spectator October 1976 ciation for almost all American beers, let me state my especial favorites...
...I'm getting stewed...
...There was a bad accident...
...In the winter it lets in the cold...
...Even in the winter, however, Budweiser maintains high consistency...
...Damn these boxes...
...It's just too big a question...
...But maybe that's the Coffee Snowshake...
...It's so sweet it makes you fat," says Helen...
...One other light beer deserving favorable mention is Budweiser, which can be drunk without violence to the tastebuds wherever none of the other four is available (in the Deep South, for example...
...Those who will dispute me on the subject will have to face no less a literary critic than Dr...
...John R. Coyne, Jr., a former speechwriter for Presidents Ford and Nixon, concludes the symposium with a stream-of-loss-ofconsciousness narrative...
...Helen Clark, my sister-in-law, has come out from Iowa to help us move...
...To get stewed, ~of course...
...It's terrible looking stuff, the kind of drink that goes with puce pimp hats...
...So remarkable and uncharacteristic a brew is this that anyone who does not yet know it will, upon a first good swallow, refuse to "How the pseudonymous "Tyrrell" could hope to get away with calling Coors "light" but Harem's and Schmidt's "middleweight" is beyond even my profoundly pessimistic view of female fallibility...
...I will drink Guinness anytime and anyplace, but the only true Guinness flows close to its source, along the quays of the Liffey in Dublin...
...How many picnic lunches have been ruined by a pretentious host's serving Heineken with cold chicken or a lobster salad...
...Bakshian's taste in all things is cultivated, yet he, in his toniness, neglected a few elemental facts concerning the rules of hops-quaffing...
...The Dutch beers, notably Heineken, are much overrated...
...Back to the beer...
...In the summer it holds in the heat...
...It's one of those beers that drink well from the bottle...
...Pat and Helen have passed out...
...Our editor R. Emmett TyrrelI, Jr...
...Maybe that's why I share Tyrrell's fondness for Stroh 's...
...I try to hit him with my beer bottle but I miss and the beer spills...
...Beer's gone now...
...That's why they call it stout...
...Oranjeboom...
...18 The Alternative: An American Spectator October 1976...
...Why don't you pour it down the toilet and write about that," says Helen, who's coming unglued...
...Those who wish to stupefy themselves in it desecrate it and would be better off taking morphine, cocaine, or a pistol to the head...
...I have no idea how the curators of Luchow's manage this, for their food is often uninspiring and always overpriced...
...Burnt caramel," says Pat...
...The best light beer in America is Coors...
...She's sweating an.d packing...
...He also neglected a few worthy brews...
...Now before asseverating my preferences, I should state that I have never encountered a beer without some redeeming social value, save two appalling Wisconsin concoctions, Chief Oshkosh and Oaonto, and one miserable juice of uncertain origin which is memorably entitled Acme Beer--Gad what sewage...
...Tastes like pine needles," says Helen...
...But maybe it's more the associations than the stuff itself...
...The bouquet is especially memorable as is its liveliness...
...Dirt, leather, sweat, mildew...
...Still some Coffee Snowshake...
...I would no sooner drink beer without pretzels nearby than go to Washington unarmed...
...All that is required is good judgment and a cultivated palate...
...A bottle of Fix...
...But now they're also putting it in cans...
...In the winter it is exposed to a greater variety of temperatures during delivery, and the result is saddening...
...People who cannot face life should not indulge in one of life's more sublime moments, and they should never be forced to overindulge in it...
...2. Karl 0 Zessker For the man of taste and judgment who participates in this Symposium, the first and most important act is to disassociate himself from the sophomoric, not to say puerile, views of the young women who write under the pseudonyms of "Aram Bakshian" and "R...
...It is one of those rare beers that--in America--tastes best from the bottle, though the enormous seidels of it that are served at Luchow's in New York are about the greatest malt treat to be had in the entire world...
...I'm drinking beer...
...In fact local beers are one of the surpassing achievements of Yank culture, though recently they have fallen into such straitened conditions that some might have legitimately applied for grants to the National Endowment for the Humanities...
...I'm sweating and doing research...
...Scotland...
...Not as bubbly," says Pat, who can't think of anything else to say...
...Let it be said at once that the best American beers stand up well by comparison to the general run of Europeans...
...To continue the discussion of what the late Walter Lippmann might have termed "The Open Question, " The Alternative presents herewith a disputatio de gustibus...
...It is a beer of poignant taste, balanced animation and clarity...
...Finally, one should never drink beer while smoking or in the company of painted women...
...It's the hottest week of the year...
...Kronenbourg on draught, an Alsatian beer, is almost as light as Coors, has the same clear and refreshing taste, but is hardly as drinkable...
...Stephen's Green there was a roaring debate over Joyce that would never have been so eloquent had the bartender not stood intrepidly at his station, pulling pint after pint of this magical drink...
...Helen bought something awful called Mr...
...I wonder why you can't get Heileman's Special Export here...
...Easily a doctoral dissertation there...
...To begin, one should never seek in beer a retreat from worldly burdens...
...The earnest habitues of libraries and classrooms always gave me the impression they had been driven to their books by fear and hatred of the world beyond...
...Note that good beer, like good Beaujolais, does not travel well...
...We'll use Rolling Rock as our control...
...Lastly, I want to mention a stout that is one of the most magnificent liquids ever ushered into my esophagus...
...Is that before or afterJFK...
...Beer is to be voluptuously i~lgested in prodigious swallows+ Eructate only in carefully selected corn pa W. 'fhen, too, beer is most congenial with esculent accompaniment...
...The best American beer I ever had was actually an ale--Neuwiller's Cream Ale, I think it was called...
...A note of good sense, no doubt meant to disarm and mislead, crept into the otherwise lamentable paragraphs signed "Tyrrell" when he (she) indicated that there are better European beers than the heavily advertised Heineken and Lowenbrau...
...Tobacco coats the tongue and dulls the sparkle from even the most audacious brew...
...Barns, horses, smoky--molasses--ham and sardines," says Helen...
...Admittedly Lowenbrau often leaves me with the disconcerting sense that it is the product of a pharmaceutical firm, but there are hundreds of little towns which produce sheer masterpieces, rarely for export beyond these tiny jurisdictions...
...It is nectar and highly nutritious...
...If a fraction of the money that the Federal Government has squandered on higher education had gone to supporting good saloons I have no doubt that America would be a vastly more literate and serene republic today-though the drinks would be more expensive and less expeditiously delivered...
...The Alternative: An American Spectator October 1976 17 credit his senses, preferring to believe that his taste has gone happily awry...
...A light beer will go nicely with anything else, and the heartier, deeper-bodied Europeans are at their best with thick steaks and ribs but may well overwhelm the flavor of lighter meats...
...Many poseurs sniff at it, claiming that true beer is heavier, on the order of European beers...
...It is tasty enough, but it is not the same gentle embrace one experiences in the pubs of Eire...
...Greek...
...The stuff is too much a part of life's primeval cycles...
...I wish I had a regular job," I tell Helen...
...KiHn and Asahi that I drank during R&R in Japan under the sort of conditions you never quite tell your wife about...
...We drink a bottle of Pripps...
...Nondescript--that beer in the Eagles Supermarket was just as good...
...Generations of dirty people have lived here...
...Hee, hee, hee...
...A shame...
...A roach looks up at me from a crack in the table and wiggles his filthy little antennae at me...
...Bill collectors are calling...
...Like so many intellectually-inclined youth of my generation I always sought refuge from the crassitude and materialism of the modern world by withdrawing to the philosophical fastness of a dignified saloon, there to listen to the literary chat and theoretical diatribes of learned coves well juiced on worldly experience and ardent waters...
...Sweetish aftertaste...
...But now I'm doing research...
...If these critics were real connoisseurs, they would admire the unbending standards of this illustrious brewery and forget the politics...
...For my part, while I share Ms...
...I've had six Rolling Rocks...
...Their invasion of the streets in the late sixties, and their resort to quack spiritualism in the seventies confirmed my suspicion...
...Hugh Kenner, with whom I recently shared many bottles of this lovely juice as we sat before a peat fire...
...Helen and I just went out to get a bunch of foreign beer...
...Then you could come home and have a drink...
...These sages usually drank beer, and so at an early age I entered upon a scholarly appreciation of the ancient elixir...
...Swedish...
...She and Helen try the Coffee Snowshake...
...It's one of the best Wisconsin beers, heavy and cheap...
...And who but a simpering, latent-hysterical virgin could, like "Tyrrell," heap praise upon that Kool-Aid of beers, Stroh 's...
...nor, of course, do they suffer from the wateriness all too often found in so-called "local" beers...
...Strange...
...Stroh's is the king in this class...
...Nonetheless the beer they serve is a prodigy, and I rarely visit New York without venturing down to Luchow's for a Wurzburger seance...
...We mix the Mackeson with Schlitz Light...
...So many variables...
...Gulp it down, never sip...
...It is a poet's drink and perhaps the key to Irish eloquence...
...It hasn't...
...It was in saloons, not universities, that I first encountered serious students of history, political philosophy, and the Beethoven quartets...
...Mackeson Stout...
...I think of those Australians...
...The Huber Brewing Company's Regal Brau is also a worthy heavyweight, and for enthusiasts of the bar stool, I suggest Schlitz's dark...
...I. R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr...
...asks Pat...
...After the second quart it could have been Bass or Harp...
...I turn now to the constructive part of this discussion...
...I lost many friends during Mr...
...Karl 0 'Lessker, professor of poh'tical science and of public and environmental affairs at Indiana Unwersity, comments...
...And when I am especially deserving of a reward I turn to that finest of all English brew, Bass Ale, so far superior to any other of its class as to deserve to be stored on a pedestal...
...I have enjoyed oceans of beer in many lands, but as for those most memorable, give me Coors and Budweiser and Wurzburger, and on my death bed give me Guinness...
...One final point, all too often overlooked...
...I take a couple of drinks...
...the latter being a quality often ignored even by the cognoscenti...
...It can be imbibed in enormous quantities without ever exhausting the palate...
...When it's hot and damp, you can smell them all...
...It atso has ample body, bouquet, and consistency...
...Cans are just no good, unless you like to yell and throw them out your car window onto people's lawns...
...Centralized, planned economies eliminate the little fellow, and diversity is swept from the landscape...
...Lacking those, you might as well stick to corn dogs and Stroh's...
...As for the Europeans, there are many delectable potions, running from Carlsberg and Tuborg in Denmark, to Pilsner Urquell in Czechoslovakia, several surprisingly fine Italian beers, and the reliable Watneys of England...
...Since I'm working it doesn't seem like I'm drinking," I say...
...Tyrrell's" enthusiasm for Dortmunder Union and lUurzburger, I prefer that Czech masterpiece, Pilsner Urquell, to either...
...This is why beer always tastes better in the summer when it is usually cooled just once...
...Hell of a research project...
...Emmett Tyrrell, J r . " Despite the presence of some cleverly wrought obfuscation there is unmistakable evidence in each as to the perpetrator's sex and lack of sensibility...
...Boston Coffee Snowshake...
...The latter has often accompanied me in my days of public service...
...It must never be bounced around, set in the sun, or exposed to widely varying temperatures...
...Here Pschorr is the best, and Hofbrau about what one might expect from a government-run establishment...
...I think of some of the beers I've liked...
...Sausages, cheeses, and Pennsylvania Dutch pretzels always call one's taste buds to attention, ordering them to their duty as the amber liquid flows about their God-given antennae...
...I first drank it under very special circumstances...
...Of the middleweights there are many that have engaged my attention and won high respect...
...But their lobsters are different from ours...
...They're the hardest beer-drinking people in the world...
...They seemed to yearn for a springtime of violence and highminded rampage...
...Americans prefer lighter beers, and there are but few heavyweights...
...Government economic policies have made it difficult for local producers to compete with more profitable national concerns...
...It did the job just fine...
...Too much of anything, save Hubert Humphrey, is always a bad thing and possibly a peril...
...Why do we drink anything with alcohol in it...
...All other beers I will welcome over my tonsils and into my maw, including the East's Nationa/Bohemian, the South's Dixie and Pearl, and the Heartland's Burger and Hudepohl...
...Some bastard stole my gas tank top--gas tank top cap...
...It's a hell of a question...
...They're beginning to giggle...
...Terrible...
...And in a pub off St...
...If we drank only for taste, we'd probably all be milkshakeoholics...
...Requires extensive research...
...Sweet as hell...
...Ever since I have remained inveterate in my view that a carefully selected saloon generally provides an educational experience superior to that of any university...
...Clarity is one of the attributes that sets high-grade beers apart from the flotsam and jetsam, and the King of Beers has it...
...My wife, Pat, has deserted me for the day, off to Washington to sit on an HEW advisory panel...
...3. John R. Coyne, Jr...
...Thick...
...This is grueling research...
Vol. 10 • October 1976 • No. 1
