Monkey Business

"Hey"

"Oh..hey"

"What are you up to?"

"What do you mean?"

"Why are you hiding here?"

"Who is hiding? I am just getting a bit of quiet time"

"Yeah? I thought you were feeding monkey"

"Done with that. I am here to get some quiet as I said. Otherwise I can't read or anything"

"What are you reading?"

"Oh, a bunch of things"

"I don't see any books around"

"They are in the other room"

"But you are in this room"

"Yeah, I know"

"So you are not reading now?"

"I guess not"

"What's that?"

"What? Oh this?"

"Yeah"

"Some drink"

"Looks like a gin and tonic to me"

"Well, it is. Gin & tonic is also drink na?"

"I see. I thought you were on some wine-only course"

"That was when thing was inside"

"Ah, makes sense"

"Really? If you say so"

"But wait, why are you drinking here?"

"Dude. Can't I drink in my own home? I might be on leave but I still pay rent on this place you know"

"Yeah yeah. But why are you hiding and drinking?"

"Who is hiding?"

"You only"

"Just because I feel like sitting in the guest room doesn't mean I am hiding"

"What does it mean then?"

"It just means I feel like sitting in the guest room"

"Oh right"

"Whatever"

"Does amma know about this?"

"Know about what?"

"Sneaking into guest room for gin & tonic"

"How old do you think I am?"

"Question for your mum. Let us ask her, shall we?"

"Go away"

Postcard from Plzeň

Because nobody wanted it. And I am too lazy to re-write it to make anyone want it. Plus I promised you all that I would furnish details of moi's many alcohol adventures. And because someone needs to convince Cat that the place exists.

The Czech Republic holds the interesting distinction of being the country with the highest per capita consumption of beer in the world. Wikipedia informs me that at 157 litres / year, the Czechs are way ahead of the Irish who come in second with 131 litres. Most of what the Czechs drink is a pale lager or rather the mother of all pale lagers, the Pilsner Urquell. The city of Pilsen (Czech: Plzeň) in western Bohemia is home to the brewery which invented the pale lager. Car aficionados no doubt recognize Pilsen as being the home of the much-seen cars on desi highways in recent years, the Skoda. As LP informed me, car and beer don’t usually mix, but don’t mention that when you are in Pilsen.

We took the bus to Pilsen from Prague, arguably the most beautiful city in Bohemia if not in all of Europe. For the casual visitor, Prague is all about the Castle’s amazing gargoyles, lovely church steeples and gold-tipped Hussite spires. For the culturally inclined, there is no dearth of intellectual tradition - this is after all the city of Kafka and Kundera, of Hrabal and of a young Forman, and of the playwright-President Vaclav Havel. Pilsen, on the other hand, seemed gritty, more an industrial town than a cultural centre, and the people not as friendly; in a sense closer to their German neighbours than their fellow countrymen in the east. It took all the German we knew and a bit of luck in the form of a Pilsner Urquell truck that we ran after to find our way to the brewery.

There were three Swedes (I am actually not making this up) in addition to the two of us in the English tour that was just starting. As we were waiting for the last two people in our tour to arrive Jan, our tour guide told us the history of how at the end of WW2, the American soldiers had already liberated Pilsen a couple of days before the Red Army reached Prague. However, they waited in Pilsen instead of continuing on to Prague in deference to their Soviet Allies who were making their way to Prague from the east. This is why Pilsen celebrates Liberation Day two days before the rest of the country. Jan explained that since then, the Americans had never turned up on time for anything just as the last two people on our tour, the American couple, joined us.

The tour began with a video of the history of the brewery – in the 1800s, every building in the city centre had a brewing license. However, the citizens were not happy with top-fermented beers because of their low quality and short storage life and decided to incorporate a brewery to produce bottom-fermenting beer. The Bavarian brewers were considered the masters in bottom fermentation and therefore they hired Josef Groll, a brewer from Bavaria. In 1842, Groll produced the first batch of Urquell beer, but distinct from the Bavarian ones because of the use of soft Bohemian water, pale malt local to the region, and bitter hops from Saaz. From such humble beginnings, Pilsner Urquell has gone on to become the signature lager, the flagship brand today for the SABMiller brewery group with many copycat products trying to cash in to the Pilsner name[1].

We visited the new, state-of-the-art bottling plant (latest German technology we were told) where thousands of bottles and cans were making their way through conveyor belts. The capacity was 60,000 bottles an hour and they work around the clock. In addition to cans and bottles, kegs are filled with unpasteurised beer to supply to the local pubs. We were then taken to the brewing plants – the old brewery has been converted into an exhibition hall and a new plant built next to it. Jan walked us through the process of making the lager – malt, water, hops and yeast are all that goes into it. Both barley for the pale malt and hops is local to the region and there were samples for us to taste. The hops were bitter, way bitter than any bitter-gourd I’ve been made to have but the after taste makes it worth the effort.

We then walked to the new brewing plant to see the mashing process - the malted grain is mixed with water and heated to break down the starch in the grains to sugars. The malt extract, called wort is boiled, and hops added at this stage to give the beer its bitterness and aroma. Once the wort is whirl pooled and cooled, the yeast is added and the fermentation process begins. For the lager, bottom fermenting yeasts are used, and these eat less sugar, produce a cleaner taste and have a longer storage life. When the sugars have been completely digested, the beer is cooled to freezing, and conditioned for 5 or 6 weeks. This beer is then filtered to remove any yeast and hops before it is sent to the packaging plant for pasteurisation and bottling.

At this point, Bill and I reckoned that we were nearly at the end of the tour and as we had a train to catch (to the next beer town actually), we told Jan that we would be leaving and promised him that we would have Pilsner Urquell in the next pub we are at. Jan asked us to wait a few minutes more. So we walked down with him to the old and dank fermentation cellars. Temperature controlled rooms and tanks are used for this purpose nowadays but these hand-built cellars are still used to make a few barrels of beer the old way just for the tour groups and for the brewery museum. This beer comes straight off the barrel, and is unfiltered and unpasteurised and more importantly, is not available anywhere else in the world. In Jan’s words, “this is the real thing”. We immediately took the largest glass possible, got it filled, raised the glasses with a “Skol” to the Swedes, and promptly drank it all up. We missed the train to Cesky Budejovice that day and had to wait a couple of hours for the next train but I wasn’t complaining. The tiny bits of hops along with the heavenly pale lager were definitely worth missing a couple of trains.

[1] I know. It is intentional alright? I have been told that this can count as relationship building. If I manage to sell work, I reckon I can expense my Czech trip. So yeah, no snarkiness on this one. Be nice.

Postcard from Spey

I know. It was ages ago. But its whisky no? We can wait a little, no?

Oh, those of you who actually saw this over your morning coffee, please note: the picture you saw is of Strathisla, not Glenfiddich. This one below is Glenfiddich alright. The distillation process.




“And malt does more than Milton can
To justify God’s way to man”
- A.E.Housman

And what better place to understand God’s mysterious ways than by the River Spey in northeastern Scotland, heart of Scottish whisky country and home to the single malt? Connoisseurs visit all eight distilleries and the one cooperage featured in the Malt Whisky Trail around Speyside while true devotees spend a few days here, and then venture far out in the old distilleries of Islay and the Orkney Islands. Having pledged allegiance to that colourless Russian concoction long back, I was happy visiting just two: the distillery of Glenfiddich, the world’s best selling single malt, and the distillery of Strathisla because I knew that Appa would never forgive me if I came all the way here and didn’t visit the home of his beloved Chivas Regal.

Speyside in North Eastern Scotland, once considered part of the Scottish Highlands, is now a region of its own. The Highlands are known for their rugged coastlines, imposing castles and impenetrable Lochs, and people usually flock here to catch a glimpse of the elusive Loch Ness monster. For those of us who are mildly adventurous, there is always the sport of Munro-bagging – a Munro is any mountain taller than 3000 ft and the Highlands are full of them. But just thirty miles east of Inverness, in Spey county, it is a different country altogether. The desolate mountains of the Highlands give way to rolling hills with meadows and pastures. Tractors shared the road with us; every village we drove through had a bridge over a clear water stream. The distinctive pagoda signs signifying the distilleries started cropping up and we followed them to the Malt Whisky Trail. Soon we found ourselves turning into the parking lot of Glenfiddich (Glen: Valley, Fiddich: Deer)

A tour was just about to begin as we entered the distillery, and we managed to get ourselves on it. There was also a large German tourist contingent visiting the distillery at the same time. This I found out just when the tour started – the first part of the tour was a short movie on the history of Glenfiddich and two minutes into the movie, I realised that it was in German! I turned to my friend but he was focussed on the screen. Too late I realised that he had taken a couple of semesters of German at the university. I frantically put on headphones and changed the audio to English by which time we were past the time of William Grant who built the first building by hand, bought second-hand equipment, and opened on Christmas Day, 1887. But I did find out the water that is used throughout the whisky making process is the spring water from the mountain stream of Robbie Dhu, the 1200 acres around which the Grant family bought as they wanted to ensure that the water of Robbie Dhu was always available to them to make the whisky.

After the movie, we met with our guide Susan who explained the process of whisky making. Barley, yeast and huge quantities of water are all that goes into the process. First, the barley is “malted” by soaking the grain in water for a few days and letting it germinate. In the past, Glenfiddich had its own malting floor with the pagoda roof used for ventilation but nowadays malt is brought commercially from specially chosen malsters. We walked to the milling section where the malt is milled into grist, and added to hot water to extract the sugars. A large kettle called the mashtun is used in extraction – the grist is mashed a few times to extract all fermentable sugars. The resulting sugary liquid is now fermented by adding yeast in giant vessels called washbacks. After this is the distillation process which is done in copper pot stills. We could walk between the stills but photography wasn’t allowed because of the high alcohol content around us. Distillation is done two or three times until the alcohol content is around 60 – 80%. The distilled alcohol is now ready for maturing.

Next, we walked to the storage area where again no cameras were allowed. We learnt about the art of cooperage where a cooper puts together an oak cask meant for storing the whisky. The cask they use for making Glenfiddich is mostly second hand – American bourbon or Portuguese sherry has been stored in them before. New oak casks are also used for some reserves. The cooper takes apart the cask, checks them to make sure they are alright, and puts them back together. The distilled whisky is poured into these casks and stored for years. The whisky takes in the flavour of the wooden cask it is in. The Glenfiddich Special Reserve takes 12 years, and then it is opened and mixed with whisky from other casks before bottling. Susan showed us three casks with small openings through which we could smell the whisky. The first was 12 years old, the second 18 and the third 22. I bent down to smell the 18 year old cask; a second later I could feel the rich wooden flavour going straight through to my sinus. Susan broke into my heavenly reprieve.

“I know. Last week, there was a guy down there and I thought he would never get up!”

Our last stop was obviously the tasting area where we could finally taste the Special Reserve. I gulped down my portion and looked at my friend who is usually not a whisky drinker. He had finished his glass and was getting it refilled.

I picked up a couple of bottles on our way out. A bottle for an uncle in the States who always bemoans the non-availability of good single malts where he lives and another for my Dad. But now as I write this, the Special Reserve on the cabinet in front of me, it looks a little too tempting. Appa, I think, will have to be happy with just his Chivas. The Glenfiddich is all mine.