Before I begin, I just want to give a shoutout to my paid subscribers. You all rock! And are cool as hell. And are good at stuff. If you also want to be cool as hell you can do a paid subscription below. Writing these things takes time and effort, and a little money makes these easier to do. It’s probably the chillest thing you can do and helps me keep Dang Dude going. Also, it’s cheap! Also, I want to thank the 94 others of you that signed up to get these newsletters from me. It’s super awesome to have so many people support my writing! Let’s get even more people involved! Tell your friends, tell your family, get everyone to sign up for this! They’ll love it!
I recently got back from a trip to Missoula, Montana. It was great. I got to see my parents for the first time since 2019, we hiked in Glacier, ate great food, saw good friends, and did a bougie river float. A good time all-around. The weather even cooperated for a few days here and there, which for Missoula in late-July/early-August is quite the feat. I also drank a couple of beers. One of them stood out.
In Montana beer is everywhere. People like to say that Montana has a “drinking culture,” as if somehow other cities aren’t populated with people who like to imbibe. Montana, and Missoula specifically, do seem to have an extraordinary number of beer lovers however. For a town of 73,000 the amount of malted beverages it consumes is rather impressive. New microbreweries seem to pop up every other day. Drunk driving rates are also through the roof. Needless to say, if a beer stands out in Montana, it really stands out. This isn’t about that though. This is about the best beer in Montana if not the world. For my money, all $300 of it, of all the beers produced in “The Garden City,” there is one that stands above the rest, Kettlehouse’s Cold Smoke Scotch Ale.
Allow me a brief aside about beer laws in Montana. First, I must point out that they are stupid. Heavy lobbying by big brewers such as Miller and Bud in the latter half of the 20th century kept in place laws that kneecap microbrewers from the get-go. Places such as Kettlehouse, Draughtworks, and Bayern cannot sell more than three beers per person per day. They also have to close their doors at eight pm. This is anathema to success for a bar. Especially in college towns such as Missoula and Bozeman, where bars rely on heavy collegiate custom to pay their bills. Perhaps the worst clause of whatever infernal law that got passed in some bygone decade is the limit on how much beer microbreweries can produce. Microbrewers rely on lisences that put a cap on the number of gallons they can make a year. This handicaps their ability to sell outside of the state and grow their businesses. Outside of the construction of various legal fictions of their own, Montana breweries have a hard time expanding their presence. The next Deschutes, Revolution, or Allagash will not be coming from Montana.
I’m sure it’s weird to see me feeling sad for corporations on this page. This newsletter in many ways can be read as a cry for the destruction of capitalism. And I don’t want to make it seem as if Montana microbreweries are bastions of the working class. I’m sure the owners of Kettlehouse and others are adept at stealing the surplus value of their workers as other large corporations are. If you are aware of any, please let me know if there are worker-owned breweries in Montana. That’d be awesome. But I’m already digressing in this digression. What really makes me mad is the power of big multi-national corporations like InBev to write and enact laws that favor them. Simply because they had enough money they were able to get rather unfair laws written that have stayed in place for decades. A truly disgusting use of the United States’ legal system. Not that the actions of big brewers were uncommon or even particularly egregious, other companies do this all the time, look into Disney and copyright laws, but I like beer more than Mickey Mouse, so this just makes me even madder. The legal system shouldn’t be a vast money pit that spews out favorable bills anytime someone throws enough cash into it.
Okay digression over. Back to the good stuff. Cold Smoke is an example of a beer that I believe could stand on its own when tasted next to the Zombie Dusts, Oberons and Fist Cities of the world, but has been held back by awful legislation. This is, of course, the perfect time to describe it, and yet I find myself struggling to come up with the words to do so. So I’ll start with the basics. Cold Smoke is a Scotch Ale. It’s best served about ten degrees below room temperature. Not warm, but also not just above freezing. It’s a darker beer but when you pour it in a glass it has some red and brown undertones, not unlike Mount Sentinel at dusk, which stands only a few miles from where it’s brewed. Unlike other dark beers, Cold Smoke doesn’t sit in the stomach. It manages to pack a boat load of flavor without a boat load of heaviness. There are hints of vanilla, brass, and graham cracker. But it’s light enough to sip in the summer. It’s a beer built for towing behind you in a net bag as you float down the Clark Fork River. A beer brewed for sipping in a lodge after a day of double black diamond skiing. A beer for sitting on the back porch looking at the stars while Nikki Lane sings about love. It’s a beer for all who partake.
Apologies if I did not describe the flavor of Cold Smoke enough. I’m writing this on a plane as I drink a lukewarm Ginger Ale. I’m also bad at describing how beer tastes, other than “good,” or “bad.” I think I did a slightly better than job than the wine seller who once sold me and Sarah a bottle of wine after saying that “she[the wine] wasn’t pretending to be anything other than what she [once again, the wine] was.” This of course is also true of Cold Smoke, but in a different way.
I’d usually tell you, my readers, to go out and get a Cold Smoke at the end of this ode to a Scotch Ale. But you probably can’t. Unless you happen to live in Montana. And even then I can’t recommend you go out in the smoke – not cold – that is currently blanketing the state. So, I won’t do that. But I will politely suggest that you read up on your state law. I bet that you can probably find ten instances of some truly fucked laws bought and paid for by corporations in about five seconds. The US is a truly insane place.
If you liked this please share. It’s the only way I’ll ever get famous from this.
the technical term for what you describe is "rent seeking." Most capitalists don't really believe that whole "level playing field" nonsense given the opportunity to stick it to their competitors.
Another fine piece, Dylan, thanks. I recall Cold Smoke being excellent and rather uniquely so in its flavor, and now that I see you’re a Nikki Lane fan too, well it just shows how superb your taste is all around 😉.