GAME OF THRONES (Song of Ice and Fire) BEERS?!?

Sorry to freak out, but has everyone seen this?

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/16/coming-soon-the-beer-of-kings/

If you don’t care already, I don’t know if I can make you care.  But I love this idea.  First off, I really like Ommegang.  They make amazing beer, and I can’t think of a better American brewery to create beers coupled with a fantasy series.  Second, I’m a big fan of A Song of Fire and Ice.  I’m in the middle of Storm of Swords (so nobody tell me what’s going to happen), and it’s a dark, meticulously constructed, high fantasy series.  Besides the wonderful political and cultural allegories at play in the books, my favorite part is the food and drink.  Every forty pages or so, George R. R. Martin will launch into an epic tirade on food and drink.  For example:

“There were great joints of aurochs roasted with leeks, venison pies, chunky with carrots, bacon, and mushrooms, mutton chops sauced in honey and cloves, savory duck, peppered boar, goose, skeweres of pigeon, and capon, beef-and-barley stew, cold fruit soup…..twenty casks of fish from White Harbor packed in slate and seaweed; whitefish and winkles, crabs and mussels, clams, herring, cod, salmon, lobster, and lampreys.  There was black bread and honeycakes and oaten biscuits; there wer turnips and pease and beets, beans and squash and huge red onions; there were baked apples and berry tarts and pears poached in strongwine.  Wheels of white cheese  sat at every table, above and below the salt, and flagons of hot spice wine and chilled autumn ale were passed up and down the tables.”-A Clash of Kings, 245, George R R Martin

You see what I mean?  Don’t you want to be at that feast?  Well, Ommegang’s providing us with the drinks, and if you go to the brewery, you might be able to find the food (or make it). Every summer Ommegang holds a music and beer festival at the brewery in Cooperstown, NY.  I have it on good authority that full suckling pigs have been roasted on the ground during the festival.   I’m sure I’ve had  an Ommegang while reading one of the books, and it makes me happy that I may be able to have a themed one next time.

Now if we can just get some Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings themed beer lines, my fantasy drinking needs will be complete.  And…I know that there’s already a Harry Potter beer at Universal, but there could be more.

Image property of Teefury.com

Artist: Nathan Stillie http://nathanstillie.com/gold-lion-shirt/