"and we hope - across the most strange year to come -"
Minnesota Thanksgiving - John Berryman | New Glarus Coffee Stout
The Poem
Minnesota Thanksgiving - John Berryman
For that free Grace bringing us past great risks
& thro' great griefs surviving to this feast
sober & still, with the children unborn and born,
among brave friends, Lord, we stand again in debt
and find ourselves in the glad position: Gratitude.
We praise our ancestors who delivered us here
within warm walls all safe, aware of music,
likely toward ample & attractive meat
with whatever accompaniment
Kate in her kind ingenuity has seen fit to devise,
and we hope - across the most strange year to come -
continually to do them and You not sufficient honour
but such as we become able to devise
out of decent or joyful conscience & thanksgiving.
Yippee!
Bless then, as Thou wilt, this wilderness board.
The Beverage
New Glarus Coffee Stout
Hello, I am drinking an eleven-month-old beer as Saturday turns to Sunday here in Central Time. So anyway, going for the after-midnight send instead of the morning send.
The beer’s not fresh, but it’s not bad. Probably would have been better when it was purchased last New Year’s at the brewery, but I just dug it out from the back of the fridge. The New Glarus Coffee Stout is definitely a winter beer -- dark and sweet and round in the mouth -- but I spent most of this week watching it snow.
This beer is one that is meant to be sipped slowly while tucked into a blanket with a fire burning. It’s a homey beer that tastes like Wisconsin. Is it homey because it tastes like Wisconsin? Or do I think it tastes like Wisconsin because it’s homey? I don't know if the distinction matters.
It really felt like a Christmas-card Christmas this Thanksgiving up in Northern Wisconsin. All my clothes smell like woodsmoke. We hiked in sweaters and flannel through snowy birch and pine. Mild and glistening and fresh and the dogs romping. I won’t mind another week of weirdly-still-fall weather that I’m heading back to in Madison, but I loved the taste of winter even as I dread the bitter cold that I know is coming sooner than I’d like.
When the Coffee Stout comes around again in the seasonal cycle this January, I’ll buy it again. Come over and have one with me while it snows. It will probably be terribly cold by then.