| "Here and There" by Clay Moore and Jay Silvers We know it's cold out but that's what February is all about. The good is that all bars are fully heated. So head out to your local pub and have a few pints!. Cheers! -------------- A few years ago a man drove into the Guinness brewery in Dublin just before rush hour. He hitched his truck to a trailer filled with 365 barrels of Guinness and Budweiser (about 50% of each), and ninety kegs of Carlsberg. Total value of the heist was over a quarter of a million dollars. To date only one man has been charged with just possession of the stolen kegs while the rest of the beer has never been found! "Not everyone who drinks is a poet. Some of us drink because we are not poets." - Dudley Moore In 1892 William Painter invented what is now called a "crown cap" for carbonated beverages. The secret to his invention was the thin disc of cork and special paper backing inside the top of the cap. When crimped on the bottle the cork creates a seal and also keeps the beverage away from the metal which in turn holds the carbonation and liquid nicely inside the bottle. Even before the Middle Ages vats of cooled wort were exposed to the open air allowing in wild, uncultivated yeasts to start fermentation. That technique, known as spontaneous fermentation, is used today only by relatively small number of skilled brewers. Modern brewers not only use open air to get the wild yeasts but also old oak barrels in which they age their beer. "Man, being reasonable, must get drunk; the best of life is but intoxication." - Lord Byron Hops are rated based on how much alpha and beta acids they contain. The alpha acids are used for bittering and beta acids for aroma. This number can vary from strain to To figure out a beer's IBUs brewers use a complex formula that takes into account the amount of hops used, the amount of alpha acids in those hops, and the amount of time the hops are in the wort. Feel free to quote this old German proverb: "Up to age forty, eating is beneficial; after forty, drinking" Craft beer is appropriate in just about any area from the golf course to the board room. Next time you're out with some champagne or martini drinking types order a barrel aged ale into a fluted glass and you'll see what we mean. Beer toasts from around the world: Moroccann: "Saha wa'afiab"; Rumanian: "Noroc", Ukrainian:"Budmo", Philippine: "Mabuhay", Turkish: "Serefe" "You'll go out for a night of drinking, and you don't know where you'll wake up the next day. It's like the throw of the dice." Jim Morrisown If you collect beer coasters (beer mats to me) you are rightfully called a tegestologist. If you collect old beer bottles and cans you're offically a labeorphilist. The largest recorded collection of beer bottles belongs to Ron Werner (USA) who had 11,644 different bottles including 7,128 that had not been opened. "When I heated my home with oil, I used an average of 800 gallons a year. I have found that I can keep comfortably warm for an entire winter with slightly over half that quantity of beer." Dave Barry In the 17th and 18th centuries midwives in Europe gave delivering mothers "groaning ale" which was fermented for seven or eight months and tapped when contractions began. After birth it wasn't uncommon for the child to be bathed in the remaining ale since it was often more sanitary than readily available water. An easy way to calculate the alcohol in a batch of homebrew is by using the specific gravity scale. Using a hydrometer, a brewer measures how any dissolved solids there are in the unfermented beer. The reading is the original gravity (OG). The brewer then takes another hydrometer reading after fermentation. The difference in the readings is the amount of alcohol created. Homer Simpson: "Beer is my way of life and I intend to keep it!" Try this cold weather warmer - pour two bottles of amber ale into a saucepan and heat until boiling. In a separate bowl, mix 4 egg yolks with tow tablespoons of sugar. Add the yolk mixture to the beer while constantly stirring. Serve hot, sprinkled with nutmeg or cinnamon. Also works well with strong ales. Before the use of hops Greeks used grapes in brewing for their covering of natural yeast. The Celts added heather, the Scythians used hep, and the northern Europeans added juniper. Thank goodness for hops! One of our favorite lines from the TV show Cheers: Sam: "Whaddya know there, Norm?" Norm: "How to sit. How to drink. Want to quiz me?" See you next month! |
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More From Moore - nothing but beer here.....
| Clay Moore dedicates this page to his and Beer Nexus's favorite band, Lunch Hour- Six Pack "beer for the ear" |
It's time for more ......TALES OF ALES
