Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, September 21, 1995 TAG: 9509210029
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Chris Henson
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Roanoke can now boast its own beer, sort of.
A few weeks ago the Mill Mountain Brewing Co. introduced Star City Premium Lager. But it seems the only thing brewing in the valley is trouble, because that concoction is really produced in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., a place you can't even see from the Mill Mountain Star.
Yet, more important than truth in advertising, more urgent than the bamboozlement of the local beer-drinker, is this simple question:
How does the stuff taste?
Well, I'm no expert. I've hoisted a glass or two on a special occasion, and I've ridden the mono-rail out to the brewery at Busch Gardens...I think. So I have volunteered to sample this "Star City Premium Lager," and make my findings known herein.
Three downtown restaurants offer the beer - The Full Moon Cafe, Awful Arthur's and Corned Beef & Co., which is where I stopped in last Saturday afternoon. Dave Weber and Jeff Harig were behind the bar.
I poured my Big Lick beer into a glass, so I could see its "regional color," as described on the label right above where it says I shouldn't drink it if I'm pregnant.
"I think it should have a zestier label," Harig said. True enough, the emblem is a sort of coal-gondola gray, with a sparkly star on it.
"Yeah," added Weber. "One more befitting the dynamic metropolis that IS Roanoke."
Allrighty then. I took my first swig, swished it around and swallowed.
"You know, they don't even make that stuff here," said a busboy who stopped to watch my reaction. He punctuated the remark by slamming a rack of dishes onto the bar. "You could have something called Dave's Beer," he added, pointing to Dave Weber. "They'd slap a label on it."
The beer with the Star City Premium Lager label slapped on it has enjoyed decent sales in its first few weeks at Corned Beef & Co.
"Everyone who's had one has had another," said Weber.
"Oh yeah?" argued Harig. "Brad said he had one, and he'll never have another one." Oh well.
Brian Betters, of Portland, Maine, was dining at the bar while in town on business. "We had a beer back home called Portland Lager," he said. "It was brewed in Utica, New York."
By this time I had finished my bottle of Star City. And, how did it taste?
During my first year of college, I shared a trailer with my older brother Ned. I refer to this as "the lost year," partly because it's when I learned to drink beer, but mostly because we lost a bicycle pump, half my textbooks, a refrigerator and our security deposit.
Ned's a big-shot computer geek in Richmond now, and he's into home-brewing. It seemed natural to turn to him for insights.
Home-brewing, or "brewing at home," is the phenomenon wherein people who enjoy the taste of serious beer think they can save money by purchasing their own tanks, hops, yeasts, barleys, malts, bottles and caps and then (ooog!) making their own. Sears even sells home-brewing paraphernalia.
Apparently it's jolly good fun to make and consume a batch of murky beer, because when you get a couple of these people together they talk about nothing else. However, they never mention the intoxicating effects, or buzz factor, of their potables. I find this unsettling.
But they are enthusiastic. Indeed, Ned's favorite T-shirt, one that he wears when he is out with his family, is emblazoned with the words: "Friends don't let friends drink crap beer."
I was able to contact Ned over the Internet (see what I mean?) and he told me this:
"Lager is a beer that's brewed at lower temperatures than ales. It uses a `bottom-fermenting' yeast that clumps and sinks to the bottom where it performs its grotesque little reproduction ritual. The colder fermentation causes much slower yeast activity which takes longer. That's what gives the beer what some call a 'lager-y flavor.' Most German beers are lagers."
Micro-breweries and their beers, like Pete's Wicked Ale, Saranac and Anchor Steam, have gained popularity of late, as though our collective tastes have matured beyond Iron City and Pabst Blue Ribbon. Ned seems to believe that the contract beers, like Portland Lager and, yes, Star City Premium Lager, are "an attempt by big corporations to capitalize on the micro-brew fad by putting red-dye number 12 in some old cans of Blatz and calling it `Shenandoah Nut-Brown Dry-Ice Ale.'''
Could be. But what if it tastes all right?
Adam Thompson, of the Full Moon Cafe, is perhaps our fair city's cheekiest resident.
"It's just like Roanoke," he says of the beer. "Expensive ... and tasteless."
Sales of Star City Premium Lager have started to wane at the Full Moon. "It's great for the tourists," adds Thompson. So it's a potable postcard.
But, how does it taste?
Well, maybe poet A. E. Housman said it best in his ode to beer, "Terrence, This Is Stupid Stuff":
I have been to Ludlow fair
And left my neck-tie God knows where
And down in lovely muck I've lain
Happy 'til I woke again."
The taste? ... It lingers still, an acrid reminder that I live in a real city bathed in the glow of the largest man-made star in North America. A place where we do not judge by labels, where our neckties and refrigerators are accounted for, and where anyone can have a beer named after him.
Even Dave. That's the one with the label befitting the dynamic bartender that IS Dave Weber.
You might prefer one of those.
by CNB