Macbeth and McEwan's Scotch Ale — Much Abrew About Nothing

The Beer

I’ll drink a good stout (especially a breakfast one) year-round, but McEwan’s Scotch Ale tastes even better the colder it gets. ‘Tis the season.

Scottish ales can be tricky to decipher, and that’s coming from someone who worked for a Scottish brewery. Jeff Alworth, of the Beervana podcast, recently posted an excellent Craft Beer & Brewing “style school” on Strong Scottish ales, which brought back the cramming I did to distinguish 60/ from 70/ from 80/shilling Scotch ales (these are notably not strong) before I sat for my Cicerone exam. It also taught me that those Edinburgh ales share a strikingly similar water source with their odd cousin, the gypsum-heavy 18th-century Burton upon Trent ales.

Unlike those Burton ales, though, Scotch ales are malt-forward, since Scotland is above the upper hop latitude. Which is what makes them so delicious in cold weather.

The McEwan’s Scotch Ale is a classic example of the style. At 8.0%, it clocks in right in the middle of the acceptable ABV range for this style. That ABV is just enough to warm your chest, as bourbon does on a cozy winter night. The McEwan’s is lip-smackingly sweet, with a complex background of very light smokiness. In color, it’s lighter than the taste might lead you to expect: not pitch black, it has ruby glimmers around its edges, hinting at the clarity that comes into even crisper focus when its head quickly dissipates.

What could pair better with a classic Scotch wee heavy than “the Scottish play,” known to the less superstitious as Shakespeare’s Macbeth?

The Book (well, The Play)

This Fall, I taught Macbeth for the fifth time. It never gets old. One year, I switched to Twelfth Night to give my students a break from a tragedy heavy syllabus (Frankenstein, Antigone, 1984, etc.), but I missed Macbeth. I couldn’t give it up because it’s so rich and complex - both traits that make it a good match for a Scottish strong ale like McEwan’s.

So many places to go with this one. Here’s Sir Ian McKellen doing a stunning explication of the “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow” speech to the Royal Shakespeare Company in the 1970s, after playing Macbeth opposite of Dame Judy Dench’s Lady Macbeth. (It’s 12 minutes and well worth it.)

Here’s Kate Fleetwood knocking Lady Macbeth’s “Unsex me here” monologue out of the park in Rupert Goold’s production (in which Patrick Stewart plays an unhinged, completely loony Macbeth). Chilling!

It’s all been done so well and covered so thoroughly. So let’s go to territory a little less trodden? This time through the play, I thought a lot about the character of Malcolm, the rightful heir to the Scottish throne following Macbeth’s murder of Malcolm’s father, King Duncan.

In Act IV, Scene 3, the loyal Macduff visits the English court (where Malcolm has fled from Scotland) to entreat Malcolm to return to mount an attack on the fiendish Macbeth. Malcolm, rightfully mistrustful, tests Macduff by averring that he would make a loathsome king. He says that there aren’t enough women in all of Scotland to sate his licentiousness, and that his greed runs so deep that it would drive him to “forge / quarrels unjust against the good and loyal” (97-8).

Macduff rationalizes these protestations away. He only finally comes down on Malcolm after Malcolm asserts:

But I have none [of] [t]he king-becoming graces,
As justice, verity, temp’rance, stableness,
Bounty, perseverance, mercy, lowliness,
Devotion, patience, courage, fortitude,
I have no relish of them but abound
In the division of each several crime,
Acting it many ways. (IV.iii.107-113).

Scott Handy as Malcolm. Killer performance.

I wish there were a clip online of Scott Handy delivering these lines in the Patrick Stewart / Kate Fleetwood / Rupert Goold production - he absolutely nails it. As he lists each admirable adjective, you see him fall in love with them. He knows, at least, every trait that makes a good king — and he values and adores them. Between each “king-becoming grace” that he lists, he pauses more… and more… and more. By the end of the speech, Macduff is convinced that Malcolm is an animal (which was Malcolm’s goal all along - he doesn’t want the loyalty of anyone who would accept an evil king). But viewers of Handy’s delivery are not duped. This is when we discover the depth of Malcolm’s goodness and start rooting for him in earnest.

As we enter this new year, 2020, an election year, I’ll keep this list in mind. Should we be so lucky to find ourselves with a leader who values “justice, verity, temp’rance, stableness, / bounty, perseverance, mercy, lowliness, / devotion, patience, courage, [and] fortitude.”

And if we don’t, bring on the warming, high-ABV wee heavies.