We're going to look backwards and forwards this week. We're going to borrow something from November and give thanks for how good we have it, and boost our spirits as we look forward to spring. Our Yankee ancestors made it through bleak winters with barely any fresh food, and in an agrarian economy there wasn't even work to divert their cabin fever. Breaks from the desperate monotony came in the forms of weekly hymns or the occasional cholera outbreak. Well, that may not be strictly true, there was also smallpox, but in addition to smallpox, and considerably more preferable, there was beer. A little brewer ingenuity gave rise to bigger ales with deeper colors and increased potency to hold the cold and dark at bay and transform the winter months from merely bearable to enjoyable. That same tactic works to this day, and this can be found for the next month or so wherever you can find Smuttynose. 

The Monday after Thanksgiving is one of the cruelest of the year. A country isn't really worthy of the name until it has a National Day Of Feasting, (and a beer and an airline, according to Frank Zappa) but I feel like a good feast, especially a winter-ish one, could really do with a National Week Of Hibernation subsequently. But we all have our roles to play in the national ant colony, and so we waddled back to our jobs, office chairs protesting perhaps more loudly than we ourselves did at the morning's alarm. My role at Thanksgiving, however, was considerably more enjoyable: Bringer Of The Beer. Here's how that went.

Craft brews have officially tipped in the Malcolm Gladwell sense. Most bars and restaurants now feature at least one tap dedicated to interesting beers, and brew-focused establishments seem to be springing up everywhere, to the delight of the hop head.

The following Froth column was originally scheduled to run last week but got sucked into a worm hole. Pardon any time related ambiguity.  

Congratulations to those of you who are now able to read this after having been gracefully ushered back into the 19th[strikethrough] 21st century by our benevolent dictators at CL&P. There's a scene in Gladiator where Djimon Hounsou's character sees the Roman coliseum for the first time and says "I did not know men were capable of such things." I imagine that's a little what it's like to use an oven or turn on the lights after a dozen days whose rhythms were controlled by the Sun's rise and fall; writing notes on the back of a wooden shovel with a lump of coal by candle light, that kind of thing. The long nights of the winter can now once again be banished by the sorcery of compact fluorescent bulbs, but some elements of the wintertide are to be embraced, like seasonal brews.

Modern hipsterism is a weird and annoying thing. Here's how it goes: people had settled into a fairly stable fashion landscape by the time the millennium rolled around so they naturally started looking around for the next big thing. Lacking any creativity or new ideas of their own, they decided to take the most hideous and outdated clothing they could find and wear it as publicly as possible because "Haha, aren't I funny and clever and please oh god look at me." Since wearing ugly clothes is easier than actually being interesting, and neon hats from 1992 were cheaper than water, it caught on. Then everybody found out about The Cobrasnake and now the landscape is littered with "Aren't I cool for not looking cool but really that's what's cool about it but I'm too cool to acknowledge I actually really think this is cool." It's the Inception of pop culture trends, and somehow beer got caught up in it. I'm sure PBR doesn't mind that every idiot with an ironic mustache and Ladyhawke on their iPod has to have a Blue Ribbon tallboy in their hand, but this is the acid reflux disease of trends. It was ugly the first time, let's not have it again. Let's try something new, and let the revolution start with beer.

On October 21, 1805, Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson lead a British fleet against the combined power of the French and Spanish fleets miles off the coast of Trafalgar, Spain. Napoleon wanted a French hegemony in Europe, the British, not so much. Nelson had twenty seven ships at his command against thirty three in the Franco-Spanish fleet. By the end of the battle twenty two ships would be destroyed and Nelson would be dead. Twenty eight ships would eventually sail on to England - every single British ship, plus the French flag vessel Bucentaure, and its Admiral, Villeneuve. The British hadn't lost a single one. As for Admiral Nelson, his body was placed in a barrel of "spirits," likely rum, and Nelson became one of the biggest heroes in British history. The story goes that when the barrel was opened back home it was found to be empty of liquid - the sailors had drilled a hole and drank it all. Thereafter rum was given the nickname "Nelson's Blood" on ships of the Royal Navy. Honestly though: this column has almost nothing to do with any of that. I just like the story. Shall we?

Oktoberfest is the most popular town fair in the world. The town, in this case, is Munich, and the party attracts about five million people, yearly. Oktoberfest started when Crown Prince Ludwig of Bavaria married Princess Therese of Saxony in 1810. That party has been repeated ever since - 201 years as of last week - and continues through the first few days of October. Only beers brewed inside the city limited of Munich are allowed in the enormous tents constructed on the Theresienwiese each year, but thankfully we have no such restrictions in the 203. Let's dive in. 

It's only fitting that we start with an actual Munich Oktoberfest beer like Paulaner.

One does not generally drink a turtle, but there I was. The time was last Friday night, and the place was the beloved and reborn Georgia Theater in Athens, Georgia. The night's entertainment was the newly formed Chris Robinson Brotherhood, and the beer was a local Terrapin. The confluence of warmth, fellowship, location and good brews was that delicious kind of overload which tends to put one in a trance like state. Trances are not conducive to note-taking. Er, sorry about that. But do try a Terrapin or a Dale's on the rooftop bar at the Theater next time you happen to come-to in Clark County. You won't regret it.

Holy Mother of God, do I love IPAs. Hops are as important an ingredient of beer as water, in my opinion. Without any hops you may as well put a plate of dry barley and yeast in front of me - I guess I could do something with it, but it's not really worth the effort. Hops are the spice of beer, I've said it before, and as such India Pale Ales occupy the same space in the temple of my mind as Thai and Mexican food. I will shoulder your grandmother out of the way if she comes between me and a kaeng phet. This week we're going to roll around in IPAs like a freshly bathed dog in a questionable pile of dirt. My tongue's already hanging out, but don't worry, hop-shy readers: there's something for you, too.

As I crash back through the figurative doorway of this site, dusty from the road, clutching a crumpled and beer-stained notebook and shaking the spiders from my clothing, I can only hope that this column's absence has made your hearts all the fonder. Although when I tried that line on a female acquaintance of mine some years ago she quipped that the sentence was not complete, and should have ended with "of someone else." Live and learn. Our triumphs and tragedies make us who we are, and sometimes intermingle. Such is the case with Lagunitas Brewing Company, and their Wilco Tango Foxtrot "Jobless Recovery Ale."