October 16, 2014
When I woke up and dragged the curtain in
the morning on October 10th, I almost thought I was blind, because I
couldn’t tell was the pollution so severe or just was it just because of the
green net covering the whole residential building, blocking my eyesight. Well,
it’s the fourth day in a row with PM2.5 index over 350. Everyone on the street
looks so dead inside.
I was struggling whether to open the
windows and let the PM2.5 kill my lungs or just keep the windows shut and be
suffocated from the thick CO2. Thanks to an article I read the other day, in a
bedroom without new air, the CO2 can reach 1000ppm (from 200ppm) over night.
Stretched a little and headed to East Hotel
at 3pm.
And the organizer (not saying slow boat)
knew how to make a 5’8’’ girl feel she’s a dwarf, when I was standing on a
table and still couldn’t reach the top of the tent to zip down the zipper.
Thanks to Ollo and Jeremy, they easily pulled that little bastard down without
any struggle or shakiness. Trust me, whenever you feel you’re tall, put
yourself surrounded by Germans, all of a sudden you’ll find the feeling of you’re
an adolescent again among those senior buddies, no need to run all the way and
burn a lot at the Disney Lands. With those gentlemen’s help, the tent was
ready.
It was good to see all the people who are
as much beer lover as the person right next to them.
[From 4 to 10pm…
Let’s start from the Calvin Beer, Calvin
went to Hefei as an exchange student and started to brew. His father and
grandfather all brewed…Calvin tried his best to express his charisma to attract
people to the untraversed area, he brought three beers. I gave this b-day boy a
T-shirt as a gift. His assistant put his hands up and shouted out “Welcome to
Calvin Beer!” every ten minute, looks like people in sacred rituals. They use
Speidel equipment, should be very stable flavor, Bourbon Barrel Porter tasted
thick.
Then Nbeer Pub, I like their ideas about
the name. “NB” means bad-ass in Chinese. And Nbeer also reminds people of new
beers. Oatmeal Stout out of five other beers has lower ABV and IBU, which is
good to drink a lot during the day.
Slow Boat is also the organizer of this
festival, which brought eight beers here; two of them were sold out at the
first day. Personally I like Double IPA and Imperial Pumpkin Stout very much.
Great Leap Brewery had four beers on tap; Beat
the landlord barley wine was very impressive, with ABV over 11.2%, but very
smooth and sweet with hardly noticeable sense of ethanol, it was so drinkable
that you wouldn’t know until you got drunk already. Kevin told me they only
sell this 310ml cup at the tap house. I’d say we should put a sign of “Danger”
with this beer. I tried Three Door Tripel before, it also looks like a hard
candy with such fresh sweetness, citrus aromas and light body, but believe me;
you won’t survive from three whole cups.
Harvest Brewing Co. from Chengdu has a
famous brewer who used to be a DJ in Beijing. They brought four beers here. At
the second day, all the tents were ready except them, Gao Yan pretended to be
the bartender and sent out their beers for fun.
There’s another shining star of this
festival--the Boxing Cat Brewery, just look at the badges and awards on the
background. The Brew-master Michael Jordan with his team came from Shanghai and
brought six beers with them. I tried Mao Mat Lager, the body was light and
strong aroma of lemon grass which reminded me of days in Thailand. I had sushi
with Kyle who is the brewing assistance of Michael, we found that Mao Mat
matched this well.
Master Gao played yo-yo around the tent,
which made the tent was surrounded by a lot of people.
Jing A always knows how to be creative and
get attention, they brought their egg cart here with keg of airpocolypse beer on
it, and it worked. They also released the Guizhou smoked chili porter which was
co-brewed with Huoli from Beijing Homebrew Society.
No. 18 Brewery carried the metal frame from
Wuhan, and all the decoration was mystery with all black-and-white style, which
reminded me of Taoism or Tai ji. The Break Stout was with strong notes of
coffee and baking breads, which is definitely my kind of breakfast. Karl told
me they used imported malts, which was worth. They also had the temporary tattoos
“無啤不欢”(means no beers, no friends), which made them became one of three
tattoo places at this festival. (The othr two were Jing A and Calvin Beer both
using their logos as tattoos.)
Then we tried the Strong Ale Works from
Qingdao, their Shuangku IPA was worth to try.
That’s Beijing and the Beer Link were the
only two media tents. At the Beer Link tent, we tried to ask people scan the QR
code and got free raffles for T-shirts, badges, cups or even growlers. But
sometimes it turned out that the lucky draws were slaughtered by guards here. They
pushed each other with bashful but greedy grins, came up to the stool, brazenly
kept on asking more chances to have a draw.
Last but not least were two tents of
Beijing Homebrew Society; actually half of it should belong to iBrew. Other
than devoting ciders and perries to lovely girls, by any random chance or maybe
the German guy Brandon think he MUST also devote his tent and share with the society,
he just did. It was so crowded in front of BHS tent. Those home-brewer were so
funny, some of them even displayed grapes and apples. And Huoli shared his
original Chili porter with me, cough cough, it contained more than three times
of chili than Jing A version. (He used Xiaomi chili, which was considered one
of the spicies chilis here.) I also like Ollo’s Blackmail IPA, with strong
smoky sense. Yob’s Orange Goblin was spicy as always.
Normally we also met a lot of interesting
people during the festival. A man standing in front of our tent tried to give
out a long speech; I asked my friend, “Do you understand what he said?”” No,
did you?”” Not even a clue.” He used to be the first importer of all the soda
beverages in China, now he imports Czech and sells them to Tsing Tao. As a
person who has been in this industry for over 20 years, we newbies were so naïve
in his eyes.
After 12 hours of standing and talking, I still
felt alive; it must be, because beers are my true love.
When I was folding the lucky draw tokens,
the pop music from next tent suddenly let a thought rush through my mind, “this
moment is life”. With the friends around me, the beers and the music made it being
here like in a dream, these are the reasons that I want to stay here. Even
though in the movie “Spirited Away” by Miyazaki Hayao, there’s a
philosophy A train in the sunset symbolizes the passage from life to death.
In the last 30 minutes of the festival,
Ollo and I ended up sitting in the vacant tent in total silence, the only sign
to show we were alive was my chest still going up and downs, and the red light
of his electronic pipe was flickering. A lot of drunk people or trying-to-get-drunk
people walked by, some of them stared at us, had a glance of the total vacant
background behind us in the bright fluorescent lamp. I broke the ice, “they
might think we’re doing performing arts”. After a slow exhale of the pipe, “we
should charge them 5 yuan to watch us”, he said seriously through a rising cloud
of some white smoke, reminding me of The Caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland. I
am so blessed to hang out with people with a sense of humor. Ollo continues, “When
will you start to brew?” Actually, I have no idea. Since I got the news that I
had to say farewell to the city that I lived for nine years, every plan about
future becomes so complicated. “You’ve tasted our beers; and you have to pay
the debts back.” He said with the long face. True, that’s the debt I have to
pay back. After an embarrassed laugh or two, I made my way with the materials
into the dreamy haze. /The End.
