Love in a Nutshell - Janet Evanovich [41]
Travis shook his head. “You know, you seem like the open-minded type. You put up with Culhane, you’ve stopped staring at my piercings, and yet you’re judging all beer based on one bad, unfortunate game of beer pong.”
“Believe me, I’d do the same with a rattlesnake, too.”
Bart laughed. “It can’t have been that bad.”
“Okay, no, because I’m still alive.” Kate glanced at each of them. “This is some sort of non-beer-drinker intervention, isn’t it?”
Nobody answered, but the light of hope continued to shine in their eyes.
“Come on, Kate, what you drank was goat pi—, uh, urine, compared to what we make,” Travis said. “This is craft beer, the nectar of the gods.”
“Nectar?”
“Try my peach beer,” he said.
The hair on her arms rose. “I’m not so sure about that.”
“No peach, then, but at least try something while you’re here.”
She was, to some degree, a captive audience. And not wholly unwilling, either. It had been a lot of years, and there remained the remote possibility that the whole beer incident had grown in her mind. Maybe it hadn’t been that truly awful.
“And consider this,” Matt said. “I can’t move you to the front of the house until you’ve learned to speak beer. So unless you and Hobart really do want to establish an exclusive relationship, you should give this a shot.”
Kate had come to see the downside to dishwashing. Running Hobart meant standing at Hobart. To be a good secret spy, she needed more mobility.
“Okay. Let’s do this thing.” She looked across the table at Matt’s co-conspirators. “I’m assuming you already have this arranged.”
“It’s going to be an experience to be savored,” Bart said as Travis left the table.
Kate looked doubtful. “On my planet, that would be lounging in a Jacuzzzi with a glass of wine and a good book.” She could feel Culhane go still next to her, and she thought she should probably stop mentioning anything even remotely involving nakedness. Her imagination had already tossed the book and substituted her boss stripping down and making the tub blissfully crowded.
Matt gently touched Kate’s hand. “All beer is made of four basic ingredients.”
She drew on her last memory of beer. “Is skunk spray one of them, because that would explain the smell.”
“Not even close. We’re talking water, barley, hops, and yeast.”
Travis returned to the table with a cooler bearing the Depot Brewing steam locomotive logo and a plastic cup. He set the cup in front of Kate and then got busy in the cooler.
“Those are hops,” Bart said.
She squinted into the cup. “It looks like rabbit food.”
“Check out the scent.”
Kate took a whiff and immediately regretted it. The hops smelled like a mix of cheap perfume, soggy dog, and grass blades. She wanted to sneeze, and possibly gag, but could do neither with any measure of diplomacy. Instead, she rubbed the tip of her nose and tried to blink back the extra moisture in her eyes.
Matt fought back a grin. “I get the feeling you’re not fond of hops.”
Travis lined up three smaller cups. Each was filled with the same grain, but of varying shades. “This is all barley,” he said.
“Barley is good. My grandmother made soup from barley.”
Matt smiled at her, and she began to relax again.
“Note the lighter and darker colors,” Bart said. “Different degrees of roasting will add varying aspects to the beer. When we boil up the wort—”
“The what?” she asked.
“The wort.”
“That sounds a little creepy,” Kate said. “Like something on a witch’s nose.”
Culhane laughed. “That’s what the boiled mix of barley, hops, and water is called. Brewers make wort. After that’s done, the yeast will make the beer.”
That, too, brought images to Kate’s mind she would have been happy to skip. “Before I get too much scary input, how about if we move along to the tasting?”
Bart reached into the cooler, brought out a bottle of beer, and set a small glass in front of Kate. It was taller and bigger than a shot glass, but not by much. If this was all she had to drink, she just might survive.
Bart handed her the bottle. “This is Dog Day Afternoon. It was one of Matt’s first beers