Teak

What colour do you think that this beer is, I ask a friend and fellow judge at the Dutch Beer Challenge (to give it some context we are are at Brouwerij Noordt in Rotterdam and drinking its Bok). I suggest the colour is mahogany brown, but he says it reminds him of the teak coloured deck of a sailing ship, which is perhaps an apt description, as the river that has made Rotterdam is only a street or so away. And then I think of the connection with the open sea — the beer is cold, 5˚C perhaps, a watch bundled up and shivering on the deck in the Atlantic, and then I think of the great steel ships abed in the harbour, the ships I’d seen earlier in the day, standing at anchor, their hulls a story of the travels that had taken them about the world. Then I smell the beer, the chocolate and coffee on the nose of the Bok, which suggests to me the emotional cargoes of Europe brought to the port, a history of several centuries brought together in a glass. Then there is the alcohol, 7%, alcohol that combustible constant of civilisation. The beer is also crisp and cold — a night spent on deck, keeping watch, crossing the Atlantic, and then there is more coffee and chocolate, followed by a brisk carbonation and finally a quick finish, as if this beer suddenly decided it wanted the BlueRiband. The tales that beers do tell.