music

Welcome back (or, if you’ve joined in media res, simply welcome) to the second part of a beer-y and life-y roundup of 2022.

In April, we discovered that our little beer podcast not only had listeners, but they had voted for us to be included in a card game, which is a very specific kind of internet-based fame, but a welcome one! The re-opening of international travel meant a family trip to Portugal, a new destination for all of us. While most of the beer wasn’t especially memorable, there were a few standouts, notably Urraca Vendaval, an IPA by Oitava Colina: we enjoyed that and some other local small breweries’ offerings at Crafty Corner, a taproom nestled in some late medieval/early modern arches in Lisbon.

Once back in Ireland, we almost immediately headed to Limerick, where I smashed my half-marathon PB by nearly 8 minutes, and enjoyed some wonderful beer from Treaty City and the always-exceptional Crew Brewing Company (that Vanilla Milk Stout, tho). In another quick turn-around, I hopped back on a plane to Denmark for a whirlwind work trip, and enjoyed some Limfjords Ale, a brown ale (BROWN ALE!) from Thisted Bryghus, before heading back home to Dublin.

May, of course, saw another Eurovision, and we are thoroughly enjoying our now-annual Beer Ladies Podcast deep dives. But there was live music, too – two nights of The Divine Comedy at the Olympia! And here we pause for an important protip – as the beer on offer at The Olympia is a wasteland of Heineken and their stout-adjacent Islands Edge, get yourself over to The Oak and/or its conjoined twin, The Beer Temple in advance; your taste buds will thank you. And, spoiler alert: there would be more Neil Hannon-ing to come, but we’re not there yet…we (we, in this instance, being me and Child One – really, Young Adult One) also snuck in an evening with Peggy Seeger and son Calum MacColl, so said offspring has bragging rights to say he’s seen Peggy as well as her brother, Pete, though alas, he barely remembers that show – and this was his third or fourth time seeing Neil. If you’re wondering, he doesn’t share the Eurovision love, but Child Two does).

But back to beer; in June, there was more cask Ballykilcavan Bambrick’s Brown – huzzah! It was well worth braving the Phoenix Park crowds at Bloom for a taste. I had another race in the form of the VHI Women’s Mini-Marathon (really a 10K, but who’s counting?), and made the impromptu decision to stop off at the Porterhouse Central for a post-race pint – much-needed after the terrible weather before and during the run. It’s a good thing I did – it disappeared not long after, so it was a last chance to see it before it morphed into Tapped, but that’s another story.

Later that month, I made it back to London for my first in-person work conference since 2019, and enjoyed some fantastic cask pints while I was in town. I also binged all the theatre I could fit in, as per usual, and am so glad I got to see Fra Fee in Cabaret, plus 2:22: A Ghost Story, with Mandip Gill and Tom Felton, which brings my ‘Doctor Who Companions Seen Onstage’ total up to – er – two. I’d hate to figure out how many ‘Harry Potter Actors’ would be on the list, but as that is some vast percentage of British Equity, it seems less worth counting, but I digress…a pre-theatre pint at The Harp was most welcome.

I also enjoyed a quick lunchtime pint in the very-haunted Haunch of Venison in Salisbury before heading back – I know that Butcombe Bitter isn’t exotic for my friends in the UK, but we just don’t have bitters around in Ireland, in cask or keg, very often. But hey, perhaps we can manifest more of them into being. We Beer Ladies do have form in that regard.

Also: more Parkuns – sometimes, in a second-woman finish!

Next up: Summertime fun….

There are a number of great beers that seem made for Halloween - Wychwood Hobgoblin, The Lost Abbey's Witch's Wit or just about anything from Brasserie Fantôme can work well.  But to really encourage a spooky bring-on-Samhain mood,why not try pairing an autumnal beer with some seasonal music? Thanks to Folk Alley's Halloween Scream Stream and Spotify, I have a constant rotation of traditional and not-so-traditional Halloween tunes going in the background, and have selected a few music and beverage options below.

Tam Lin - Fairport Convention / Traquair House Ale
I could have chosen any version of Child Ballad 39A - I have something approaching twenty in my own collection (considerably more if you include print), and there is a seemingly endless supply beyond that - but I'm a big fan of this particular one. As you are probably aware, the song tells the story of Janet (also called Margaret in some versions), who must rescue her lover, Tam Lin (insert many variants here as well) from the Queen of the Fairies, who has been keeping him captive at Carterhaugh, a wooded area near Selkirk in Scotland.  Appropriately enough, there is fine beer to be had locally - Traquair House Brewery's excellent House Ale and Jacobite Ale are both perfect tie-ins.

Witches [sic] Hat - The Incredible String Band / Moorhouse's Pendle Witches Brew
Veering toward the more psychedelic end of the of the psych-folk band's canon, this 1968 track presumably owes more to chemical experimentation than to the folk tradition, but its trippy lyrics and music are still atmospherically-appropriate for Halloween.  Pair it with Moorhouse's Pendle Witches Brew for some malty goodness, and raise a glass to the real-life Pendle 'witches,' executed in 1612.  Moorhouse's Black Cat, a mild, is also a fantastic beer.

Lord Of The Ages - Magna Carta / Weyerbacher Old Heathen
Perhaps you have friends who aren't quite sure what prog rock is.  In response, you might have gone easy on them, offering up some Jethro Tull, but why hold back? This track, released in 1973, has everything: lyrics that might have been borrowed from Tolkien-inspired fan fiction ('Lord of the Ages rode one night / Out through the gateways of time / Astride a great charger / In a cloak of white samite' - you get the idea), a 'rocking out' section toward the end, a little chanting and a nearly 10-minute running time.  You may need a strong drink after listening to it, so a Weyerbacher Old Heathen should be just the thing.

Widdicombe Fair - The City Waites / Hambleton's Nightmare Porter
The most well-known version of the comedic West Country folksong was collected in 1888 by  the Rev. Sabine Baring-Gould, whose career as an antiquarian, songwriter, correspondent, novelist and folklorist is, perhaps, the classic example of why being a wealthy 19^th century churchman was pretty awesome. In the song, a number of stock characters (possibly or possibly not based on real 18^th century people from the town of Widecombe in the Moor) borrow a horse to visit the eponymous fair; the mare dies from the effort of hauling a goodly portion of the village around, and returns as a ghost with all aboard. The song, as interpreted by The City Waites, puts the emphasis on the comedy. Although hailing from an entirely different moorland (Yorkshire rather than Devon), Hambleton's Nightmare Porter still works, and rather nicely too.

Damn These Vampires - The Mountain Goats / Great Lakes Nosferatu
I know, vampires are presently extremely uncool, given their sparkly associations with teenage girls who fear actual boys, but this song recalls a time (not so long ago) when they were still dangerous as well as glamorous (and, frankly, a lot more interesting). Luckily, there is a beer than can help you forget the Twi-hards (or could be employed with caution in a related drinking game, though one suspects that it would be easy to see such a game reach Withnailian proportions) - Great Lakes Nosferatu. This big, red beer is one to look forward to every fall (rather unlike Twilight movies, unless your capacity for ironic viewing is unparalleled).

In the Company of Ravens - Maddy Prior / Black Raven Brewing's Tamerlane Brown Porter
This spare, haunting tribute to the oft-misunderstood bird, from the Steeleye Span singer's 1999 solo album, Ravenchild, is a great mood-setter for Halloween, and  Black Raven Brewing's Tamerlane Brown Porter keeps the spooky theme going with a liquid nod to Edgar Allen Poe.  Appropriately enough, in addition to their porter, the Seattle brewery makes a great IPA called Trickster - also raven-approved in Native American lore.

Happy Halloween! For more on beer and hauntings, check out my story on the Lemp family over at Serious Drinks, or go back a bit further for my pumpkin beer history.

The icy weather affords an opportunity to broadcast a few recent favorites, many of which admittedly have not changed much since November:

Music
Sweden – The Mountain Goats
Laid – James
The Life Pursuit – Belle & Sebastian
Company – 2006 Broadway Revival Cast Recording
Fourteen Autumns and Fifteen Winters – The Twilight Sad

February Derby Picks
Anak Nakal
Court Vision
Face the Cat
Tale of Ekati
War Pass

Beer
Iron Hill Pilsner Barleywine (West Chester)
Stone XI Anniversary
Troubadour Obscura
Troegs Scratch #7
Victory