Page 14 of Grumpy Ex-Military Brewmaster’s Secret

7

JENNA

The lull between lunch and the after-work crowd is when Gunny runs his tests, and today he corners me by the walk-in with a small burlap pouch and the solemn energy of a man administering something he considers important.

"Smell it. Don't look, just smell it."

I close my eyes and breathe in over the open pouch, green and grassy with something citrus underneath that I've only started noticing in the last week, now that I know to look for it.

"Cascade."

"Centennial. Close, though. Two weeks ago you couldn't tell a hop from a pinecone. Now you're getting the family right even when you miss the cousin." He cinches the pouch shut like I've disappointed him only mildly. "That's basically a sommelier."

"I don't think that's how sommeliers work."

"It's exactly how they work. They just charge more to be wrong about it."

I've been keeping a tally in my head since the second week, a private scorecard nobody asked for, and by my count I'm right about four times out of ten now. It isn't much. It's more than nothing, and nothing was where I started, back when every hop Rafe handed me smelled like the inside of a Christmas tree lot and I nodded along like I understood the difference.

Rafe comes out of the office with a small wooden flight in his hands, four glasses lined up like soldiers, each one holding an inch of something different, amber to gold to a cloudy orange that looks almost alive under the taproom lights. He sets it down in front of me with the precision of a man defusing something.

"Time for the real test."

"I thought the hop pouches were the real test."

"That was training. This is deployment." He taps the first glass. "Pale ale. Tell me what you taste. Not what you think I want to hear. What you actually taste."

I lift the glass, swirl it the way I've watched him do a hundred times without ever admitting I was paying attention, and take a sip. It's bready, a little sweet, with a bitterness at the end that curls along the back of my tongue and fades fast.

"Toast. Like buttered toast, with a little bit of an argument at the end."

Something shifts behind his eyes, surprised in a way he's trying not to show. "That's not wrong."

"I know. I'm getting good at this."

"Don't get ahead of yourself." He slides the second glass toward me. "Amber."

This one's rounder, with caramel up front and a warmth that sits low in my chest by the time I swallow. "Caramel. Maybe a little bit like a candy bar that went to college and got serious about itself."

"That's oddly specific."

"I contain multitudes."

He almost smiles, the small private one that still catches me off guard every time it happens, like watching a locked door ease open half an inch. He nudges the third glass forward, the pale gold one, and I can smell it before it even reaches my mouth, sharp and green and a little bit dangerous.

"IPA. Deep breath first. This one's got a lot going on."

I take the deep breath. I take the sip. My whole face reacts before my brain catches up, an involuntary full-body flinch at the wall of bitterness that hits somewhere behind my molars and just sits there, refusing to leave.

"Oh my god."

"Too much?"

"It tastes like a pinecone got mad at you."

Rafe is mid-sip of his own glass when the words land, and it goes catastrophically wrong for him. He chokes, actually chokes, beer spraying half across the bar top while he doubles over coughing, one hand slamming flat against the wood like he's trying to keep himself upright through sheer force of will. I freeze with my own glass still raised, halfway between horrified and delighted, watching a man who once summed up an entire military career in four flat sentences completely come undone over a hop metaphor.

"Are you dying? Do I need to do something official right now?"