[October 25^th – aka Vision 10/25].

I had a beer bottle share in my bachelor studio apartment in 2013. By “bottle share” I mean an unveiling day. By “bachelor” apartment I just mean my depressing suburban shelter-in-place after my divorce. A territory of the dark divide.

This gathering of souls was called “Vision: 10/25”.

Tim, a dreamfinder, a mistic of Baphomet, flew in from New York City. He shipped in a full box of bombers – a baroque talisman of heavy hitters called up from the malt league. A Rubik’s cube of magic with course-altering power. Friends drove up from other burbs and came down from the city. One friend came over from Fort Wayne, Indiana. Everyone brought their finest vessel with intent to portion and measure. Divide and indulge.

This particular night lives on like fireflies humming in fleeting nostalgia. An immersive event – a singularity that truly helped craft a full ideology for me.

As Tim’s Lament Configuration puzzle box was opened and as the bombers of disbelief were withdrawn one by one, plumes of incandescent liquid rock permeated in a sense of reverence. The gates of Hell were opened. The Cenobites were summoned.

Each bottle pulled from the curio shopkeeper’s trunk was an ornament of a charm bracelet. The music box became a Solomon’s Key, unlocking and releasing melody to any future door of any brewpub taproom bar.

Conversations I would long to sing with strangers about fabled grain bills, hop additions and long, cold weather lines I would stand in, waiting for beer.

90% of the beers were not even approaching anything under 12%. To match the intensity, Hellraiser spun in the background via Laserdisc technology as the Cerberus howled its three-headed snarl.

Three of the minions from the murderers’ row box were:

2011 Mash & Grind by The Bruery

This was the first beer I ever tasted from The Bruery. In a kickoff of dark berries and booze-soaked raisins, Mash & Grind was their bourbon barrel aged barleywine. With a wave of caffeine essence from Portola Coffee Lab, not only did my world tilt a bit after tasting it, but I’m pretty sure it was the first barleywine I ever consumed.

2011 Churchill’s Finest Hour by Port Brewing

Only two-hundred bottles of this were released. Brewed solely for Churchill’s Pub and Grill in St. Marcos, Port’s take on the barrel aged Russian imperial stout unleashed licorice and burnt chocolate in a flood of indulgence.

Viscous black wax dripping over a label like an old newspaper with metallic turquois highlights of Churchills silhouetted cigar smoke.

2012 Cigar City Hunahpu’s

Bakers’ chocolate, plum, and toffee giving way to vanilla and finishing with pepper skin and cinnamon spice extracted from Mayan mythology. The stout aged in apple brandy barrels zapped any reservation I may have had left in my feeble existence.

I knew it was a storied special release bottle that beer geeks waited hours for on a sidewalk in Tampa Bay, Florida sunshine. Counterfeit tickets overwhelming the gatekeepers. Until that point in time, I just assumed I’d never try it.

…

I had long since quit asking Tim where he got these bottles from. I was just thankful he shipped them over in a box sealed by The Auryn.

Below are a few other bottles of note that were brought over by my friend Jason, to add to the festivities included in the Vision: 10/25 celebration:

2013 Cognac Barrel Aged Dark Lord Muerte by Three Floyds

Procured from that year’s Dark Lord Day festival, dripping in orange blood, a silk screen printed skull rocking a coonskin cap was emblazoned over amber glass. A still, black liquid with no head. I recall the ancho chili pepper burn in a twisted game with the cognac spirit essence.

Dark chocolate bitterness in heft. Muerte is still my most favorite Dark Lord barrel aged variant to this day.

Spicy Nachos by Evil Twin

Not a heavy hitter and probably one of the only pale ales cracked that night. Spicy Nachos is an anomaly worth noting. It was a jalapeno beer that tasted like…nachos. It was a nostalgic avenue directly to the days of little league games, and going to Wrigley Field as a child, innocently chomping a plate of chips and liquid cheese covered in sliced jalapeno, waiting anxiously with my mit ready to catch a foul ball.

I’m not certain if they used tortilla chips in the mash, or what. I couldn’t tell you how they did it, and they only did it one single time. It added an interesting cap to offset the roster of heavy stouts and obviously I’m still thinking about it fourteen years later.

Tokyo by Brewdog – an aside:

In 2010, Tim secured four bottles of Tactical Nuclear Penguin, a 32% ABV beer. At one point it was the beer with the highest alcohol by volume in the entire world, (it’s still like number four or something) Brewdog only fashioned enough to fill four hundred 375ml bottles. You might imagine the demand for these at the time – an era before the Scottish kilted yaksmen would become entrenched in beer controversy. Each bottle came wrapped in brown paper and every individual one had a unique, hand-drawn penguin cartoon.

The experience at the time of uncorking and letting flow those bottles into four, full 12oz shaker pints in a Lincoln Park apartment is one of massive, adorable ignorance. Quickly realizing that the beer was basically blended malt whiskey, we crafted zip lock bag funnels and returned the 64-proof beer to the bottles. Re-corked and re-caged, only to be transported home on the Red Line. The oft-shared memory helped solidify a four-man crew.

Alex showed up to Vision: 10/25 at my bachelor apartment with a tattoo of an original penguin drawing from his paper Tactical Nuclear Penguin paper bag. A pure and noble true-life commitment to a crew, and a vow to never dime and never sway until tossed in a coffin. In warmth, the tattoo inspired a tear from Tim who had flown in from NYC for no other reason than to drink beer with us.

…

The night itself was revelatory for me in terms of gathering, opening an array of mythic beer bottles in de rigueur, and conversing. I would go as far as to say almost every one of my friends from every walk of my life at the time was there, in my cramped apartment. My aging gay neighbor Raul prepared a dish, unsure of what he had walked in to. I didn’t have enough chairs, and I remember people sitting on milk crates and on top of my vintage Pioneer speakers.

Brooking a hagiography, it was a time where the term “bottle share” would get me out of having to provide food, tablecloths and silverware. It wasn’t a party. It was an event to let flow the opaque offerings as black as the muddy banks of Crete retention ponds. Reservoirs of memories of conversation so loud it drowned out the music I had spinning on my 1980s Techniques turntable.

I felt inspired; I had unlocked a new Vision of how I wanted to spend time. I wanted to do it a lot. Again, and again. And although no future bottle share would ever quite reach that level, I would.