Good Beer Hunting - Crisis Cava in a Colony, and Other Ways of Coping in Old San Juan

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On Sunday, March 15, about a week after the first case of the novel coronavirus was reported in Puerto Rico, Governor Wanda Vázquez announced a two-week lockdown. Everything but grocery stores and pharmacies would close, starting at 6 p.m. The announcement came without much time for planning, without much warning, and I scrambled. There was the initial shock, of course, that we would be kept in our homes, without life happening outside, but this initiative on the part of a usually inept local government was also surprising. We might actually nip this in the bud, my boyfriend and I thought.
https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/c...g?format=1000w That first case had been an Italian tourist who’d arrived on a cruise. She’d been isolated since her illness was discovered. We went out without masks upon the announcement of the lockdown, because no one had deemed them necessary yet. The air of Old San Juan, where we live, was vibrating with the mystery of how these next two weeks would unfold.
A friend who manages a bar was looking forward to the time off, thinking it would be just a couple of weeks. We stopped into one of our favorite dives for a shot of rum on our way to our regular hangout, El Batey, a local graffiti-covered classic that had just celebrated its 50th anniversary. There, we drank cold cans of Medalla and downed shots of Don Q Añejo rum. I always take pictures while we’re at the bar, because the light shines perfectly there, day and night, and I fully documented our quick pre-quarantine drinks in the bliss of ignorance about what would come.
Pairing: Can of Medalla and Shot of Don Q Añejo
Just as COVID-19 is the “novel coronavirus,” so the experience of having to stay inside for two weeks was new. We quickly discovered that the cops were not going to go easy on us: Even walking our dog more than a few blocks brought on threats of tickets, of fines reaching up to $6,000. Neighbors having similar experiences told us to always carry a canvas tote, so we could pretend to be going to the grocery store. Soon, too, it was discovered that the sight of two people together was what put the cops on alert, so we walked on separate sidewalks. There were times I hid behind cars, my heart racing. My last experience with the cops had been the local protests of the prior summer when, through weeks of endless demonstrations and a general strike, the local people had pushed out a corrupt governor. The stress of being exposed to tear gas and blocked by their military formations had stayed with me.

“The bubbles were a visceral way, with the cork popping and the fizz on the tongue, to immerse ourselves in the good of life when we couldn’t celebrate in any of the old ways (too many shots as we hopped from bar to bar, a fancy dinner).”

Inside our apartment, though, we remained optimistic. When the pandemic first began to ravage the United States, causing panic and joblessness throughout the hospitality sector, I had a lot of work to do reporting on labor conditions, how undocumented workers would be supported despite lack of access to unemployment payments, and generally what people were going to do to keep their businesses alive and workers paid during an unprecedented crisis.
My boyfriend, a former bartender who’d gotten a job as a historian just in time for us to avoid questions of how we’d stay financially afloat through this, focused on making new cocktails. Running out of dry vermouth for my beloved gin martinis meant I got Tuxedo No. 4s, made with fino sherry in its place, and he perfected an espresso-tinged take on the Garibaldi, a breakfast cocktail made with orange juice and Campari. Though there was so much anxiety outside our home, both with the local police and with cases climbing in my native New York, we were safe, we were creative, and we focused on that.
Pairing: Tuxedo No. 4 and Coffee Garibaldi
Our lockdown wore on far past the first two weeks we’d assumed. The government kept an unscientific curfew of 7 p.m. in place, and most restaurants and bars remained closed. Takeout and delivery were the only options. I stopped reporting on the hospitality industry; everything was changing too rapidly, and watching cases climb among agricultural and meat-processing workers in the U.S. proved too depressing. Instead, I focused my energy on launching a newsletter on food culture, politics, and media. In my weekly interviews with people I admire, the pandemic would come up, but I would try to focus the conversations on work that had relevance beyond the current nightmare—small doses of fresh imagination.
https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/c...g?format=1000w The newsletter became more popular than I could have imagined. I was asked to appear on “Good Morning America” to talk about the sorry state of food media, and other requests kept coming in. Soon, I had a book deal for a proposal that my agent had been shopping around for months. How to process success amid so much misery? When I appeared on TV, our favorite local Thai restaurant, Mai Pen Rai, sent a bottle of Champagne with our noodles. When my newsletter hit a milestone in signups or revenue, we drank cava. When my boyfriend had a paper accepted into a Latin American studies conference, cava. For my book deal, Champagne again. The bubbles were a visceral way, with the cork popping and the fizz on the tongue, to immerse ourselves in the good of life when we couldn’t celebrate in any of the old ways (too many shots as we hopped from bar to bar, a fancy dinner). Nothing felt quite right, but we tried. We try.
Pairing: Segura Viudas Brut Cava
Come July, more bars and restaurants had flung open their doors in anticipation of the island’s grand reopening to tourism on the 15th. Tourism had never really stopped—despite the early curfew and nothing being open, maskless couples could be seen walking hand in hand toward the sunset as we locals were told by cops to teach our dogs how to poop inside—but now it was being encouraged. Articles kept appearing in travel magazines, encouraged by the local tourism initiative, announcing this new, safe time to come visit.

“The tourists would walk around in big groups, no masks, and leave their empty plastic cups on our balcony as though it were a garbage can. How many cups have we tossed into the garbage for visitors acting as though they’re on spring break? Countless. How many times have I screamed my head off cursing at them? Just once. Just once.”

There was still a curfew, though, so all the visitors were getting drunk earlier in the day than they would have under 4 a.m. closing conditions. At 6:30 p.m., we would step into a bar to grab a beer to go, and everyone inside would be wasted and dancing as though it were 3:30 a.m. Though COVID-19 was ravaging the U.S., its inhabitants thought coming to Puerto Rico meant all their troubles disappeared, despite the steady stream of cases we’d been dealing with since March. The tourists would walk around in big groups, no masks, and leave their empty plastic cups on our balcony as though it were a garbage can. How many cups have we tossed into the garbage for visitors acting as though they’re on spring break? Countless. How many times have I screamed my head off cursing at them? Just once. Just once.
Pairing: Empty Plastic Cups Filled with the Lime and Mint Dregs of Mojitos
Once the cops decided it was OK for us to walk our dog, we stumbled upon a group of neighbors who would gather with theirs in a nearby park every evening after work and before curfew. The dogs would run around, being dogs, and we’d sit and chat as the sky turned from blue to the peaches and pinks of a tropical sunset over the ocean. Joe, an old guy from the States, would often hand out cold bottles of Heineken—he’d never gotten a taste for Medalla, the local go-to. Our days might have taken on a predictable character, but at this improvised outdoor happy hour, a little bit of new light began to emerge.
Pairing: Bottles of Heineken
Because in Old San Juan, as in much of Puerto Rico, when you’re inside you’re also outside, we began to visit some of our old haunts as they opened up again. At La Taberna Lúpulo, a craft beer bar, we even found something new to love, which felt like a gift from heaven. Leatherback Brewing Company, from nearby St. Croix, made a limited-edition Hefeweizen flavored with acerola, a small, tart cherry that grows around the Caribbean. We downed our pints and got a crowler to go; we bought six-packs of it whenever it was available at a local grocer. It became the official beer of the pandemic, sweet and sour.
Pairing: Crowlers and Cans of Leatherback Brewing Company’s Acerola Cherry Hefe
https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/c...g?format=1000w Though normalcy looked like it would never return, we did take to spending Saturday afternoons at Sube, a small nook on the second floor of the massive bar Mono Stereo. The dry vermouth there was Martini & Rossi brand, my least favorite, and there were no olives to garnish my martinis, but just the sight of my favorite drink sweating in a Nick & Nora glass as I sat on a stool not inside my own apartment felt like some of the most luxurious moments I’d ever had in my life. The world went from black-and-white to Technicolor, and though I knew I would, I wanted to never take any simple pleasure for granted again. It was around this time that I started to say “cheers” in every language I knew.
Pairing: Sweaty Martinis in Nick & Nora Glasses
The curfew continued, though pushed to 10 p.m., and for a few weeks we went into full lockdown on Sundays for vaguely religious reasons, it seemed. We were stopped by cops just for trying to go on our daily morning jog because of this new rule, but they were much nicer than before. The Leatherback Acerola Cherry Hefe was out of stock, so we got a six-pack of Lagunitas Super Cluster IPA to end the workdays, to mark a transition that didn’t feel real anymore without that punctuation.

“The dry vermouth there was Martini & Rossi brand, my least favorite, and there were no olives to garnish my martinis, but just the sight of my favorite drink sweating in a Nick & Nora glass as I sat on a stool not inside my own apartment felt like some of the most luxurious moments I’d ever had in my life.”

Pairing: Cans of Lagunitas Super Cluster IPA
To cheers, the Sunday lockdown recently lifted. We’re now allowed not just to be out until 10 p.m. but to purchase alcohol after 7 p.m., meaning the bars are open later, meaning the whole town feels less ghostly far too early in the evening. The tourism has slowed down, probably because school is back in session, but visitors continue to walk the streets without masks, drinks in hand that they’ll eventually leave on someone’s balcony, having photo shoots against the candy-colored buildings of the colonial city. I watch two men with frozen pink drinks walking down the street without a care in the world, as a driver turns down his reggaeton to tell them to wear masks. “You’re not a cop,” the tourists yell back, and the driver repeats himself. They don’t listen.
Our days continue largely unchanged, but with welcome flexibility. It continues to be the drinks that mark them, that give them meaning. We order bottles of cold brew from a local business called Chubidubi, and the owner tells us he’s making beers, so we order a six-pack. They’re a smooth, high-ABV Lager capped with light blue wax. They taste like possibility, and that’s all we can hope for right now.
Pairing: Unlabeled Local Brew by Chubidubi
http://goodbeerhunting.com/assets/authors/Kennedy.jpg http://goodbeerhunting.com/assets/authors/Troy-ford.png Words by Alicia Kennedy Graphics by Ryan Troy Ford

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