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Saturday, April 3, 2010

Tradition! A Fallen Friar at Easter Vigil

For over ten years, I have had a tradition of drinking strong beers before singing at the Easter Vigil services at my church. It began when my brother-in-law Carl arrived at the train station for Easter one Saturday afternoon, oh, years ago, when we still had a Taurus station wagon, when Nora was a baby. We loaded his luggage in the back, and he got in the front with a shoebox. What's that, I asked, and he grinned and opened it up: three bottles of Old Dominion Millennium. ... In later years, I would attend the Split Thy Skull barleywine event at Sugar Mom's on the afternoon in question, and make my way home, and sing. Yes, I did, and beautifully, I'd say; others have said so.

I did not falter this year. This afternoon, while cutting up leftover turkey for a skillet of hash (nice, too, with the Worcestershire sauce tang), I polished off a 22 oz. bottle of BridgePort Brewing's Fallen Friar Triple. It was nice: spicy, not flabby and sweet (just the way I like tripels), with a woody/brett tang to it, almost like someone had mixed a bottle of Chimay White and Orval. Tasty. I followed that with a 12 oz. bottle of the newly re-launched Dundee Pale Bock from Genesee. And that, which I am still finishing off, is just plain good: malty, juicy, authoritative.

Fear not. I'm losing weight, but I'm still big enough to ground that much beer. I'm ready to sing. It is the pinnacle of the Christian year. Christ is risen, risen indeed!

4 comments:

Dick said...

Yikes Lew how do you do that. I absolutely can't drink anything before I either sing or conduct. I'm impressed.

Lew Bryson said...

Years of practice? A calling? Dunno!

Alan said...

I find I can't sing without... even or maybe because I am a Minister's kid. Risen indeed!

sam k said...

Gotta admire any tradition that mixes good beer and religion!

Question: I was under the impression that Pale Bock was going away, and that it would even be phased out of the variety pack, which is the only place, I was told by my Genny master, that it still existed. They say they can't get full cases of it. Can you enlighten?