TACOMA PREFUNK SATURDAY, MARCH 24 2018: Orval Day and The Disaster Artist
PREFUNK: Today is Orval Day — created by Seattle specialty beer importer Merchant du Vin in honor of the famed 1000-plus-year-old Orval Trappist Ale brewed within the walls of Notre Dame d’Orval Monastery. Merchant du Vin aims to donate $1,000,000 of direct benefit to nonprofit MAP International, which provides humanitarian assistance and relief aid to those in need during disasters, and every bottle of Orval sold in March will go toward that goal. Additionally, Peaks and Pints offers a taste of Orval 2016 and 2017 for you to compare and contrast. The two Orvals are part of our beer flight of Trappist ales today. Bottles of Orval 2017 are also available for purchase.
There may be no beer or brewery more respected by brewers around the world than Orval. The singular focus of these Trappist monks and the depth and character of the beer they produce is (arguably) unmatched. Orval is a pale brewed and bottle-conditioned the enchanting Abbaye Notre-Dame d’Orval monastery, founded around 1070 AD in the Belgian Gaume countryside. The brewery’s Orval ale is brewed with springwater, 2-row spring barley and liquid candy sugar. It is top fermented and dry hopped before undergoing further fermentation with Brettanomyces in the bottle. It’s the only beer that the monastery brews. It changes and evolves in the bottle. When it’s fresh at the brewery, it’s surprisingly hoppy, with a minty and spicy noble hops aroma. Then as it sits in the bottle, the bottle-conditioning Brett yeast takes over, drying out the beer completely and adding an evolving horse blanket and almost tropical note of pineapple, slightly acidic bouquet, firm body, profound hop bitterness, and a long, dry finish. A six-month-old bottle is an entirely different beast from a 12-month-old bottle. And it’s different again after two years.
7-9 P.M. WORLD STORYTELLING NIGHT: It takes cajones to be a good storyteller. You have to impress a crowd with no props, no fancy lighting and no CGI-crafted battle scenes. Today is World Storytelling Day — a global celebration of the art of oral storytelling, obviously. Tonight at the Antique Sandwich Co. in Ruston, The Fireside Storyteller league hosts World Storytelling Night as a way to bind people together in the most wonderful way: with stories and sandwiches, told in all languages and drawn from all manner of cultures — a way of detaching yourself from the video games and gnat-sized attention spans.
11 P.M. THE DISASTER ARTIST: Good news, everyone: James Franco found a role he was born to play. It is the part of Tommy Wiseau, the mysterious, eccentric self-styled artiste who made one of the worst movies of recent years with his 2003’s The Room. Franco not only plays Wiseau but also directs The Disaster Artist, a daffy, loving account of the making of that primal scream from a man who cannot scream convincingly, and it’s the Ed Wood of our generation. Check it out late tonight at The Grand Cinema.
LINK: Orval
