“So often we Taste the beer in celebration and in happiness,” says Lovibond, my cousin, who has relocated here from somewhere - or everywhere - in Europe. “But today it is in sadness we toast, in the honor of my dear friend and great man of the beers, Michael Jackson.”

“Michael Jackson?” I ask, confused, images of the skinny one-gloved singer in mind. It doesn’t seem to fit what I know about people in Lovi’s past, and surely I would have heard, along with the rest of America, of some significant sad occasion in the pop music world.

“Michael, he would say, he was ‘not that Michael Jackson.’ He would come, sometimes, to Ocktoberfest wearing the one glove, though, to make people laugh. He taught me many things, and some about beer too.” My cousin has a glint in her eye, if a little moist, when she says this. “Friends called him the Beer Hunter and it was maybe because of that they called me the Beer Whisperer. He hunted the good beers all over the world and then he wrote about them.

“The big boom of your American microbreweries, maybe it would not have happened without Michael, or maybe different. Nobody has written about beers, and the foods good for having with them, like Michael. I knew him from when I was a girl, and he was a young Yorkshireman visiting his Bubbe, his Granny, in Lithuania. He showed to me chickens she had living in the basement, and sneaked for us some mead she made.”

Lovi shares some stories about sampling and judging beer in Belgium, Britain and Bavaria with this man, who grows more fascinating to me with each tale. Her nostalgia touches me, and I feel a sense of loss from never having met this humorous, quiet authority on beers of the western world. She tells me that it was only when a rumor was heard of Mr. Jackson appearing intoxicated at an event that he disclosed the Parkinson’s disease that affected him; he didn’t drink to excess, at least, she confides, in adulthood.

“So tonight for Michael we toast,” says Lovibond. There is a distinctly different feeling about this approach to our experience this afternoon: we have not roamed around the canyons and rivers of northern Arizona, or otherwise readied ourselves to Taste fine beer in Lovi’s usual style. My cousin has picked out only a single brew to toast to her friend and mentor’s memory.

“Michael, he loved the beers of Belgium. One of his books was on just those beers. We drink to my friend with one of the great ones, this Chimay Ale, Peres Trappistes. It is the blue one, the Grande Reserve. Here, we can not get it aged as he liked, three or four years, but to honor him it will be good.”

We take glasses and lawn chairs to the shade of the trees overlooking the creek. Lovi tells me that there is a special chalice designed just for the appreciation of Chimay, but her elegant goblets are a fine substitute. She solemnly pours the strong, bottle-finished ale for both of us.

The color is a hazy rich cocoa-red with an enthusiastic, nearly tan head. More than I’ve ever noticed before, this beer talks. The head crackles pleasantly like the crispy rice cereal I had as a child, and slowly becomes silent as it sinks into a thin layer of foam on top of the brew.

We hold our glasses to the light filtering through the riparian trees, and salute the life and words of “the bard of beer,” who traveled the world in search of extraordinary brews and wrote so engagingly about those experiences. The clink of goblets sends our sentiment out, wherever it will go. Perhaps this toast echoes in the wordless quiet of the Chimay monastery, where the Trappist monks brewed this beer under their vows of silence. Certainly it rings in tune with the orchestrated memorial toast to Michael Jackson in brewpubs and taverns around the world, one month after his August 30th departure from the pleasures of the palate.

And Lovi and I, we return to the earthy experience of appreciating a fine Belgian ale.

Because of its warm color, I anticipate an aroma a little deeper than the lemony notes I inhale from the Chimay. The taste, too, is lemony, but also yeasty with hints of walnut, apricot and fig, and curiously light. Hops flavors are very subtle, with no piney resin taste – more a hint of warm hardwood. Here the yeasts have conversed thoroughly with the malt and hops producing a whiskey-like sharpness. Aging, I sense, could deepen and warm the flavors of this beer and smooth the acid tones. On second sip, I am impressed by the clear simplicity of the taste, as though so many elements have gone into it that it goes beyond complexity into purity. The aftertaste is noticeably dry, astringent on the tongue.

Lovibond has taught me to notice the effects a beer has on me, the high. That experience is the physical, mental and emotional communication of a good brew to the human individual. The Grande Reserve seems to go right to my heart, a warm tingling feeling in the center of my chest. “To gladden the heart” is exactly what the monk-brewers of Chimay, Abbaye de Notre Dame de Scourmont, tell us is the purpose of their products. It is a poignant note in our tribute to a man whose ailing heart ended his life.

It is largely because of Mr. Jackson that we can enjoy this Belgian Strong Ale and the other fine brews we Taste here in Arizona. His pioneering research and writing about the world’s great beers, and his support of the microbrewery movement have been major factors in America’s gradual but remarkable recovery from Prohibition. Almost single-handedly he brought beer to culinary consideration, matching fine brews to fine food. He leaves a legacy - books, columns and a TV series - that is as witty, humorous, sharp and warm as good ale.

Here’s to the Beer Hunter, the Bard of Beer, Michael Jackson.