Knowing your food; Palo Santo Marron beer from Dogfish Head.

A couple years ago I read an article in the New Yorker about a brewery called Dogfish Head. In the article they talked about an interesting beer, Palo Santo Marron. Besides the beer they gave a rough history of the company including the fact that when Dogfish Head started brewing it was illegal in Delaware, the owner single handedly wrote the bill legalizing it, and got it passed. Now, after reading this article I was informed about this one food stuff, and I hadn’t ever had the chance to try it.

I like to know about my food, but few food items have full-length New Yorker articles written about them. Maybe if more food like onions, and carrots were treated with as much breadth I would know more, but as much as I know about food items, like carrots, and onions in general, its very hard to find information that is specific. You need to actually talk to people, which is something I find difficult.

A year or so when by, and by chance went to a friends beer bar in San Francisco, the Church Key, and he was showing off some awesome beers. If you are in the North Beach area you should check it out. It came up in conversation they had the beer in question from Dogfish head. I had my chance to taste it.

I don’t think I have ever been so excited to try something like that. Though, I once had a chance to eat at Chez Panisse that was pretty awesome to. I knew about what I was about to imbibe. It was an awesome experience. I had a knowledgeable Bar Tender, supplementing what I already knew. The kicker was that it tasted good as well. It doesn’t taste like any other beer I have had, well except maybe like a barley wine, which I know is tangential to beer, maybe like Chimay.

That was that though, I was sure the only place you could get that beer was in bars, and I don’t go to bar’s all that often. Also if you want to know how hard it is for a beer to get into the hands of a consumer check out Beer Wars. Then one day, the Berkeley Bowl opened a new edition two blocks from my apartment. To my surprise, they sold the four-packs of Palo Santo. Now I can buy it whenever I want and enjoy it.

There are very few foods that when I walk into the store I can almost visualize the trip that it made. I can envision the from the brewery in Delaware to my store. To my tummy, and it’s a satisfying feeling. I wonder what it would be like if I could visualize the entire trip, of all my food from where it came from to my table.