Have you heard of the Stanford marshmallow experiment? A child is given a choice: you can have one marshmallow right now… or, if you can wait 15 minutes without eating the marshmallow, you’ll be rewarded with two marshmallows. The experiment’s about delayed gratification: do the children have the willpower to wait for a better reward, and will that serve them well in life?
Well, here’s where it’ll serve you. Buy a Munich Dunkel, and put it in your fridge. When you’re ready to drink it, take it out of the fridge, and wait.
One minute…
Two minutes…
Two-minutes-thirty…
Two-minutes-forty-five…
It’s torturous. But if you can wait about five minutes, the temperature of the drink will have risen to a few degrees higher than fridge temperature – and this is when the Munich Dunkel will reward you the most. Crack it open and pour it into a glass.
Of course, at this point you want to pause – MORE waiting – and bask in the delightful colour of the beer. It’s the colour of Charles Dickens’ mahogany writing desk – or, for anyone who enjoys 30 Rock, the colour of Jack Donaghy’s upstairs hallway.
Then you want to wait a smidge longer before taking that first sip: just long enough to take a deep whiff, filling your nostrils with the dark-fruit-and-spice goodness of your grandma’s dark fruit cake.
By now your patience has well and truly run out, and you can finally get some of that Munich Dunkel into your mouth. You feel the wonderful mouthfeel that borders on creamy: both the liquid itself and the softer-than-soft carbonation create this luxurious sensation. By the time you swallow, the beer is no longer feeling creamy; somehow, it’s lightened in the mouth, so now it’s teasing you, taunting you to take another sip so you can experience it all over again.
And through it all, the flavour is emanating from where the glass meets your lips, spilling out with the sweet and sticky character of the outside crust part of bread and butter pudding, where the sugars have caramelised and the pudding has darkened. There’s a touch of chocolate, and you find yourself silently thanking the Bavarian brewers who invented this style of beer.
Yet, if you drink this beer straight from the fridge, you’ll only get about 50 percent of all this. Aren’t you glad you waited?
Mick Wüst
Published March 8, 2024 2024-03-08 00:00:00
