A while ago when I was actively trying to increase my collection of beer quotations, the ones that randomly appear in the upper right-hand corner every time you reload the page, I kept finding ones that were part of larger poems. Having something of an obsession with words — and poetry for that matter — I made a page of beer poetry. When I come across another one I find interesting, I add it. There are now 22 of them. Some are quite old, some are by famous poets, and a few are just plain goofy. Take the one below, for example, a spoof of Joyce Kilmer’s famous Trees poem, credited to a Joyce Killjoy by a homebrew club in Boston, The Boston Wort Processors. They have their own small page of five beer poems, including this Trees spoof.
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I think that I shall never hear A poem as lovely as a beer The brew that Joe’s bar has on tap With golden base and snowy cap The foamy stuff I drink all day Until my memory melts away Poems are made by fools I fear But only the Worts can make a beer Notice it’s 4 lines short from the original and references the club in the final line. |
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It’s good on its own, but enter that word obsession of mine, and I couldn’t let well enough alone. I added the four missing lines and made several additional modifications. I think I improved it, but what do you think?
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The original, by Joyce Kilmer I THINK that I shall never see A poem lovely as a tree. A tree whose hungry mouth is prest Against the sweet earth’s flowing breast; A tree that looks at God all day, And lifts her leafy arms to pray; A tree that may in summer wear A nest of robins in her hair; Upon whose bosom snow has lain; Who intimately lives with rain. Poems are made by fools like me, But only God can make a tree. |
My version, by me I THINK that I shall never hear A poem lovely as a beer. A brew that’s best straight from a tap With golden hue and snowy cap; The liquid bread I drink all day, Until my memory melts away; A beer that’s made with summer malt Too little hops its only fault; Upon whose brow the yeast has lain; In water clear as falling rain. Poems are made by fools I fear, But only wort can make a beer. |
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This doesn’t have anything to do with beer, but someone sent me a link (thanks, Cindy) correctly believing I’d enjoy it. In fact, it’s surreal, weird and perversely hilarious. Food Fight is simply the history of warfare since World War II told through food fights, with national foods representing each country, or as the Food Fight website put is.
Food Fight is an abridged history of war, from World War II to present day, told through the foods of the countries in conflict. Watch as traditional comestibles slug it out for world domination in this chronologically re-enacted smorgasbord of aggression.
They’ve also thoughtfully provided a cheat sheet listing all of the foods in the film and which nation they’re associated with. And since it’s war, expect a lot of ketchup. Enjoy.
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While searching for an image of a beer delivery truck yesterday, I noticed a photo of this truck kept popping up in the search results, but always identified as a beer truck, or words to that effect. However, take a close look at the bottle.
Cool as the image is, it sure didn’t look like beer inside the bottle to me. So I did a little research to find out what Bionade is. It turns out that it’s organic soda made in Germany. But interestingly, it does have a brewing pedigree. Here’s the story, from Wikipedia:
Bionade was created in 1995 by Dieter Leipold. Leipold was the master brewer at Privatbrauerei Peter in Ostheim, a town in northern Bavaria with just 4,000 inhabitants, and a friend of the family that owned the brewery. He was worried about the future of the company, which was about to go bankrupt, as import beers like Corona and Miller Lite were taking over the German market. He got the idea of creating a nonalcoholic drink produced with the same principles and under the same purity laws used to brew beer:[3] not using corn syrup or other artificial additives and making it by fermentation. The drink would consist only of the natural ingredients malt, water, sugar, and fruit essences. For eight years, Leipold experimented spending €1.5 million of the brewery owner Peter Kowalsky’s money. His lab was a bathroom. He isolated a strain of bacteria capable of converting the sugar that normally becomes alcohol into nonalcoholic gluconic acid, which he used to ferment the new drink.
Bionade’s premise was that it tasted like soft drinks, but contained little sugar and no stabilizing or flavor-enhancing additives. It thus combines the taste of soft drinks with the healthiness of juice. It also contains both calcium and magnesium, in such quantities that they do not cancel each other out and is low in sodium and free of phosphorus
To this day, Leipold refuses divulge the exact chemical process he used to do this. the gluconic acid also has the advantage that it allows him to reduce the amount of sugar, because it strengths the sugar’s taste. After fermentation, the natural flavors, elderberry, litchi, orange-ginger, and herb are added along with carbonation.
Apparently sales Bionade started out slowly but with the recent popularity of healthy food and drinks, things have picked up considerably. Since 2006, it’s been sold in the U.S., though I can’t say I recall ever seeing it. But then I don’t drink soda so I wouldn’t have been looking for it, either. It might be worth giving it a try, since it was created by a brewer and he’s managed to keep the secret of how it’s made. There’s also an article about it from Time Magazine that was published last January.
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I stumbled on this list of “10 Unexpected Uses for Beer” on the website Gomestic, which as far as I can tell looks like it’s about home and garden issues and related things. It was written by 131242313424, who apparently didn’t get the memo about being a free man and not a number (bonus points if you get that reference). We often hear lots of different things that can be done with beer besides its intended purpose from soup to nuts.
Despite its name, the ten on Gomestic’s list are hardly what I’d call “unexpected” unless you’re one of those people A.E. Housman was talking about when he alluded to “fellows whom it hurts to think.” Apparently it was hard for 131242313424 to stay focused on his theme of the uses being novel because number ten is “drink it,” which has to be the most expected use for beer one could imagine. But usual curmudgeonly grumbles aside, it got me thinking. There are plenty of other uses for beer, expected and unexpected, other than just drinking it. Some make sense and seem obvious, like using it to marinate meat with. Others seem less so, like using it to help dry patches on your lawn grow green again. But let’s start a list, shall we? What other uses for beer have you come across that you could recommend? To get you started, here are the ten from Gomestic and Men’s Health had a list of 33 back in March.
I’ll begin compiling my list on a page I’ll call Beer’s Other Uses.
I was away this weekend at the Northern California Homebrewers Festival and — gasp — had no internet access for two whole days. As a result I missed the Wall Street Journal article about ethics among food bloggers that ran in Saturday’s paper entitled The Price of a Four-Star Rating. Luckily, more than a few people sent me a link to it (thanks, you know who you are) given my recent musings and ramblings on The Ethical Blogging Debate. There are certainly a few parallels to our own issues and it makes for interesting reading, assuming you enjoyed the initial forays into the subject here and at Stonch’s Beer Blog and A Good Beer Blog. There’s also a related WSJ article that lists ten popular restaurant review sites and their general ethical policies.
If you’re a regular Bulletin reader you might think I drink nothing except beer, but that’s not at all true. I enjoy many different alcoholic beverages such as wine, especially heavy reds and fortified wines like Late Bottled Vintage Port, along with sake, hard cider, gin and other spirits. But I’m especially fond of whisky and, naturally, single malt scotch though I don’t generally write about it because my knowledge of it is restricted to that of happy amateur. I’ve skimmed Michael Jackson’s book Whisky, Jim Murray’s and a few others but generally I leave it to the experts. Happily, I know a few of them. One is John Hansell who’s been in the business for going on twenty-five years now and for many of them has been publishing Malt Advocate magazine, undoubtedly the best American whisky periodical. He also recently started a blog on the world of whisky called What Does John Know? My good friends Stephen Beaumont and Lew Bryson also write regularly for Malt Advocate.
Malt Advocate has been putting on tasting and educational events called WhiskyFests in New York and Chicago for a number of years, and this year they’re finally coming to San Francisco. WhiskyFest is exactly like it sounds, a festival where you can sample whisky and other libations, but it also includes an educational component with a number of speakers. And not only that, it will be the biggest whisky event in the country. If you love whisky, join me at WhiskyFest. It should be a blast.
It will take place in three weeks, on October 23 from 6:30-10:00 pm at the Hyatt Regency at 5 Embarcadero Plaza in San Francisco. Tickets are $105 for regular admission or $145 for VIP admission, which gets you in an hour earlier. Tickets include all sampling, speakers and a gourmet buffet. You can get advance tickets online at Malt Advocate or by phone at 800.610.MALT.
From the website:
What will be poured?
More than 250 of the world’s finest and rarest whiskies will be available for sampling, featuring premium single malt and blended Scotch whiskies, the best bourbons and Tennessee whiskeys, top of the line Irish whiskeys, Japanese whisky and the best from Canada. Visit Malt Advocate for an up-to-the-minute list of what will be available for sampling.
Who will be speaking?
The focus is on education, and many well-known distillery managers and distillery representatives will be on hand at the pouring booths to explain how the whiskies are made. Thirteen of the world’s leading distillery managers and master blenders will be conducting seminars throughout the evening including:
- Stephen Beal, Master of Whisky, Classic Malts
- Parker Beam, Master Distiller, Heaven Hill
- Simon Brooking, Global Brand Ambassador, The Dalmore & Laphroaig
- John Campbell, Distillery Manager, Laphroaig
- Ronnie Cox, Director, The Glenrothes
- John Hall, Whisky Maker, Kittling Ridge
- Lincoln Henderson, Whisky Expert, Suntory
- Ian Millar, Master Distiller, Glenfiddich
- Chris Morris, Master Distiller, Woodford Reserve
- Fred Noe, Jim Beam’s Great Grandson
- Richard Paterson, Master Distiller, The Dalmore
- John Scharffenberger, President, ScharffenBerger Chocolate
- Joy Spence, Master Blender, Appleton Rum
10.23
Hyatt Regency Hotel, 5 Embarcadero, San Francisco, California
800.610.MALT [ website ] [ tickets online ]
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