Smithsonian.com

On Saturday, I visited “Beer Planet,” as the Smithsonian Resident Associates invitingly titled their latest program at DC’s Brickskeller. Captained by Horst Dornbusch, a crew of about 100 boldly trekked through a global history of beer that featured 13 tastings.

Actually, I think the title was a bit overzealous. The tasting menu was divided into four categories: Germany, Belgium, British Isles, and North America (Maryland and Maine). Beer…Planet, you say? Well, I guess “Beers of the North Atlantic” doesn’t sound quite as cool.

Dornbusch, an engaging speaker who epitomizes the term “beer nerd,” attempted to cram a college course’s worth of world history into four hours. I groaned and settled in for a long ride when his first Powerpoint slide asked: “How long has homo sapiens been on this earth?” But somehow, we made it rather quickly through evolution, the dawn of civilization, the Sumerians, the Babylonians, and the Egyptians, all while still sipping our first beer, a gentle, malty ale called “Old Brown Dog” from New Hampshire’s Smuttynose Brewing Co. (Not clear what the connection was between the beer and the topic at that point; other than the word “old.”)

Beer bubbles, courtesy Flickr user Attilla 1000

No one’s sure exactly when beer was invented—it was referenced as early as the 6th century B.C. in Sumeria—or how. Dornbusch’s personal theory, that beer was invented by accident during bread-making, goes something like this: One day, someone was making bread outdoors when their work was interrupted by a big rainstorm. They ran for shelter and forgot about the dough for a day or two, then came back to discover a soupy, fermenting liquid in the bowl. They tried it, got tipsy, and said, “hey, this is good.”

Eh, that seems like a bit of a stretch, but as I don’t have a better theory to offer, we’ll go with it. Dornbusch says brewing spread to Egypt and continued to grow until Cleopatra instated a beer tax (at this, a rumble of “booooo” went around the room—the tasting seemed to be taking effect) and declined drastically after Arab conquest of the region in the 7th century, since Islamic laws proscribe drinking alcohol.

But while beer’s popularity waned in the Middle East, it was gaining ground in northern Europe. People there somehow figured out brewing (perhaps via another soggy-bread epiphany) by at least 800 B.C., based on beer residues in a Celtic amphora found in modern Bavaria. Dornbusch says the Romans were the first to invent the modern brewing process—involving malting and mashing—based on the ruins of a 179 A.D. brewery discovered in a Roman settlement near what is now Regensburg, Germany.

For this portion of the tasting, we started with a Hefeweizen from Weihenstephan, which claims to be the world’s oldest continually operating brewery, founded in 1040 A.D. by Benedictine monks. I’ve been a fan of this beer since I lived in Germany a few years ago, so I was happy to taste it again; there’s a spicy, sweet quality to it reminiscent of banana bread. Then we moved onto a Jever Pilsener—crisp and refreshing, but unspectacular—and a Reissdorf Kölsch, a pleasant, light-bodied brew which Dornbusch compared to a British pale ale.

In the early years, German beer was flavored with whatever was available to cover up its rank taste in warmer months: herbs, bark, mushrooms, or even chicken blood and bile! In 1516, Bavarian Duke Wilhelm IV issued the now-famous edict restricting the ingredients of beer to barley, hops and water. For the past century this edict has been commonly referred to as the Reinheitsgebot, or “purity law,” which irks Dornbusch. (”Ninety-five percent of it was about price fixing; this was no ‘purity law!’” he told us, pointing out that it excludes wheat and even yeast, which hadn’t been discovered yet.)

Eventually we moved on to Belgium, whose more anti-authoritarian culture is reflected in its more inventive and eccentric beers. I was sure I’d find my favorite in this country, and I was right…sort of. The beer I liked best—a dark red ale called Ommegang—is named for a Belgian festival, inspired by Belgian Trappist ales and even made with Belgian yeast, but the brewery is actually in Cooperstown, New York. Ommegang’s spiced-fruit flavor reminded me of the “drunken fig preserves” I made a few months ago, and I imagine a bottle of it would disappear from my fridge even more quickly than those did! Same goes for the two true Belgians we tasted: Saison Dupont, a bottle-conditioned farmhouse ale with coriander and orange notes, and Liefmans Kriek, a cherry lambic that tastes like fruitcake (in a good way).

In Great Britain, archaeological evidence suggests that fermented beverages date back to Neolithic times, and brewing became an industry during the Roman occupation. Ale was drunk widely in medieval Britain (hey, it was safer than water), and hops had become part of the brewing process by the 16th century.

Although not as exciting as the Belgians, the two British ales we tasted (Fuller’s ESB, and Boddington’s Mild) were highly drinkable, and the O’Hara’s Irish Stout from Carlow Brewing was every bit as good as Guinness, my first love in terms of beer.

Finally, we landed (tipsily) in North America, where we tried two brews from nearby Maryland: Flying Dog Double Dog, an “insanely hopped” IPA which I found too bitter too drink, and Clipper City’s Great Pumpkin Imperial Pumpkin Ale, which tasted like, well, pumpkin pie that someone spilled beer on. The real star of the show was the Maine-brewed Allagash Curieux Tripel Ale, which had hints of coconut, bourbon and vanilla in it after aging for two months in Jim Beam barrels.

If you could plot a trip to your own “Beer Planet,” what countries would your tastebuds pull you toward?

Courtesy Flickr user PumpkinWayne

Unless you leave your house (or turn off all the lights and hide, as at least one person I know does) this Saturday evening, chances are good that you’ll be faced with at least a few sweet-toothed, half-pint monsters on your doorstep.

It’s a funny custom, isn’t it? Dressing cute children up like ghouls and goblins, and sending them door-to-door to beg for fistfuls of usually forbidden treats… whose idea was that?

The custom of trick-or-treating may have Celtic origins, related to the pagan celebration of Samhain, which marked the end of the harvest and the threshold of a new season. According to this paper by anthropologist Bettina Arnold:

The association between Halloween and ghosts and spirits today comes from the Celtic belief that it was at this time of transition between the old year and the new that the barrier between this world and the Otherworld where the dead and supernatural beings lived became permeable….Trick-or-treating is a modern day holdover of the practice of propitiating, or bribing, the spirits and their human counterparts roaming the world of the living on that night. Pumpkins carved as jack-o-lanterns would not have been part of traditional Halloween festivals in Celtic Europe, since pumpkins are New World plants, but large turnips were hollowed out, carved with faces and placed in windows to ward off evil spirits.

Others argue that Halloween is a Christian, not a pagan holiday, pointing to the early Catholic church’s celebrations of All Hallows (Saints) Day, and the night before it, All Hallows E’en (Evening), when Christians were instructed to pray for the souls of the departed. I can see how that would lead to a certain fascination with ghosts, but the candy? Well, back in medieval Europe, kids and beggars would go “souling” on All Hallows Eve…which sounds like a macabre version of door-to-door Christmas caroling: Instead of a merry song, the visitors offered prayers for dead loved ones, in exchange for “soul cakes.” (These, too, may have had pagan roots.)

Some chap named Charles Dickens mentions this tradition in an 1887 issue of his literary journal, “All the Year Round” (actually, I think it must have been Charles Dickens, Jr., who took over the journal after his dad died in 1870):

“…it was a custom to bake on All Hallow E’en, a cake for every soul in the house, which cakes were eaten on All Souls’ Day. The poor people used to go round begging for some cakes or anything to make merry with on this night. Their petition consisted in singing a doggerel sort of rhyme: A soul cake, A soul cake; Have mercy on all Christian souls; For a soul cake; A soul cake. In Cheshire on this night they once had a custom called ‘Hob Nob,’ which consisted of a man carrying a dead horse’s head covered with a sheet to frighten people.”

Eep! That’s quite a trick, alright. In America these days, not too many people take the “trick” part of trick-or-treating seriously anymore; it’s more like: “Hi, gimme candy.” But according to this New York Times article, Halloween night trickery is a problem in the United Kingdom, where “egg-and-flour-throwing, attacks on fences and doors, menacing gatherings of disaffected drunken youths and the theft of garden ornaments” are enough to make some people—gasp!—”hate Halloween.”

 Loading ...

When I wrote about apple picking in Massachusetts last month, my editor spotted what she thought might be an error in the post: I referred to the “cider donuts” sold at the orchard. Did I mean cider AND donuts, she asked?

Cider donuts at Shelburne Orchards, VT, courtesy Flickr user Organic Nation

Nope. I meant donuts made with apple cider, and my condolences if you’ve never met one!

I don’t eat donuts in general, but I make an exception for these babies whenever I visit an orchard that makes them. Basically, they’re buttermilk donuts with apple cider added to the batter—lending more moisture, and a subtle sweetness—and often spiced with cinnamon and nutmeg. I like them best fresh from the fryer; they don’t taste as good even a few hours later, which puts a fortunate curb on my impulse to take home a few dozen. (Although I suspect that dunking a less-than-fresh cider donut in hot mulled cider would still taste pretty darn good.)

If you’re not near an orchard, and dare to delve into a vat of Crisco for deep-frying at home, Smitten Kitchen has a gorgeous recipe for apple cider donuts. This recipe from A Bowl of Mush is similar.

I don’t know exactly when cider donuts were invented, but they seem to have made their commercial debut in the United States in the 1950s. Using ProQuest, I found the following in a New York Times article from August 19, 1951:

A new type of product, the Sweet Cider Doughnut will be introduced by the Doughnut Corporation of America in its twenty-third annual campaign this fall to increase doughnut sales. The new item is a spicy round cake that is expected to have a natural fall appeal.

According to the 2008 book “Glazed America: A History of the Doughnut,” by Paul R. Mullins, the Doughnut Corporation of America (DCA) was founded in the 1920s by a Russian immigrant named Adolph Levitt who was quite the entrepreneur. He launched a chain of doughnut shops, developed a doughnut-making machine and a standardized a mix of ingredients to sell to other bakeries, and came up with National Donut Month and a host of other marketing gimmicks.

By the way, Levitt’s DCA no longer exists (it was bought out by Lyons in the 1970s), but its name does: In what Saveur magazine calls “a stroke of pure genius,” the brothers behind a small Seattle business called Top Pot Doughnuts bought the DCA trademark. Make that a “formerly small” business; Top Pot now sells its donuts in many Starbucks nationwide. Sadly—or perhaps happily for my arteries—their product line doesn’t include cider donuts.

As I’ve mentioned before, I live in the boonies, which is lovely but not exactly hopping with art museums, ethnic cuisine or cool historic bars where you can order a vintage cocktail. So, when I visit my family in Los Angeles (or go to any big city), I try to cram in as much of that stuff as I can.

Aviation cocktail, courtesy Flickr user jen_maiser

On my latest trip, last week, I went in search of a liqueur called Crème de Violette that was recently reintroduced in the United States after decades off the market. I had read about it on the blog Rowley’s Whiskey Forge, where Matthew Rowley reported that floral, especially violet, scented cocktails were all the rage at the latest Tales of the Cocktail convention in New Orleans. Austrian distiller Rothman & Winter makes a Crème de Violette from Alpine violets that is imported by Haus Alpenz. Now, Robert Cooper of  Philadelphia-based Charles Jacquin et Cie has resurrected his family’s recipe for Crème Yvette, another violet-scented liqueur that was discontinued in 1969. The company already had a hit with its elderflower-flavored liqueur, St. Germain, introduced in 2007.

The idea of violet liqueur intrigued me. I occasionally like to buy those old-fashioned violet pastilles in a tin, and, despite my earlier rice pudding disaster, I find rose water similarly appealing. Some flavors can transport you to another place; the light perfume of violets somehow evokes another era of dainty gloves and nosegays. The fact that the Rothman & Winters Crème de Violette comes in a sleek art deco bottle made it all the more attractive to me. I am a sucker for good package design—even if you don’t end up liking the contents, the bottle will look good on your bar.

But I wondered: Why the sudden revival of floral flavors now? Robert Hess, co-founder of the Museum of the American Cocktail, told me he thought the resurgence was ”tied up with the overall renewed interest in the old pre-Prohibition classics.”

Even the venerable, though soon-to-be-defunct, Gourmet magazine had an article about violet liqueurs in its October issue. Pulitzer-winning food writer Jonathan Gold (whose column in L.A. Weekly I always read when I lived in California) wrote, “Violet-scented cocktails, once fairly common, almost disappeared 50 years ago, dismissed as auntly and old-fashioned, unable to compete with the more immediate pleasures of Mai Tais or Rusty Nails.”

He wrote about a drink made with Crème Yvette, called an Eagle’s Dream, that he was served at a speakeasy-type establishment behind the legendary Cole’s sandwich shop in downtown L.A. (Cole’s purports to be the inventor of the french dip sandwich, a claim disputed by rival Philippe’s “The Original” a few miles away). So, when it turned out that my fiancé and I would be meeting up with a friend who lives a block away from Cole’s, I seized my opportunity to try a violet cocktail.

The speakeasy wasn’t open yet, but the regular Cole’s bar—which, according to a sign outside the building, is the oldest “public house” in the city, established in 1908—had Crème de Violette in stock. The dapper bartender mixed me up a classic cocktail, the Aviation. It was made with—in addition to the violet liqueur—gin, lemon juice, Luxardo maraschino liqueur and simple syrup (a deviation from the original recipe), and finished with a gorgeous, deep-red, imported maraschino cherry (which bears no resemblance to the candied pink version you usually find in domestic bars). The cocktail was a beautiful cloudy violet color, and tasted even better than I had imagined—slightly sweet and somewhat sour, with the faintest hint of violet perfume. My fiancé said it tasted like a purple Sweet Tart, which he meant as a compliment.

Now that I’m home, I’m kind of wishing I had picked up a bottle to grace the wet bar in my house. There are some other classic violet cocktails, such as the Blue Moon, I’d like to try.  I guess I’ll have to wait until my next L.A. trip.

I depend on coffee for my morning caffeine, but I prefer the more delicate flavor of tea when I need an afternoon warmer or a mild pick-me-up. The various international rituals and accoutrements of tea I’ve encountered in my travels are also part of its appeal for me: I loved how, in Turkey, every social or business transaction began with some steaming çai served in a graceful little glasses on a silver tray, and that I never entered a home in Ireland or Great Britain where a kettle wasn’t immediately put on to boil for some milky tea.

A silver Italian teapot, circa 1840. Photograph courtesy of Fowler Museum, UCLA

So, during a recent visit to my hometown Los Angeles, I was interested to catch an exhibition at UCLA’s Fowler Museum called “Steeped in History: The Art of Tea“. Aside from seeing some beautiful artifacts, including teapots, tea caddies and Japanese netsuke, I absorbed enough historical tidbits to ace a tea category if I ever make it onto Jeopardy.

For starters, I learned that steeping didn’t become the preferred method of preparing tea until the Ming Dynasty in China, which began in the 14th century. The ancient Chinese compressed tea into cakes, then shaved off portions to boil in water. By the 10th century, during the Song Dynasty, powdered tea, which was whipped with hot water using a bamboo whisk, became popular.

According to Chinese legend, an emperor named Shen Nong discovered tea nearly 5,000 years ago, when the wind blew some leaves into his kettle of boiling water.

During the Ming era, Xü Cishu wrote a tea manual called Chashu, which listed appropriate times to drink tea. These included “When bored with poetry,” “After tipsy guests have left,” “When skies are overcast,” and “In perfect weather.” In other words, anytime.

Tea was introduced to Japan during the early Heian period (794–1185) by monks who returned after studying Zen Buddhism in China. The traditional Japanese tea ceremony was formalized in the 1500s, and was believed to offer a path to enlightenment through everyday gestures performed “in mindful awareness of the present moment.” At first performed solely by men, the role eventually became associated with women.

An alternative, less formal ceremony called Senchado emerged later. It was based on the wu wei principle of “yielding to the stream of life rather than working against it.”

Europeans didn’t start drinking tea until the 17th century. It caught on first with the Dutch, who were the only traders allowed to enter Japan after it enacted a closed-door policy in 1639, and even they were only allowed as far as an island in Nagasaki harbor.

No place today is more associated with tea drinking than the United Kingdom, and the exhibition devotes some space to both English tea culture and to the political ramifications of the kingdom’s former imperial practices in India, where most of its tea was grown, and in the American colonies—where, of course, tea-related taxes and restrictions eventually helped spark a revolution.

Steeped in Tradition: The Art of Tea continues at the Fowler through November 29.