Three Summer Loves

by

These are three of my summer favorites. Three antidotes for the langours of season. Three anecdotes about the energy of its heat. Three summer loves.

Sponsored by Discount Liquor

Affogato

We were four friends in the middle of Italy in the middle of summer. A painter from Calabria, a movie editor from Cologne, a public policy scholar from Baltimore and me. The colors of our skin were porcelain and ebony, honey and almond. And we were all in desperate need of an affogato.

As we crossed the threshold of a sleepy café, its barista spoke out loud to himself. “I quattro mondi.”

The four worlds. That was his commentary about my friends and me. About our four disparate colors. 

The four worlds is also my commentary about affogato.

L’affogato al caffè is a beverage as much as it’s a dessert. It’s vanilla gelato in a bath of espresso. Its magic is in the metamorphosis of its identity. A dessert sauced with coffee turns into its own creamy chaser. The sweet ice cream and bitter coffee enhance each other. Like the best of friends, they meet in the middle. Its porcelain and ebony turn into honey and almond.

L’affogato al caffè

Ingredients

  • 1 or 2 shots (1 or 2 ounces) of hot espresso
  • 1/4 or 1/2 cup of cold vanilla gelato. (If you’re using one shot of espresso, then use 1/4 cup of gelato. If two shots, then 1/2 cup.)

Method

Make the espresso, then scoop the cold gelato into a small, shallow bowl, glass or cup. Slowly pour the hot espresso in a thin stream directly over the gelato, draping the entire surface of the scoop with an even layer of coffee. 

Sparkling Wine as a Luxe Sports Drink

It was a hot summer day. I was back in the apartment after a ten-kilometer run. My face was in the fridge. I was thirsty, but I didn’t want water. And there it was, looking at me.

“No, I can’t,” I whispered to myself.

“But it’s three in the afternoon,” it whispered back. “And you’re off today.”

So I drank it then and there. A half-bottle of brut non-vintage champagne as if it were a sports drink.

Maybe it was the measure of my thirst, or the physiological effect of heat on my palate, or the endorphins coursing through my nervous system, but drinking that drink of champagne was an out-of-body experience.

“I have to do this again,” I whispered to myself. 

And I did. I have. On hot summer days after cardiovascular activity with all sorts of good sparkling wines. And every experience is like the first. The sparkling wine explodes across my palate. It slakes my thirst. It invigorates my body. It makes me think of sparkling wine as a luxe sports drink.

Kölsch

This one isn’t fair of me, but I’m going to tell you about it anyway. The best summer drink of all is Kölsch.

The two primary styles of beer are ales and lagers. Ales are made with yeasts which ferment at warm temperatures. Lagers are made with yeasts which ferment at cold temperatures. Ales are conditioned―which is to say, carbonated―at warm temperatures. Lagers are conditioned at cold temperatures. Kölsch is a hybrid style of beer. It’s brewed at warm temperatures like an ale, but conditioned at cold temperatures like a lager, which yields a beer with the best qualities of both ales and lagers.

Kölsch has a straw color, with lightly fruity, yeasty aromas and flavors and a light, hoppy bitterness. It’s brewed with light barley malt and has an alcohol by volume (ABV) of about 4.8%. 

Why is recommending Kölsch to you not fair of me?

Because Kölsch resists the demands of the North American market. Kölsch is a delicate style of beer which is best drunk as fresh as possible, which means it’s best made locally. It’s damaged by brewers over-hopping beer. It’s corrupted by the unpredictability of storage at warehouses and beer shops, as well as by the varying quality of barroom tap lines. 

The Kölsch occupying the shelves of my refrigerator is made by two brothers of German descent in a Pewaukee basement. And they don’t sell their Kölsch. But at every beer shop and barroom I visit this summer, I’ll look for a good, honest, local Kölsch.