B Is for Beer

by Tom Robbins

  It’s rather obvious that Gracie and the Beer Fairy were touring a brewery. Right? In this brewery, as in every brewery, there would have been men working: busy brewers all over the place. Right? Yet the men had failed to take the slightest notice of the presence in their midst of a strange little girl in a vomit-stained birthday dress with a ginger-haired, gossamer-gowned “dragonfly” on her shoulder. Right? But being smart, you’ve guessed (correctly) that Gracie and the fairy couldn’t be observed, were invisible to the men due to the fact that they were on the Other Side of the Seam. Right?

  Or, if you didn’t figure that out on your own, your grandpa surely pointed it out to you—provided he’s still hanging in there with you, which he may well be since your grandpa, after so many, many experiences of reading you bedtime stories about talking choo-choo trains, teddy bear picnics, and the hardships of young Abe Lincoln, stories that surely made his teeth feel squeaky and his eyelids droop like coffin covers, well, he must have jumped at the chance to read you a book about beer; must have been so enthused that he poured himself a tall frosty one before he began—and if Grandma hasn’t been checking on him, perhaps a couple more by Chapter 13. Right? It wouldn’t be unusual. That’s often the way it is with beer.

  That’s the way it is with beer, but so far we’ve encountered no actual beer in this brewery. Rather, the tour has stalled before some huge tanks of warm water, flavored (heavily at some breweries, lightly at this one) with malt and hops. (It may be worth mentioning here that the water used in brewing also contributes to the character of beer: for example, hard water—water with a lot of mineral content, such as that in Ireland—lends a muscular nature to a stout brew like Guinness, while softer, less mineral-laced water such as that for which the Czech Republic is famous, produces the paler, crisper style of beer known worldwide as pilsner or lager.)

  At any rate, at this point the Beer Fairy, growing a tad impatient, hustled Gracie along to a second, equally large set of tanks: the fermentation vessels. “This is where the rabbit jumps out of the hat. This is where the so-so hits the go-go and lets loose the mojo. This is where beer becomes beer.”

  The transformative agent, the freelance sorcerer whose alchemy turns wort into beer, is yeast. Once the wort has cooled and has been transferred into fermentation tanks, yeast is summoned to the tanks and left undisturbed therein for at least ten days to do the mysterious work that yeast and yeast alone can do.

  Although she was aware that her mother used something called yeast when she baked bread, Gracie had not the remotest idea what the stuff was (for a time she believed yeast to be the opposite direction from west), so the Beer Fairy had to explain.

  “Yeast is a miniature plant, a fungus actually, a cousin of mushrooms and toadstools; but while each mushroom is composed of numerous cells, a yeast plant is so tiny it’s got only one cell to its name. To see a yeast plant, you’d need a microscope, although you’d have no problem locating yeast plants to look at, because they’re floating around in the air almost everywhere; not just in breweries or in the woods and fields, but in your house, the White House, the Vatican, and a rock star’s dressing room. Maybe especially in a rock star’s dressing room.”

  In spite of being assured that yeast plants were microscopic in size, Gracie couldn’t keep herself from staring hard at the air around her. Just in case. She didn’t want to miss anything.

  “You may be wondering how all that yeast got into the planet’s atmosphere in the first place.” In the event Gracie was wondering that very thing, the fairy went on to suggest that over countless eons of time, yeast spores may have accidentally—or on purpose—drifted down through empty space like friendly invaders from other planets far, far away. “It’s scientifically feasible. They definitely possess the physical capability to do just that. Beer, then, has not only a deep connection to the soil beneath us but also to the stars.” After a brief pause to allow the girl to muse on beer’s possible links to Mars, to Venus, to space travel and little green men, the sprite brought her back down to earth.

  “There are people who earn a living cultivating yeast plants and molding them by the tens of millions into cakes or powders. This is the yeast that brewers dump in the wort. There’s nothing yeast likes to eat better than wort. To hungry yeast, wort is like a steak dinner with chocolate mousse for dessert. Well, actually, for yeast, wort is more on the order of pecan pie à la mode with chocolate mousse for dessert, because what the yeast feasts on in the wort is the sugar. And as it digests it, yeast slowly turns that sugar into alcohol. Bingo!”

  “Alcohol makes beer beer, and people want beer because they want alcohol.”

  “Oh, beer does possess other charms, Gracie; but in the end, you’re correct: that’s what it comes down to. Yeast, like malt and hops and water, influences the character and flavor of beer, but its primary business, its day job, the work that pays its rent and makes it famous—in a funky sort of way—is to give sugar an extreme makeover. The people in the lab coats call that makeover process fermentation. What the Sugar Elves call it is something else again.”

  “There’s Sugar Elfs?”

  “Never mind them. Sugar is reliable, dependable; you can count on sugar to teach cakes and cookies to sing their sweet little songs, to grin from ear to ear whenever it lands on your tongue, and, when you aren’t looking, to rot your molars and make you fat. It’s all very predictable. But by the time yeast gets through fermenting it, sugar will gradually have turned into something wild and crazy; into that tricky, loose-cannon, charismatic chemical known as alcohol.

  “It was the alcohol in beer that set you to merrily dancing, and it was the alcohol that made you puke. Alcohol. It has that power, and we can discuss its good side and its bad side to our hearts’ content. But listen: thirty-six billion gallons of beer are sold in the world every year. How much beer do you suppose would be sold if there wasn’t any alcohol in it?”

  The little girl pondered this, but not for long. “About a gallon and a half,” she suggested.

  “Gracie Perkel, you are a genius!” the Beer Fairy exclaimed. “Let’s blow this pop stand.”

  14

  Uncle Moe had told Gracie that once in a strange, distant land (it could have been England, she wasn’t certain) he’d visited a village called Creamed-Beef-on-Toast. She’d giggled, thinking he was probably being silly. Now, however, as from the hilltop on which she and the Beer Fairy had come to rest, Gracie looked down on a village in the valley below; she had a funny feeling that that village was the very place to which Moe had referred. She couldn’t explain it, so she kept quiet, lest the Beer Fairy think she was the silly one, which the fairy surely would had she blurted out, “Look down there! That’s Creamed-Beef-on-Toast.”

  Prior to departing the brewery, the pixie had guided Gracie down a spiral metal staircase to another large room filled with yet more large tanks. “These are the conditioning tanks,” the fairy had said. “After the primary fermentation is done, the immature beer travels through pipes down to here, where it’s allowed to age, usually for about two weeks. As part of its conditioning it’s generally filtered to strain out any remaining yeast. Some brewers will leave particular beers unfiltered, however, so they can continue to age in the bottle. Children such as you, Gracie, are best left unfiltered while you age, although some parents and institutions, regrettably, do attempt to filter the young souls in their charge.”

  “Uncle Moe told me no institution can be trusted,” said Gracie, not that she completely understood what he’d meant by “institution”. The Beer Fairy nodded but didn’t respond. Maybe she was tired of hearing about that guy Moe.

  “The process here is almost over,” she said instead. (Gracie wasn’t too unhappy about that, because the temperature in the conditioning room was only thirty-four degrees.) “You see that giant horizontal tank over there next to the doors? That’s a holding tank. When the beer at last has satisfied all the brewmaster’s expectations, it’s passed into the holding tank, ready now to leave th
e brewery in kegs or bottles or, if it’s a macrobrewery, in cans, as well. It will journey out into the world as though flying a flag, bearing the brand name of the brewing company.”

  “You mean like Re-Re-Redhook?” asked Gracie. Her teeth were starting to chatter.

  “Could be Redhook. Or Red Stripe, or Red Tail, or Red MacGregor, Red Horse, Redback, Red Erik, or Red Dog. It could be Black Dog, Laughing Dog, Sun Dog, Turbodog, Dogfish Head, Hair of the Dog….”

  “I kno-know about that!”

  “…Black Eye, Black Gold, Black Mac, Black Butte, Blue Label, Blue Moon, Blue Heron, or Pabst Blue Ribbon. It could be, as long as we’re doing colors, Great White. It could be Lazy Boy, Beach Bum, Dead Guy, Fat Tire, Rolling Rock, Three Philosophers, or Delirium Nocturnum.

  “In Japan, it could be Kirin, Asahi Super Dry, Yebisu, or Sapporo.”

  Gracie knew about Sapporo, as well, but she didn’t say anything.

  “In Germany, there’re so many it’s impossible to know where to begin. And Belgium has 365 brands, one for every day of the year. The Czech Republic…”

  “What about Co-Co-Costa Rica?”

  “The national beer of Costa Rica is Imperial, although I don’t know why you’re so interested in that toy country. Anyway, enough brand naming. It could go on all day.” She’d led Gracie out onto the loading dock, where delivery trucks would eventually come to pick up the kegs or the cases of bottles. On the dock there’d been a splash of sunlight, like a puddle of spilled lager, and Gracie went and stood in it. Her jaws quit banging their drumsticks.

  Hovering like a miniature helicopter, a rescue chopper for wounded ladybugs, the fairy, with a serious face, announced that the time had arrived “to learn the truth of beer.”

  Gracie, who’d recently been paying studious attention to all the tanks and tubes and materials, was surprised and confused. “But I already learned…”

  “No, no. You’ve learned something about the chemistry of beer, the technology of brewing, that’s correct, but a brewery doesn’t define beer any more than a shoe factory defines dancing.”

  “I dance in my sneakers,” Gracie volunteered.

  “Good. But it’s not about the sneakers, is it?”

  “No, ’cause sometimes I dance barefooted.”

  “Would you say you dance because you’re glad and dizzy?”

  “I don’t know. I guess so. Uncle Moe says that when I dance I look like a blissed-out monkey.”

  “You’re not alone, kiddo, you’re not alone. When civilized people dance they reconnect with their old animal nature. It reminds them that they aren’t mechanical chess pieces or rooted trees, but free-flowing meat waves of possibility.”

  Gracie looked as blank as a crashed computer, an empty wading pool, a stuffed owl; leading the fairy to say, “Well, enough about dancing. Our subject is beer. If beer is more than the sum of its parts, if the truth of beer lies beyond the brewery, where do we go to find it, and why should we care?”

  Immediately upon posing the question, the Beer Fairy had thrust her wand at Gracie, who automatically took hold of it. Within minutes, or maybe even seconds ( poof! whoosh! ), the brewery was out of sight and the pair of them were seated on a grassy hilltop, overlooking, on one side, fields of ripe grain that stretched into the distance like gulfs of whiskered honey; and on the other, a village that may or may not have been Creamed-Beef-on-Toast.

  15

  It was nice to be outdoors again. The day remained quite sunny, although shuffling along the horizon was a big bumpy cloud the color of the bruises that decorated Gracie’s shins whenever she played soccer.

  When you look at the sky, do the shapes of particular clouds remind you of animals or furniture or various objects? You’re not alone. Gracie, for example, thought this blue-black cloud resembled a bag lady, it being ragged and droopy and slow and dirty looking, with occasional darker bulges of suspended rainwater that could be viewed perhaps as Dumpster diamonds or wads of bag-lady underwear. She imagined the sun giving the poor cloud a handout to buy itself a cup of coffee—or just go away.

  Briefly, Gracie wondered if this cloud might actually be lumbering above Seattle, way off in the distance, and she felt a pang in her heart. It was a twinge, however, that could not accurately be described as “homesickness,” at least not in the usual sense.

  Turning her back on the cloud, Gracie directed her gaze to that village that clung to the banks of a river in the valley down below. Some sort of festival was in progress there, and the cobblestone streets were teeming with noisy merrymakers. There were carnival games and dancing. There were flags fluttering, sausages smoking on grills. The music that drifted up the hillside was polka music, a style with which Gracie was unfamiliar and which struck her as more than a little goofy.

  She saw a great many people seated at tables in tavern gardens, while waiters in long white aprons rushed from bars to tables, back and forth, bearing whole trays of mugs that overflowed with foam. Obviously, large quantities of beer were being both consumed and spilled. Vinegar eels would be having a field day.

  The Beer Fairy, too, was observing this activity, and eventually, as if she felt she ought to get on with her teaching, she said, “Beer is rooted in the Four Elements. Do you know the Four Elements? They are Earth, Air, Fire, and Water. Together they form the basis of what some like to call the real world.

  “Barley and wheat spring from the Earth, of course. The grain is heated to make malt and the malted mash is cooked: that’s where Fire comes in. As for Water, that’s a no-brainer, since beer is essentially enhanced Water.”

  The sprite paused, prompting Gracie to ask, “What about the Air elephant?” It was amazing how attentive she’d become.

  “Why, the Air is in the bubbles. In the carbonation. You’ll learn at school that the Air you inhale is oxygen and the Air you breathe out is carbon dioxide. It’s carbon dioxide bubbles—carbonated Air—that causes beer to sparkle, to tease the inside of one’s cheeks with delicious prickles, and, yes, to make one belch. A degree of carbonation occurs naturally while beer is fermenting, but some brewers will later add carbon dioxide to the conditioning tanks to produce a more bubbly brew.”

  Gee, I thought we were done with the brewery lessons, thought Gracie. She struggled in vain to hold back a yawn.

  “Something you’ll never learn in school or in a brewery,” the Beer Fairy went on, poking Gracie between the eyes with her wand, “is that there’s also a Fifth Element. That’s right, another basic component of reality, one that’s as nourishing as Earth, as shifty as Water, as invisible as Air, and as dangerous as Fire.”

  There’s nothing like the word dangerous to generate interest: it’s irresistible to young males, scary to most young females, though not necessarily those of the Gracie Perkel variety.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  The fairy hesitated. A breeze rustled her papery wings. “It’s not easy to say.” She paused again. “I’m only labeling it an ‘element,’ understand, because it doesn’t fall into the category of animal or vegetable or mineral. It disobeys the laws of physics and it moons the rules of logic, just as the two of us have been doing today, actually, although you seem to have taken it completely in stride. What is it? Some people call it transcendence, some used to call it magic…before that word got used up.

  “It’s a mixture of pure love, unlimited freedom, and total, spontaneous, instantaneous knowledge of everything past, present, and future—all rolled up in a kind of invisible ghost-sheet enchilada that can be periodically smelled and occasionally tasted, but rarely chewed and never, never digested. Hey, you don’t need to make a face. I told you it wouldn’t be easy.

  “There are those who regard it as a blast of divine energy, originating in Heaven, maybe, or in Another World. There’re also people who are content to refer to it simply as the Mystery, and that’s as good a term as any, I guess, although I’m rather fond of the jazz musician who, in a different context, once called it hi de ho.”

 
Gracie issued half a giggle. The top half. She wasn’t sure why. “Hi de ho,” she said. And then she said it again.

  “People are attracted to the Mystery,” said the fairy, only to immediately correct herself. “No, not simply attracted, they are unconsciously pulled toward it, they hunger for it, they yearn to connect with it, to get next to it, even to merge with it.”

  “They do?”

  “They do and always have, although as I said, this longing is deep inside and mostly unconscious.”

  “But what is it?”

  “If we could say what it is, it wouldn’t be the Mystery, would it? When you stare out of your window into the drizzle and the mist, don’t you sometimes feel that there’s something more to life than what television and the mall and kindergarten and even your family represent; that there’s something grander and stranger, more alive, more free and more real than what any ordinary situation has to offer? Something way beyond? And that it seems to be calling to you, calling even though it doesn’t know your name, your address, how old you are, or give a rip if you’ve washed behind your ears or finished your peas?”