Pint/Counterpint: Beer, Beards, and Taxonomy with Lansing’s Most Interesting Brewer

by Greg Teachout

Leaving one’s house occasionally is good, I’m told, so I caught up with Midtown Beer Company’s in-house brew maestro, Brandon “Father Time”¹ Cook recently, and pinned him down on his ideas about beer.

Saying “I caught up with” my interview subject is a time-honored media cliché, but in the case of Cook, the phrase becomes literal: he is a driven, methodical person holding down three jobs. If you need to meet with Father Time, he pencils you in.

When I finally ensnare Cook at the MBC brewpub on S. Washington, he bursts out of the back room and gives me the best sort of handshake—one that fills my proffered hand with a beer. He skips “hello” and tells me to try it, so I do.

He tells me the beer—”Uncle Scrooged”— contains cinnamon, nutmeg, vanilla, cranberries, and ginger. I tell him I’m here to talk beer, not scones. I love unusual food, but this sounds overwrought, even repulsive. (This I think and do not say.)

The beer is wonderful. Really, really good. It tastes like a Belgian, but that’s just the clove coming through. Yes, he also added clove, since five wacky additions were just not enough. Apparently, Frankensteining a spice rack into a beer is genius, because this is the most unique and delicious draft I’ve had since exhausting Jolly Pumpkin of their on-site La Roja supply.

    

The plans for my moon base are almost complete.

Cook and I slide into his pet booth near the kitchen for the interview. If the ghost of the defunct Michigan Brewing Company still haunts these rooms, it does so in a Bruce Willis-in-the-The-Sixth-Sense fashion.² Everything is identical, down to the sweet potato fries, with the lone exception of Cook and his unusually ideological brewing process. A window into this process is splayed between us— his notebook contains boiling formulae and yeast figures for something Cook is calling the “Elvis.” This is a peanut butter and banana beer. I suddenly have the feeling of having finally found Colonel Kurtz.

What looks like a classic blue and white composition book filled with algebra scrawlings is actually Pandora’s box, ready to unleash its twisted majesty on the world. This is for our own good, he'd assure you. Cook will show me his vision of brewing, and why this is the way it must be, and I will be transformed.

Cook is an intense guy, perhaps a true alpha; he seems refreshingly devoid of any instinct to posture. He sports a notable beard; he’s opted for volume over length. He seems to be in great shape, though he refuses a Body Mass Index pinch, so I can’t be certain. His vaguely blacksmithish presentation is offset by glasses that radiate “science” above “style."
I’m a bad interviewer, so I come right out and say the first thing I’m thinking.

GT: What do you think about the crossover between beards and brewing/people who are generally involved in craftsmanship? With carpenters and blacksmiths, for instance, all throughout history, big beards, full beards abound. You have a nice full beard.

Cook: Thank you.

GT: Sure.

Cook: “Magnificent” is the word most commonly used to describe it.

GT: I don’t doubt it. I see a lot of brewers, people from Stone, Lagunitas, Dark Horse, and they all look like they could be in ZZ Top. So what is it? Does it reflect that, as a brewer, you’re owned by no one?

Cook: I’ve been able to try a lot of different looks, facial hair-wise. I’ve tried out a lot of different looks over the years.. I like variety—that’s what I’m about. If you notice the stuff I brew, I’ve brewed a wide variety in the short time I’ve been here. Something like 40 different styles have been on tap here with my name on it. As far as the beard: back in late spring, it was brought to my attention that I might look good with a full beard. I’ve done the goatee, the handlebar—for a very short period of time—

GT: Of course.

At this point, we’re interrupted by a young lady from the kitchen who wordlessly offers a cup of hot sauce for Cook. He dabs it, not undaintily, and says, “You could make it hotter.” Then he continues.

Cook: I’m also a sound guy, that’s also another subsection of people that really embraces facial hair.

GT: You’re a free agent with a lot of skills.

Cook: Yeah, I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that as a free agent, you’re a manager of your own time. And your time doesn’t always cater to the necessity of shaving your face. With a full beard, I can wake up and just leave, most of the time.

GT: You Lothario, you.

Opening with seemingly idiotic questions is a dangerous gambit. One runs the risk of seeming like, well, an idiot. But my favorite people always build a bridge of their own back to something substantial, and this bridge is often more telling than its destination.

Cook is wearing a baseball cap emblazoned with the logo of Brazilian thrash/tribal luminaries Sepultura. Wait—I know what you’re thinking. But fear not! It’s a capital “S,” replete with thorns, from the Roots era, not the anemic post-Max Cavalera embarrassment of today. So Cook is keeping it real.

GT: I’d hazard wearing this sort of “metal” hat is more common among brewers than most professions. I’ve noticed craft beer culture embraces [the musical genre of] “metal.” There’s always been a relationship between music and beer, obviously, but there’s an amazing amount of “traditional” metal and—I’ll say it—Dungeons and Dragons-style imagery, and Satanic and/or “evil” iconography utilized by the craft beer scene. At this point, it seems natural by repeated exposure. But it’s not necessarily intuitive on the level of combining peanut butter with chocolate to just put a demon or a gargoyle on your beer. You’re wearing a Sepultura hat as we speak. So...what’s up with that?

Cook: I consider beer to be art. Music is art. I don’t know how much it intersects with metal; I know the guys down at Dark Horse are really into metal, but the guys down at the Hideout are into some metal, but they’re also into folk music…

GT: But do those other genres make it into their artwork? Because the guys who love metal really seem to weave it into their labels, their names, and their brands.

Cook: At the Hideout, not at all. Dark horse, yes. The logo of a Double Crooked Tree? Menacing! It’s awesome; it’s what attracted me to that beer in the first place. Seeing that label...it’s just so dark. It just looks dark. And I knew nothing about the beer, the first time I had it. Then that was that. For me, I kind of have to get into metal a little bit, to talk about it.

GT: This is a safe place. Go ahead.

Cook: To me, metal is a genre of music that has more subgenres than any other.

(Note: this is true, with the possible exception of modern “electronic music.” Trying to measure the subgenre birth rate in either case suggests Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle.)

Cook: And it is meticulously broken up into those categories. Fans of metal will, more often than not, will say “that’s Industrial, not Goth.” Or, “that’s Pop Metal, that’s Power Metal, while that’s Operatic Metal—not necessarily Power Metal, but almost a subgenre of that.”

GT: Hardcore, grindcore, digital hardcore…

Cook: Exactly. You got it. There are so many subgenres, and a lot of that same level of categorization happens in the beer world as well.

You don’t just have an IPA, you’ve got rye IPAs, you’ve got Belgian IPAs, you’ve got black IPAs, you’ve got sour IPAs now, you’ve got India Pale Lagers. Even though it is technically different than an ale, India Pale Lager happened because of how big IPAs are. You’ve got all these different styles, and they’re so different. The common, or average beer drinker, or music listener, would say, “Oh, that’s just metal. Oh, that’s beer, I don’t like beer. Oh, I don’t like metal.” And I say, “Well, I’m pretty sure you just haven’t found the right metal.” And I’ll tell people, “I’m pretty sure you just haven’t found the right beer.” They’ll say, “No I’ve had a lot of them,” and I’ll say, “No, you probably haven’t, whether you actually realize it or not.”

At this point, the kitchen girl arrives again. Cook dabs and tastes. He stares at the sauce again. The girl says she feels like it can’t get it any hotter. Cook is skeptical.

“It’s missing the slow burn it had before.”

“I know,” she says pointedly.

“Do you have peppers in there?”

“No…”

They settle on adding some crushed red pepper, and Cook continues.

Cook: People who often make those claims, they often just haven’t found the right one yet. People who say they don’t like dark beer—that’s a broad generalization. To say you don’t like dark beer, define dark beer to me. Are you saying dark in color? The Huma Lupa Licious I’m about to drink is a really light-colored IPA, but it’s super bitter. (Editor’s note: At 140 IBU, Short’s IPA is up there, even for IPAs.) Are you associating “bitterness” with “darkness?” Because I’ve had a lot of cream stouts that are dark, but they’re sweet, by nature. So it’s a matter of people just being misinformed. Uneducated, uninitiated.

"Father Time" speaks like a cross between a prophet and a car salesman. He’s simply sure that after you’ve heard the Good News, he can find the right model for you.

GT: I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but it sounds like you feel like an emissary, or an ambassador, by bringing people who thought they didn’t like beer something they actually find palatable?

Cook: Yeah, yeah, a little bit. I’ve been asked repeatedly here to brew a straightforward IPA. I’ve danced around it. A lot! I have done it; it was a very small batch, and it was everything that they wanted.

As he explains this, Cook begins speaking slowly and with an edge, the way you would to a child who just stuck his toy train in your supper. The memory itself seems to try his patience. This is when it truly clicks for me that Cook is no simple mercenary. He has an artist’s soul, of the sort that chafes at being wrangled.

Cook: At that point, I said, OK, I’m going to move forward with this other IPA, because it’s more fun for me to brew. And I’m not saying that it’s necessarily unique, or that nobody had ever brewed this before, because, much like music, somebody has probably tried, or done something very close.

GT: But the innovation sounds important to you. You’re pushing at the fringe as much as you can.

Cook: Yeah, kind of a happy medium between pushing it to the fringe and being socially palatable. I don’t just want to be something people expect and know. If I can be a little outside of that box, while still being able to market it, then my job’s accomplished.

GT: I think that taste, next to smell, is our most animal sense. A person’s reaction to food and drink is often visceral, or involuntary. Taste culture ultimately doesn’t get as much respect, even if it gets as much press, as the visual arts, or music. But it seems like true gourmands and craft brewing culture provide a nice counterpoint to that. It sounds to me like you’re interested in forcing people into acquired tastes for their own good, ultimately.

Cook: Yeah.

GT: Fascist.

Cook: (Laughs.) I’ve got a variety of different wheat beers. I started brewing here, they said, “We want something light, something dark, something different. Well, they want something light primarily for the people who don’t know any better. Or the people who are cautious about getting into something dark. Because they’re afraid of it.

GT: The three-foot end of the pool.

Cook: Exactly. I already  knew it was going to be a wheat beer, most likely, but instead of going with your typical “American Wheat,” in the style of...well, Blue Moon is technically a Belgian-style ale, but… basically, what Oberon has become. Not to badmouth Oberon, but...something like Leinenkugel Sunset Wheat. It’s sweeter, and associated more with its garnish than with it being a beer in the first place. The orange, the citrus peel, things like that. I wanted to avoid conforming to that very rigid box and do something different with it, so the first thing I did was brew a German Hefeweizen, where it’s all about the wheat, and the ester from the yeast, you know, something that’s really going to breathe, but that’s still exceptionally drinkable.

G: What was that called?

Cook: That was the Weisen of Eden. When it came to finally do an American Wheat, I brewed something straightforward, and accentuated the spice, the coriander… not terribly inventive. But I took part of that batch, and went a different way with it. People always associate lemon, orange, with those beers, but I went lime. I made a lime wheat with coriander, and it was delicious. It came out back in October. The Cal Cadaver. I coordinated the release with the week of Halloween, alongside our pumpkin ale. The pumpkin ale was for Halloween, but the Cal Cadaver was for Day of the Dead.

Cook puts all his beer on Untappd, the beer social network. He says most have gone over well, notwithstanding the occasional lambasting by a Big Beer loyalist who—mystifyingly—utilizes Untappd.
  
GT: Do you have any personal favorites that have been universally panned? Something where nobody else is along for the ride, but you know in your heart it's delicious?

Cook: Nothing I’ve put out here has been universally panned. I’ve got a pretty solid batting average. I’m not going to say they've all been home runs. At all. But they start off pretty drinkable, and my process has gotten refined, so the beer has stepped up in quality a lot. The only one that got a straight up poor rating was actually the Scottish Ale that came out.

G: Interesting.

Cook: I thought it was great. Most people here thought it was great. But sometimes the people online they can be brutal.

GT: That’s B-R-E-W-tal?

Cook: (Laughs.) Yeah.

GT: Has anyone done that already?

Cook: I don’t think so.

GT: You can have that.

Cook: Thanks. I’ll name a beer after you.

GT: Thanks. Same to you.

Cook: What?

Catch up with Brandon “Father Time” Cook at:

Midtown Beer Company

402 S. Washington Square

Lansing, MI 48933

(517) 977-1349

<sup>1. "Father Time" is evidently a poker nickname. His ceaseless dedication to watching the game clock and announcing imminent increases in blinds earned him the handle and probably lots of friends.

2. I'm not really sure what this means either. Like a ghost that is present without being obnoxiously poltergeisty, I guess.</sup>

How to Eat Your Salad Historically

1) Before you eat your salad, or dismiss it for its more seasonably appealing cousin, the soup, please consider what it’s been through.

Get to know it a bit. This is your salad. There are many like it, but this one is yours. Whether it’s a kaleidoscope of peppers and peaches, or the simple poetry of a Caesar, your salad has spanned oceans and millennia (and may have suffered some litigation in East Texas, which we’ll get to) to sit humbly beside your entrée. Lose yourself in the majesty. Tears are permissible.

In fact, if you cry into your salad, it might feel right at home. Your salad’s ancient ancestors were wet, salty affairs. A salad under Caesar would have been a selection of pickled vegetables, covered in oil and/or vinegar, with generous salt, as wealth allowed. (Caesar’s salads were not Caesar salads. In fact, the Caesars of old had very little in common with the salad’s namesake, the former being emperors, and the latter being an Italian chef who lived in Tijuana during the Roaring Twenties.)

The Romans liked their salad, though they probably “borrowed” the idea from the Greeks, as they were fond of doing. (See also: religion, clothing, democracy, military strategy.) While the “idea” for the modern salad may belong to Greece, it was the Roman designation, the Vulgar Latin herba salata, meaning “salted herbs,” that would eventually evolve into our word “salad.” (Greece does get credit for the word “idea,” and even the idea of an idea, but who’s keeping score?) Salad found advocacy in the wise among both societies, with the Greek Hippocrates and the Roman Galen, some five hundred years later, each lauding the virtues of salad as both bowel cleanser and palette cleanser. There aren’t many things that share that double distinction, so three cheers for salad.

Mind you, the ancient Greeks liked their salad, and they were, of course, Greek, but they were not eating what we would call “Greek salad” in 400 BC. “Greek salads” wouldn’t come into play until the 20th century, where they were introduced in… the United States. Our Greek salads, in their charmingly American way, break all the rules, so if you want beets in your salad, you’re better off going to Greektown than Greece. A modern Greek may attack you if you go anywhere near his Horiatiki (Greek “peasant” or “rustic” salad) with beets and feta cheese.

Speaking of wanton violence, Christopher Columbus has become an increasingly polarizing figure in recent years, as our framing of history evolves. But whether you see him as a bold adventurer and emissary of civilization or an opportunistic murderer, it’s hard to argue with his contribution to the modern salad. In short, he’s given credit for bringing home the lettuce and cucumbers, and taking back the tomatoes. (Although Hernán Cortés also brought back tomatoes when he was finished slaughtering the Aztecs.) Thus were the native peoples of North America able to enjoy the cucumber, though that may be a poor consolation prize.

Esteem for the cuke has varied widely among peoples. (Folk etymology tells us that our word, “cucumber,” is a mutation of the word “cowcumber,” so called because farmers thought that the vegetable was most suited to feeding cows. Real, non-folk etymology tells us that the word’s origin is Latin. Nevertheless, the “cowcumber” had a less-than-spotless reputation for centuries, likely due to its tendency to spoil quickly.)

Meanwhile, the tomato became huge in Europe; the pomi d’oro put North America on the (totally inaccurate) map. Italy, as you may have gathered, fell in love with the “golden apple” and never looked back. (Occasional Alfredo dalliances notwithstanding.)

The United States didn’t exist during the first couple millennia of salad’s existence, so we didn’t contribute very much in the way of salad evolution until the twentieth century. British colonists were getting all disgruntled about the crown over plates of salmagundi. (A corruption of the word “salmagundi” probably birthed the charming nursery tale of “Solomon Grundy.” What do you expect of a dish that is composed of “meats, vegetables, seafood, nuts, and flowers?” It's like a shepherd's pie for people with nothing to lose.)

The United States, as a country of immigrants, had always embraced culinary diversity. But a melting pot is no place for a salad. We were late bloomers, as far as salad is concerned. To clobber you with a third metaphor, it was only after we found our voice that we realized we had so much to say, salad-wise.

An emerging middle class, and what the history books call the “home economics boom” of the early nineteen-hundreds, saw meal preparers refining the domestic arts to unprecedented levels. Homemakers put a premium on control and the aesthetically responsible arrangement of salad elements. This ultimately led to such regrettable leaps in logic as fruit salads, suspensions in gelatin, and other so-called salad mutations too grotesque to name here. (Unless you’re into that sort of thing.)

Fantastic-but-brutal experiments are all well and good. But the USA’s indelible mark on the modern salad didn’t come in the form of some Island of Dr. Moreau-style hijinks.

If the red in the American culinary flag is ketchup, and the blue is Kool-Aid, then the white is none other than that creamy, savory, versatile, guilty pleasure of condiments: Ranch. Ranch, sneered at by the culinarati and championed by the masses. Ranch, dripping Americana across pizza, salads, and chicken nuggets. While twentieth-century America also gave the world Green Goddess, Thousand Island, and French dressings, it’s Ranch that will forever be our defining condiment, our spirit animal of sauces.

Like many great American stories, Ranch’s begins with a cowboy. Well, actually, it begins with a plumber—one Steve Henson—who used his savings to buy a dude ranch, which he named Hidden Valley, and in so doing, became a cowboy. His first order of business as a cowboy was to create a savory salad dressing for his guests, obviously, and the rest is history. Almost.

Hidden Valley Ranch is indisputably the first Ranch. But with the advent of bottled salad dressing and “just add” packets, Ranch caught on in a big way, and the sixties and seventies were host to a litany of trademark infringement suits between companies grappling for market share. As the country had its two-hundredth birthday, in 1976, a federal judge told a Fort Worth courtroom that “ranch style” belonged to us all.

So please, look at your salad again. Follow the trail of (any brand) ranch style dressing past banana peppers, cucumbers, and tomatoes, as it winds its way deep into the lettuce undergrowth, through litigation and ancient Rome, over a dusting of cracked pepper, and past a conquistador. Understand that before you sits a pilgrim, an exemplar of the human will to till the earth, to assimilate instead of destroy, to turn the necessity of eating into the art of dining. 

2) Plunge in your fork, with respect.