Here Comes a Regular

Feeling hopeful enough to risk lower-ABV beer.

Good news, everyhoss, it’s spring. Sure, half the country is still iced over and we’re a fortnight and three quarters away from the actual equinox, but it stays light past 5 p.m. where I happen to live and probably where you do too, and we’re all much closer to March than we are to January. There’s plenty of bullshit weather to come, but we’re now deep enough into the year to indulge in the fantasy that each bout of sleetarrhea will be the last. And therein lies the immense psychological precarity of late February. 

If you happened to wander into a couple-hour patch of pleasant weather a month ago, you simply appreciated it for what it was. “Hey, it’s 38 degrees and partly sunny, this trudge through the slush is so much less bad than yesterday’s was, and I will enjoy this microdose of comfort before it starts snowing again in the morning.” But I just checked the 10-day forecast and there’s no calamity in sight. That gets us into the second week of March, which gets me to recovered memories of wearing shorts on St. Patrick’s Day. Dangerous times, starting to tell myself some lies over here, which I guess is the sort of thing that happens when you begin your day by declaring that it’s spring on February 24. But you know what I’m saying—we’re getting there. 

Pandemic is on a similar timeline: still bad, just like the weather is, but there’s a reasonable expectation that the worst is behind us. New infections are falling, and a handful of people have even been vaccinated. Are we in for another spike driven by viral mutation, collective overconfidence, craven economic autofellatio, and reckless adult spring breaking? Seems about as likely as another big snowstorm, i.e., hell yeah, odds are at least one in three. BUT that’s better than the odds were a couple months ago. We’re nowhere near the clear, but we’ve got a chance; we’re in simultaneous versions of the same season regarding the desperate self-deceptions necessary to get out of bed when everything is still so objectively terrible. Shoot, this was intended to be a positive post. 

You look nice today.

So while I’m more optimistic about the middle distance than I have been for damn near a year, I’m still not quite ready to look forward to anything more specific than sitting on a beer patio someday this summer. That seems almost certainly feasible and it’s enough to get me by for now. I completely understand the appeal of booking a Labor Day all-you-can-endure sex and gout cruise around the Cape of Good Fuckin’ Luck, but it’s not for me. I’m not yet at the point where I can plan specific future happinesses. For the likes of me it’s time to sit back and reflect on just how in the hell we made it through winter (it’s spring, remember). 

I didn’t prefer winter when I was a kid, but I didn’t dread it too much either, because even back then I was pretty good at doing time. As long as there’s a clearly defined end to the sentence, I’ve always been content to read, do pushups, and make ketchup wine in the toilet. My wife, on the other hand, was brought up with a winter tolerance so strong that sometimes I suspect it borders on outright enjoyment. She skied some when she was kid and she loves the Nutcracker, plus her birthday’s in February. The Gordons were not skiers or dancers, nor did we have the good sense to celebrate Emily’s birthday back then. 

In normal years this disparity doesn’t really matter, because seasons aren’t as much of a factor when you’re a regular office drone with the normal suite of social inputs and outlets. What I’m saying is that in an unfucked year I can read detective novels and hang out in bars just as easily in February as in August. But since we were both stuck in the same cave 23 hours a day this past winter (it’s spring now), I felt compelled to make the best of things, which I interpreted as whining 95 percent less than I wanted to and buying Champagne a couple times. 

I know a lot of people cope with tough times by shopping, but that’s an untoward hobby for a nonprofit beer newslettrist and furthermore importantly I’ve just never really cared for it. I’m as much of a materialist as the next pig, but I take no great pleasure in the act of acquiring shit. I am very excited for my new juicer to arrive tomorrow, but I didn’t enjoy the selection process. I like it when materials just kinda show up, which is why my most important bit of self-care during the pandemic frost was signing up for Notch Brewing’s monthly subscription service. 

Notch is for sure one of my five or eight favorite breweries and if I weren’t such a cowardly soak I’d just declare it number one, but I’m a sucker for expensive Belgian-style stuff that gets you drunk quick and also every Chicago brewery, but regardless of my day’s angle Notch is in the very top tier. They make a lot of Euro-inspired lagers and some hoppy American ales, none higher than 4.5% ABV and I swear that’s plenty. I’ve never gotten on the return ferry from their Salem taproom more than partially legful. Notch is exacting and classical yet also joyful and stylish, and it rules so hard. Damn. 

Massachusetts residency comes with certain burdens. The unfuckable accent, the reputation for racism that is totally unfair and certainly fell from the sky fully formed for absolutely no reason, and a Republican governor who views his mandate as nothing more than keeping the roads paved and the cops paid. HOWEVER, it is the only state in which you can get a mixed 12-pack of Notch UPS’d to your front door the first week of each month. February’s shipment contained a very fine Kolsch, an even better Tmavy Czech Dark Lager, and a bonkers good German pale lager called Here Comes a Regular. 

This last one’s a shankbier, a German classification for beers between 2% and 3% ABV. That’s right, the very first edition of this subscription contained a sub-3 lager. The fucking audacity! I love it. It was brewed with heirloom malt ooh la la and decocted intensively, which frankly doesn’t sound like any of my business but is said to have contributed to its impossibly robust flavor for such a low-power beer. I’ve been drinking a lot of helles lager lately, Notch’s and otherwise, and Here Comes a Regular has more character than any of them. And it’ll get you less drunk, which is worth looking into for the first time in quite some while. 

Today’s other recommendation is A Rage in Harlem by Chester Himes, a caper-thriller featuring crookedish cops named Coffin Ed Johnson and Gravedigger Jones. It’s also got fake nuns, and the main guy steals a hearse.