For Matt Tarpey, cofounder and head brewer of Richmond, Virginia’s The Veil Brewing Co., early craft-beer experiences seared persistent impressions in his sense memory. Here, he builds a six-pack of beers that changed the course of his beer (and brewing) interests, as well as beers he still reaches for today.
While the brewery he creatively heads is best known for outlandish—and at times absurd—boundary-pushing experiments in ingredient additions, Matt Tarpey’s own taste in beer is rooted in the classics of Belgium and a few generations of the American craft lexicon. In this six-pack, he walks through his personal beer history and palate development, marking the key turning points where beers made an indelible mark on his tastes and even his career.
Cantillon Gueuze
(Brussels, Belgium)
“Holy crap. Cantillon was the one that took me from ‘I don’t like sour beer’ to ‘I love sour beer.’ It was actually Cantillon Fou’Foune that did it, but that opened the door to Cantillon Gueuze, which is something I could drink daily. Lambic in general showed me that all sour beer isn’t one dimensional lactic or any single character—not all of them are. But Cantillon Gueuze is one beer that I could drink all the time and a beer that was important to my career in general. The path my career took—I started to work, ask questions, and volunteer in places that focus on wild beer because of Cantillon.