Smuttynose Old Brown Dog

     I am re-reading (I never finished it the first time, though) Van Wyck Brooks' Indian Summer, a retrospective of the literary renaissance in this area during the late 19th century. Chapter 2, my favorite, is about the great poets of Cambridge: my predecessors, as it were; of whom I am grossly ignorant overall. Chapter 3 goes out into Concord and Amesbury, and conjures a host of geographic names, some familiar, others less so - but one place, that I never thought of as a place, put me in the mood to drink (not that it takes much, these days.)

                                                Smutty Nose

    Well, I thought you were just a beer. You are, aren't you? You Old Brown Dog, Man's best friend on this first full day of autumn, when the humidity suggests the Dog Days are not yet behind us and perhaps we are in for our own Indian Summer, New England. What can I say about smooth, clear, caramelly malt that's just strong enough to get the job done without completely dehydrating one as I'm already sweating. Hop character I would call medium - that is, it's not like the ridiculous Massachusett IPA fanatics that have no sense at all for tradition and hop-up their beers with more terpenes than a fat nug of OG Kush - nor as flat and mild as the timeless lagers of Plzn and Bavaria. Something else, something old and seaside, that sentimental yearning across the Atlantic for our English past, the roots we've laid in small town and city across MA and NH, the love of beer that the working man and the poet have in common, more than anything save a busy hand.

                                                "Make mine a Smutty!"