MOTHER'S MILK
Monsoon-like rains were deluging San Francisco's hilly Chinatown last week when, in a dive run by a liver-spotted curmudgeon, a man requested a most peculiar drink.
"Give me a shot of pussy juice?on the rocks!" he cackled at the doorway, before hobbling into the rainy afternoon.
I spit my sake on the bar. Um, what? How does one procure such, um, juice? Is there a slave factory filled with crotchless panties and exhausted women? Is it a misunderstood tonic, like Vietnam's snake penis wine? Could a drink be any odder? Then, after returning to New York City, I heard about milk stout.
Milk stout is a dark-beer variant brewed with lactose, the sugar derived from milk. Lactose adds sweetness, sort of like scooping two sugars into bodega java. Milk stout was once a medicinal tonic, fed to nursing moms to promote, well, milk production. Did it work? Who knows, but I doubt mothers of newborns complained that breast-feeding time was also happy hour.
Governments, unsurprisingly, were wary that kids would swill milk stout: "Mommy, my chocolate milk makes me feel?funny." So "milk" was barred as a labeling term. Lactose-flavored beers remain legal, however. They're crafted by breweries like England's Mackeson's, Oregon's Widmer Brothers and, most importantly, upstate New York's Keegan Ales.
If Keegan leaves you clueless, join the crowd. The Kingston-based brewer (near Woodstock) only started crafting beer in 2003. Plus, its New York City market infiltration is relegated to Bayside in Queens at Press 195, and that's because the owner buys kegs at the microbrewery. All this is changing. Keegan Ales recently joined Manhattan Beer's distribution roster. Reason for excitement? Or is milk stout as much of a head-scratcher as that Chinatown request?
On a recent weeknight, questions are answered at the East Village's Hop Devil Grill. This brewpub offers several dozen tap beers, dollar-taco Tuesdays and, for its big-city debut, Keegan Ales. Even before drinking the first beer, the crowd is buzzing with anticipation. Owner Tommy Keegan and his baby-faced brewer, 21-year-old Geoff Wenzel, have trucked their concoctions Downstate themselves. This is no anomaly. Since the small microbrewery opened, every bottle and keg has been self-distributed.
It's a "big pain in the ass," says Wenzel, who started out driving Keegan delivery trucks.
He and his boss are standing at the bar, explaining the genesis of their lactose stout, Mother's Milk, which I've just ordered. Keegan, wearing blue jeans and beard scruff, loved the phrase "mother's milk." So, he set out to create a beer that matched the name.
He dumped 50 pounds of lactose into a 1,200-gallon-plus oatmeal stout batch. The results were so delicious that they won a 2003 gold medal at the Hunter Mountain Hudson Valley Microbrewery Festival.
"Obviously," Keegan says, "we decided not to change the recipe."
Each pint of Mother's Milk, he says, contains less than a teaspoon of lactose. That means a lactose-intolerant individual must perform 10 keg stands to get sick. It's like saccharine-sweetened chewing gum. It gives lab rats cancer, but you'd need to chew a garbage truck of gum to grow a tumor.
My pint arrives. I sip. It's velvety and sweet, not syrupy. The repeat-drinkability factor rivals, if not surpasses, Guinness.
"People think stout, they think Guinness; they need to learn a lot," says Keith Reichenbach, Hop Devil co-owner.
In minutes my beer has disappeared. So I sample Keegan's India Pale Ale. The Hur-ricane Kitty (so-named after the owner's grandma, who gleefully ignored every speed limit) is a hops-powered, D-Day assault on the palette. It's weightlifter strong (in alcohol content and flavor), and two will turn any evening into a head-spinning adventure. The golden Old Capital ale, sipped next, is crisp and eminently potable. But judged against the other bold offerings, it's like comparing Miss Idaho to Miss Universe.
Suffice to say, Keegan beers surpassed my expectations. Who knew I'd be a milk stout believer? Come summertime, it and other offerings will make delicious additions to local taps. Perhaps Keegan Ales will join Brooklyn Brewery and Sixpoint Craft Ales in overcoming the Budweiser cartel, like a locally brewed Voltron. It's a dream, and perhaps not one so ludicrous: If milk does a body good, and beer makes you feel better, just imagine what a little Mother's Milk could accomplish.