These are the words, images, and beers that inspired the GBH Collective this week. Drinking alone just got better, because now you’re drinking with all of us.
READ.// “To glimpse one’s own true nature is a kind of home-going, to a place East of the Sun, West of the Moon—the home-going that needs no home, like that waterfall on the upper Suli Gad that turns to mist before touching the earth and rises once again into the sky.” It took me forever to find Peter Matthiessen’s “The Snow Leopard,” but it feels like the perfect book for this winter: part travelogue, part memoir, filled with stories of travelers trudging through deep snow.
LOOK.// Lance Oppenheim’s stunning “Some Kind of Heaven” was a recent pick in the film club John Gross runs over at the Fervent Few, and I’m still reeling from it—and thinking about its amazing characters—several days after finishing it. Yes, it’s a documentary, but it’s way more surprising than most fiction films I’ve seen lately.
DRINK.// Radegast Ratar
Uhh, guys? 10º Czech Pale Lagers are not supposed to have 50 IBUs. Ratar, from the Pilsner Urquell group’s Radegast brewery, launched in the middle of the pandemic last year. Love it or hate it, the Czech Republic’s most bitter 10º beer is now widely available in cans and bottles. I’m still trying to figure out how I feel about it.
READ.// “A friend says the best way to love the world is to think of leaving.” This quote from poet Ada Limón is interwoven with an atmospheric meditation on nature, climate, and beauty by Chris La Tray in “The World Appears Beautiful,” the latest issue of his newsletter, An Irritable Métis.
LOOK.// The first issue of “For the Culture,” which describes itself as “a magazine celebrating Black women and femmes in food and wine,” could have been both my “Read” and “Look” this week, with its powerful reporting, interviews, recipes, and firsthand accounts of the Black female experience in food and beverage. It is structured around the pandemic, as most things are these days, organized into “before,” “during,” and “after” sections. And it is gorgeous to behold, mixing artwork, photography, color, design, and text across wide-margined, matte pages.
DRINK.// Urban Family Brewing Co.’s Mutually Assured Destruction
While on assignment for my most recent GBH piece, I picked up a collaboration beer from the Ballard Brewery District’s Urban Family Brewing Co. and another Seattle brewery, Ravenna Brewing Company: an Imperial Stout aptly named Mutually Assured Destruction. Inky and viscous, roasty and lightly sweet with vanilla, chocolate, and coffee flavors, it earns the moniker by combining a super-silky, smooth, and sippable character with 12% ABV. But that futurist can art!
READ.// “This cycle repeats seemingly every few weeks, when a new food video goes viral for being bizarre or disgusting, either on purpose or accidentally. Many of these videos start out in a familiar way, promising a quick weeknight dinner trick or a money-saving hack to re-create your favorite takeout. Then, they go off the rails.” The same day this week that a friend sent me the viral video of a woman making “Mac and Cheetos” with a bag of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, I saw someone on Twitter asking aloud about the spate of outlandish, disgust-baiting cooking videos proliferating on TikTok and elsewhere online. This Atlantic article by the ever-reliable Amanda Mull does a good job plumbing the phenomenon.
LOOK.// I first came across Naima Green’s work after seeing the striking photos she took of Solange for Harper’s Bazaar last fall. Recently, I enjoyed learning more about her projects and approach in this interview with Office Magazine. Her ongoing series, “Jewels from the Hinterland,” “documents ‘black and brown people in similar urban green spaces,’” and the photos are stunning.
DRINK.// Newbarns Brewery’s Plain Dark Beer
I’m not much of an Imperial Stout gal these days, but in the last week, London has seen days of snowfall and subzero temperatures, and suddenly, I’ve found myself craving rich, roasty, 11% ABV beers again. My friend Jonny Hamilton at Newbarns Brewery in Leith, Scotland brewed this beer late last year—what was apparently a messy, stressful brew day has yielded a Stout of impeccable balance, lusciousness, and warmth. It was worth it, Jonny.
Curated by The GBH Collective
