alcohol production technology—most notably oak barrel aging—was perfected hundreds of years ago and nothing has come along to improve on it. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
Robert Picard is something of a guardian of traditions. He refuses to get a replicator—the magical food machine on the Enterprise—because cooking is a dying art. Jean-Luc insists such art is not lost with technology; there’s just an added layer of convenience. “Life is already too convenient,” Robert retorts.
Robert, if he were alive in the twenty-first century, would have made a good craft brewer. The life-is-too-convenient mantra is the raison d’etre of craft brewers, or any craft beverage maker, really. Sure, massive industrial production and the modern supply chain made beer more convenient in the twentieth century, but the beverage lost its soul. Craft brewers restored the soul by championing quality and flavor over convenience. Hopefully that value system persists well into the twenty-fourth century, as it does with Robert. Hopefully it won’t die with him when he and his son burn to death (off-screen) years later in Star Trek: Generations.
Where No Malt Has Gone Before
For a TV series and movie franchise (and merchandising bonanza) as venerable as Star Trek, it’s kind of amazing that it took nearly five decades for there to be an officially licensed beer line. A Canadian company—in Calgary, Alberta, to be precise—that goes by the name Federation of Beer, negotiated the license with CBS Television to bring these brews into our century. I remember running into a bunch of people dressed as Klingons at the 2014 Nightclub & Bar Show in Vegas when the company was promoting the partnership. Federation of Beer doesn’t actually brew the beers; nor would they be considered a contract brewer in the traditional sense.
They’ve teamed with a number of US- and Canada-based breweries to produce an ongoing series of limited-edition Star Trek beers. But Federation of Brewing acts more as a silent partner in the enterprise (sorry, had to), as the brewers maintain their own branding on the releases. Clifton Park, New York’s Shmaltz Brewing Co. (best known for its He’Brew line) has marketed such beers as Golden Anniversary Ale: The Trouble with Tribbles, commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the Star Trek franchise in 2016; Symbiosis, a hoppy wheat celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of Star Trek: The Next Generation the following year; Klingon Imperial Porter and Deep Space Nine Profit Motive, a generously hopped golden ale inspired by Quark’s Bar, released in 2018 to coincide with Deep Space Nine’s twenty-fifth anniversary.
Halifax, Nova Scotia-based Garrison Brewing has produced Klingon Warnog Roggen Dunkel, a dark rye, and Red Shirt Ale, an amber brew that’s a nod to the ill-fated Enterprise crewmembers who wear their crimson attire like a target on their backs.
Balok’s Best of Both Worlds: Non-Traditional Tranya
As mentioned earlier, there’s been a bit of controversy about the contents of the prop tranya back in 1966—Clint Howard swears it was grapefruit juice while William Shatner insists that it was apricot juice. Since tranya was a symbol of diplomacy and interplanetary understanding, my version has an equal amount of both. Since it’s sort of tiki-ish, I wanted it to be rum-based—particularly rhum agricole. I also wanted to include something distilled from Iowa grain, as a nod to everyone’s favorite Iowan, a man by the name of James Tiberius Kirk. That’s where the Iowa unaged corn or rye whiskey (a.k.a. moonshine, but it’s legal) comes in.
•2 ounces white rhum agricole (Rhum Clément and Rhum Barbancourt are accessible options)
•1 ounce Iowa white dog/moonshine/unaged corn whiskey (Country Gal Moonshine from Iowa Distilling Co., Two Jay’s Iowa Corn Whiskey from Broadbent Distillery, River Baron Artisan Spirit from Mississippi River Distilling Co., and Iowa Legendary White Rye are some good examples; if you can’t find anything from Iowa, any unaged whiskey will do)
•2 ounces grapefruit juice
•2 ounces apricot juice
•2 dashes orange bitters
Pour all ingredients in a shaker full of ice. Stir well. Strain and serve up in a stemless Cosmo glass because it most closely resembles the glassware in which Balok served tranya to his guests. (If you don’t have this, a rocks glass is fine.) If you really want to go full Balok, scale it up and serve it out of a punch bowl.
Vulcan-O
The good folks at Beeline Creative, the makers of Geeki Tikis cocktail mugs, teamed up with noted tropical drinks and tiki bar expert, personality, and consultant Blair Reynolds on this concoction—a twist on the classic Leilani Volcano. Reynolds also markets his own line of drinks syrups called B.G. Reynolds, one of which is a component of this drink. Reynolds created it specifically for Geeki Tikis’ Spock mug, but any tiki vessel or tall glass will suffice.
•1 ounce blue curaçao
•½ ounce coconut rum
•2 ounces guava nectar
•1 ounce pineapple juice
•¾ ounces fresh lime juice
•½ ounce B.G. Reynolds Lush Grenadine (or equivalent)
•Mint sprig (garnish)
•Lime wheel (garnish)
Shake the first five ingredients with crushed ice and pour into the mug. Top with crushed ice, float the grenadine, and garnish with a mint sprig and lime wheel.
The Vulcan-O (in Geeki Tikis Spock mug). Photo credit: Perfect Drink®
(Special thanks to Beeline Creative)
Chapter 3
The Doctor, and all of his (and now her) incarnations, is a thousands of years old Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey who has the ability to regenerate into a new form, taking on an entirely new face, body and—as glass-TARDIS-ceiling smasher Jodie Whittaker has once and for all proven—gender. But what’s most appealing to me is not that the Doctor is a time-traveling alien, but that at heart he is incredibly British. (That doesn’t just mean English. The character has been played by no fewer than three Scotsmen thus far). The television show, Doctor Who, made its debut in 1963, and since then has been a show by Brits for Brits, which meant the hero had to be somewhat relatable for the target audience. That means, over the course of its nearly six-decade history—we won’t talk about the wasteland years when the show didn’t air—the longest-running sci-fi series in history lacked the puritanical tendencies of its counterparts across the pond when it came to social drinking.
Of course, when you’re dealing with a character who has had thirteen different personalities—fourteen when you count John Hurt’s War Doctor—you’re likely to get a plethora of favorite tipples and approaches to drinking.
The obvious example is the third Doctor (Jon Pertwee). The producers at the time seemed intent on harnessing some of the 007 mojo that had swept Britain (and the world) over the prior decade. Pertwee’s tenure officially began in January 1970 and Doctor number three was a man of action with a penchant for gadgets. Pertwee’s Doctor spent most of his first three seasons stuck on Earth, which made it easier to sell the more Bond-ian elements, down to both iconic British
