There are few things more delicious than the mingling of good beer and good literature. Such is Java Head, a creation of Troegs Craft Brewery in Hershey, Pennsylvania, a soul-stirring stout with a hint of coffee and an allusion to Joseph Hergesheimer’s wonderful novel, Java Head (1919), from which I quote this early passage, young Laurel Ammidon thinking about chairs:
“She could see by her fireplace the elaborately carved teakwood chair that her grandfather had brought home from China, which had never varied from the state of a brown and rather benevolent dragon; its claws were always claws, the grinning fretted mouth was perpetually fixed for a cloud of smoke and a mild rumble of complaint. The severe waxed hickory beyond with the broad arm for writing, a source of special pride, had been an accommodating and precise old gentleman. The spindling gold chairs in the drawing-room were supercilious creatures at a king’s ball; the graceful impressive formality of the Heppelwhites in the dining room belonged to the loveliest of Boston ladies. Those with difficult haircloth seats in the parlor were deacons; others in the breakfast room talkative and unpretentious; while the deep easy-chair before the library fire was a ship. There were mahogany stools, dwarfs of dark tricks; angry high-backed things in the hall below; and a terrifying shape of gleaming red that, without question, stirred hatefully and reached out curved and dripping hands. Anyhow, such they all had seemed.”
