You don’t get much more American than this TN native
I love America. Goddammit, I really do. And I love that I come from the same country as the blues, baseball, Patti Smith, candy corn, and the Double IPA. I love the Jumbotron cam and I love Spencer Tunick (nsfw). I love Dolly Parton’s…hair. At the same time there’s this over-sized American pride makes me really uncomfortable; the kind I associate with monster truck rallies, super-sized grease fests, and SUVs the size of my living room.
Why is it then that the same bigger-is-better attitude I roll my eyes at is precisely why I like American beers so damn much? Because please, throw an obscene amount of hops in my beer — I’ll take two.
Brunch!
This contradiction was evident on Sunday, July 3rd at 11:30 in the morning, when I found myself in the Nashville’s Farmers’ Market with two flights of Tennessee beers sitting in neat rows on boards the shape of their state. I had suffered a panicked moment of almost-Millennial FOMO and had to try all of the beers. Of course, I didn’t drink them all by myself; my ever-eager, ever-thirsty father was across the table from me, ready to take whatever I handed him. Some families go worship God together every week; me and Pops, we share a sacred brew of our own.
This is what Honky Tonk looks like — in Robert’s on Broadway
Nashville is an amazing mish-mash of the America that watches Nascar on 80-inch TVs and invests generously in belt buckles alongside the America that always remembers its canvas bags at the grocery and drives hybrids. Just wandering around different neighborhoods I found several business incubators — collections of container cars halved, each housing a small business that was testing the waters: a Tennessee-author-only bookstore, a shop with just oatmeal in a jar (it’s to-go!), an art shop for Nashville artists. And then there’s Broadway, lined with jumbo honky tonks, all neon and Merle covers, with the streets a Times Square crush.
No jackalopes were injured in the writing of this blog
The Tennessee beers I tried were also a satisfying mix of the bold and the subtle. We visited the Jackalope Brewing Company one afternoon because I had read it was started by two women and I immediately wanted to meet them. (Okay, maybe not as much as I wanted to meet Jack White while I was down there, but lady brewers? A close second.) It was a hyper-trendy joint with a patio that had, yes, jumbo Jenga and an overwhelming number of dudes in Polos.
I wasn’t able to meet the ladies (or Jack White, for that matter), but I did nab a rockin’ flight. The standout of the quartet was the bourbon barrel-aged ale with peach slices. I imagine the brewer standing in front of the fermenter, a quizzical finger on her lip — what can we do to make this totally rad beer even sicker? Liquor and peaches, that’s what.
Tennessee All-Stars
At the Farmers’ Market the next morning, the lone, spread-thin bartender took the time to help me pick eight beer samples that would appeal to hop heads. We threw in two wildcards: a peanut butter milk stout and a gose.
***Allow me to take a moment out of this beer column to say how damn nice everyone in Nashville was. Thank you, Nashers, for welcoming a couple square Yankees and keeping beers in their hands.***
All of the beers were good, or maybe my palate is not too discerning before noon. My favorites were a tossup between Bearded Iris’ Best Bet IPA and the Ruby Red from Fat Bottom Brewing (disregarding their penchant for offensive label art and terrible bottom-related puns.)
“Grow Where You’re Planted”
We wandered through the rest of the market, past the corn-shaped bike racks, pausing at the coffee stand, and through the tables of produce. We had a pizza with hummus on it and one with fermented fennel. I finally realized that, from the two-table display of fresh zucchini and eggplant to the labyrinthine garden store, the common thread that stitched all these businesses and people together was pride.
It wasn’t ugly pride, or blind pride; it was pride in what comes from the place you live. What is grown and what is made. Nashville: you have every right to be proud of those eggplants and pizzas, and especially those beers. And I have every right to be proud of my country, because of Nashville. Because of Cleveland and because of Detroit. Even because of Mansfield.