let's go! nippon craft beer festival 2010

tokyo-dwellers--how about a little craft before all hallow's eve? here's a great opportunity to check out a bunch of domestic and imported microbrews while you shield your bodies from typhoon #14 (aka "chaba")!

weather map from mainichi.jp/

Kuro: A Beer for the Socratic Examination of Life

The rule about pairing is that you can match, go the opposite way, or go for something weird. Or, do whatever. This is true for fashion too. Just ask style icon, Chloe Sevigny:  

"Chloe Sevigny for Opening Ceremony, Resort 2011"

Dress with socks and sandals? Hell yes: 

Barnsley, Dome/Pacific Coast News

Also true for food and beer pairings, as well as for beer and music pairings. Green Flash Hop Head Red with a sesame red bean bun (just sayin'...)?

With that preamble, I'm going to go ahead and pair Suntory Premium Malts <黒> with Herma by the composer Iannis Xenakis. 

Herma, by Iannis Xenakis (1961), first page. 'Dedicated to Yuji Takahashi'

The Story

In the summer of 1961, a young 22-year old pianist named Takahashi Yuji commissioned a piece from his friend Iannis Xenakis for 50,000 yen during Xenakis' visit to Japan (in 2010, 50,000 yen is 612 USD). "Herma" is an ancient Greek term that refers to a foundation, or a stringing together. Xenakis was interested in Aristotelean principles of logic, and tried applying ideas of mathematical logic as a compositional method to determine what sounds he would use. The piece set a precedent for the compositions based on rigorous mathematical principles that Xenakis would become famous for in the 1960s. When Herma was completed, pianists insisted that it was humanly impossible to play. For its premiere in 1962, Takahashi played it with a degree of perfection that stunned Xenakis. He also played it entirely from memory. "Well, that's really the only way you can play it," says Takahashi in his soft-spoken but freakishly intense way in this youtube video. Here's the link to the piece without the commentary, but do yourself a favor and find a decent recording. But the best story about Takahashi's performance of this piece is the one about how, during a Paris performance, he sliced his finger on the keyboard sending blood and *a nail* flying into space. And so, the story goes, that this was Takahashi's way of paying respect to Xenakis' devotion to the Socratic dictum, "the unexamined life is not worth living."

Back to the business of pairings. I'm going to say it was Takahashi that inspired this pairing of a tangy, charcoal infused, dark honey flavored black beer called the Suntory Premium Malts <黒> with the unfathomably freaky beast that is the child of set theory. But in performance, Takahashi demonstrates that there's so much more to it as well, like movement, listening, and an obsessive commitment to formations. There's beauty that rears its head out of all of this. In this space of confusion and the joy that comes from it, One Woman finds inspiration to make weird pairings. 

minipost: bad beer

sometimes there are bad things, and sometimes there are good things--words from my mother.
sometimes there is good beer; and then there is bad beer.

to enjoy good beer, one must understand bad beer.

remember me? -- no thank you! (photo from the huffington post)

the top ten, according to ratebeer.com:

...bad weekend in college that involved one or more of these? maybe you don't remember. maybe that's a good thing. here's the huffington post's version with lovely pics, and ratebeer's original post for the full list with 50 of 'the worst beers in the world.' how many of the top 50 have you had?

*for the record... one woman is shamelessly fond of the tv + coors light (#26) experience.  

Baked Empanadas with Ebisu za Black

Feeling pretty jubilant after the Chilean miners rescue operation, One Woman was gripped by a sudden desire to make empanadas for the fam to celebrate the mision cumplida. These babies are seriously, *so good.* This baked empanada recipe courtesy of the fabulous Chef Dré. Check her website here to enjoy them for yourself! Really. Enjoyed all over the world with infinite variation, empanadas are the classic comfort food. Buttery, toasty, warm, soft, and cuddly.


The beer: Ebisu za black--found in mom's fridge. Technically, it's a dark lager, but it's got a little metallic tang to it that brings it a bit towards the red ale category in terms of flavor. If you look at if closely, it's got a bit of a reddish tint too. Since the dark caramel malt used is already deep in color from the beginning, the actual roast isn't as dark as it looks. A bit of bitterness doesn't overpower other elements, and it has a nice balance with the grassy hop and burnt sugar flavors. Nothing too complex here; perhaps not the first thing I would have paired with the empanadas, but the color has impact, and the taste can hold up against the bold flavors of the empanada filling: tuna with a slow-cooked onion, garlic, tomato, red pepper, and paprika base mixed with little cubes of egg and potato, and herbs. Yum. 

The musical pairing: While we're going for a bit of unusual combos here, I'm goingin the out-direction with the Mary Halvorson Quintet. Like the empanada, this music is a lot of things, and it's tasty: a bit of indie rock, a bit of Anthony Braxton, a bit of Sun Ra, a bit of Ethiopiques, and disastrously Mary with sweet delay pedals to mess with your food comma'd brain. Click the link to hear "Sea Seizures (No. 19)" from her new album, Saturn Sings.

Alternatives: "Give her another highball"

When Susan Alexander (played by the lovely Dorothy Comingdore) and Thompson order highballs in Citizen Kane (dir. Orson Welles, 1941), it pretty much seems like the coolest drink ever.

A drunk and lovelorn Susan after one too many highballs

The highball, for cocktail non-connaisseuses like One Woman, is basically, a mixed drink made with whiskey, and soda in its most basic form. Other additions and substitutions like lemon peel or ginger ale are also options.

Cut ahead 69 years... far, far, away from Kane's Xanadu: Tokyo, Japan 2010. With domestic whiskey sales dragging, the large beverage corporation Suntory (one of the top 4 beer corporations in Japan) suddenly releases a huge national campaign to promote the sales of whiskey in 2009. The Suntory campaign markets whiskey not in pure form or even on the rocks, but as the much more tempered, easy-going highball. The most visible and tangible artifacts of this aggressive campaign are posters and TV commercials featuring the pale-faced heian-cool flawless-skinned beer-gulping beauty named Koyuki, paired with vintage imagery hearkening to the good old Showa-era days. And it's _everywhere_.

Koyuki will teach you the ancient art of highball mixing--please, be gentle; don't stir too much

In any case, the highball--whether mixed, on tap, or in a can--has been highly visible everywhere in Tokyo recently. It was only a matter of time before One Woman had to try it.

Taste Test:
There's somewhat of a gap between the visuals and the taste. Suntory's highballs come in large beer mugs emblazoned with the company's kakubin whiskey logo. Serve in a super-chilled glass with lots of ice.

The suntory kakubin highball is served in a special kaku-mug (kaku means corner in Japanese). 

Notice  the angular tortoise shell-like wedges on the glass.

In the end, the kakubin highball is basically, a splash of plain whiskey with lots of fizzy ice water. Besides, Suntory's large mugs can't compare to those dainty goblets that Susan Alexander drinks out of (though, I'm told that a 'highball glass' is a tumbler--closer in kind to a mug than a goblet). Still, the highball was a nice pre-dinner cocktail; a fine alternative to the usual beer that often precedes any izakaya-dining occasion. Suntory's recommended lower end blended whiskey, "kakubin," which sells for around ¥2000/bottle, does the job well. Soft, mellow, sweet, with just a wisp of caramelized dark sugar, it doesn't have much vanilla or smoke character that you might desire from a fine bourbon or scotch. But sometimes that's not necessary. Kakubin whiskey is the type of whiskey that takes a backseat to the occasion, letting you enjoy the moment without diverting your critical attention from the food or the wonderful company.

Musical pairing: "How High the Moon"--the soundtrack of my imagined highball drinking experience circa 1940: pinnacle of the big band era, golden age of Hollywood. A smokey-eyed Helen Forrest with the Benny Goodman Orchestra on stage at some private penthouse ball, an amber autumn moon reflected by the glass crown on the Chrysler building. Music by Morgan Lewis; lyrics by Nancy Hamilton.