Off Flavor Sources in Beer Land!

Siiigh. I was tired. It, as usual, had been a long day at the brewery. It was dry season in Can Gio, just before Tet, but it had been raining so it was extra hot and humid. And we were busy! Business was really taking off and we were making lots of beer. With the holiday coming up, we were working at max capacity.

We pretty much stuck to a routine. The boys all shared one room that had bunk beds but sometimes boys slept on mats on the floor. The day began by waking up to the roosters. Then, the boys would take turns in the bathroom. Wash face. Brush teeth. Breakfast was instant coffee and instant noodles with vegetables and sometimes egg.

Then, brewery work would begin for everyone. Except for one guy, who was in charge of the kitchen and the animals. There was live stock on the farm from time to time. I'm not sure why. There were several mean geese that hung around. And then of course there were the dogs. Nine dogs to be exact. (Mike loved dogs. He took in every stray dog he could.)

Brewery work meant mashing in on brew days or cleaning and packaging on other days. I implemented a production calendar in half English/half Vietnamese. This seemed to keep everyone on the same page. Around noon (no one really kept the time) we would break for lunch. Lunch was usually soup, rice and stir fried meat and vegetables.

Then, back to work for a bit; clean some more, finish the brew. In the afternoons it got super hot so this was lazy, hammock time. After the work of the day was completed, the boys took turns taking showers before dinner. There was a smaller bathroom to the side that I used. It had the luxury of a hot water heater. All of the hot water heaters in Vietnam are tank-less. That was nice. The boys were very respectful of my privacy but from time to time, they liked to shower using the nuoc lahn.

Dinner was more soup, rice again, better meat, usually fish, and beers. Most of the time, I brought my own food down from Saigon and made my own dinner. They used a lot of sugar in their cooking and no cheese. Dietarily speaking, that's a deal breaker for me. I'm more of breakfast for dinner kind of woman and I ate a lot of eggs and bacon on the farm.

This is where this day got different. Mike, the nanny and his son were all in Saigon, so it was just me and the boys in the countryside. On this particular day, the air seemed more humid and hotter than usual. The brew took longer than usual. I spent more time on my computer than usual. I was more tired than usual. By the time I got around to dinner, the boys were happily eating and drinking in the breezeway. I started to get out pans to make an omelet, when I turned around and looked at what the boys had made. It didn't look too terrible. I decided to just eat that.

There was, as always, rice. And then there were the stir fried vegetables. I grabbed a carrot out of the industrial sized wok and tried it. The sauce didn't seem too sweet. But this was weird, the meat, which looked like beef, was by itself in a bowl to the side on the counter. Usually they just mixed it in with the vegetables and sauce but for some reason, this night, they didn't. It looked a little gray, like they had boiled it maybe?

In Vietnam, they are mostly Buddhist and strict Buddhists are vegetarian. While I did see the boys pray regularly, they also still ate meat regularly. But they ate mostly fish. To see them eat beef or pork was rare. Maybe someone didn't like red meat and that's why it was on the side?

I got a bowl. Grabbed some rice, added vegetables and then spooned some of the meat on top. I sat down at the table in the kitchen and began to eat. I started to chew. Man, was this meat chewy. Had they boiled it? It was super tough. They probably just didn't know how to cook it.

And then the flavor hit me. It was musky and unpleasant. Like, acrid and bitter. Was this beef spoiled? Is that why it was on the side by itself? Was it old beef? At this point I spit the meat out into my hand and looked at it. Was this meat even beef?

Even though the only speaking Vietnamese I knew was how to brew beer, I was going to get to the bottom of this. I grabbed the bowl off the counter in the kitchen and took it into the breezeway to where Tha and the other boys were sitting.

I pointed to the bowl and said “Bo?” (which means beef). He looked confused. Ok, I thought, maybe this mystery meat was pork. This meat had to be pork then. “Heo?” (which means pork) I asked him. This time he looked at me, shook his head no and smiled. He started laughing and said “cho!”

Well, fuck. I knew what cho meant. Cho means dog.

I had always head the rumors of folks eating dog meat in Asia. Its not something I had ever seen on the menu in any mainstream location. But having been there for a while, I'd seen pictures of cartoon dogs next to cows, fish and chickens on menus once off the beaten path. I was worried this day would come. The day where I ate dog in Vietnam. I just didn't think that it would take place in my brewery home and that the dog meat would be in my mouth unknowingly.

Mike would have never been okay with the boys preparing and eating dog meat at the brewery. As I mentioned earlier, he loved dogs. That's why I'll mention it again. He rescued every dog that every dumb backpacker adopted and then abandoned before leaving the country. That's why there were so many dogs on the farm. But he was not there this night. And Vin and the nanny were not there either.

Then also, this was just before Tet, or the Chinese new year. It's the busiest time of the year. This, I believe, was a pre-Tet-thank-you-for-working-hard treat! But, it's also apparently an acquired taste. Which is why it was served on the side. Even in Vietnam, not everyone likes it. And having tried it. I can understand why.