#9.5: The Two-Hearted

A top ten list seemed like a good idea, until I made my list and came up with eleven indispensable, irreductible items I couldn't remove. So, in the spirit that rules are made to be broken, I give you #9.5 of the Ten Things I Will Miss Most about Kalamazoo: Bell's Two-Hearted Ale.

Delicious on draft, even better in a bottle, but I'm getting ahead of myself: let's start with the label, shall we? Two watercolor ying-yanging trout, just as you would see them if you were looking straight down on them from the surface of a stream. Named for the Two-Hearted River, which Hemingway named a story after (although the river in the story isn't the Two-Hearted at all, as it turns out). For the longest time I thought they were morel mushrooms instead of trout, but we'll chalk that up to I can't get near the label without drinking copious amounts of the beer it's identifying.

I won't pretend that I've got some expert palate that can tell hops from barley or whether a beer has a crisp finish and whatnot. I've never much gone in for that sort of talk. All I know is that this beer is, to my mind, damned tasty. It possesses just the right balance of spicy, tingly, rich, toasty and sweet. It's a playful grizzly bear cub of a beer. It's a 1920's bungalow of a beer. It's a man in the shirt printed with tiny flowers whose masculinity nobody questions of a beer.

And, at 7%, one pint is enough to get me pleasantly, inconspicuously buzzed.

I was beginning to feel a bit depressed about having to abandon my favorite beer, until I learned that the B-movie-themed pizza parlor and beer emporium on the corner of my new street in Virginia has Two-Hearted Ale on draught. Which means that, once I move away, my proximity to Two-Hearted Ale will actually be greater than it is even now. Although I have to confess, I experienced a twinge of disappointment that it was there, once I had taken the trouble to squeeze it onto the Top Ten List at position 9.5. I am happy to report that, on draft and 750 miles away from its origin, it tastes a little thin and bitter. I wouldn't want it to be as good as it is here at home, but instead a reasonable simulacrum that leaves me an excuse to come back.