We sing a springSing joy spring.A rare and most mysterious spring,This most occult thingIs buried deep in the soul.Its story never has been told.The joy spring, the fountain of pleasure,Is deep inside you whether you're diggin' it or not.Once you're aware of this spring,You'll know that it's the greatestTreasure you've got.And furthermore:The joy spring, the bounteous treasure,Cannot be bartered away and never can be sold.Nothing can take it from you.It's yours and yours alone to have and to hold.And something more:It never is lost to fire or theft.It's always around. When trouble is gone,The pleasure is left.I've always foundIt's burglar-proof same as the treasureMan lays up in heaven, worth aPrice no one can measure.That says a lot.So joy spring,this fountain of pleasure,That's deep inside you, let me inform you in all truth,Ponce de Leon sought thisWhen he was searchin'For the fountain of youth.I say in truth, heSought a magical thing,For he was searchin'For the joy spring.
.png "VeggieDag Thursday")
The Session: Beer Blogging Friday is a monthly event for the beer blogging community, begun in March of 2007 by Stan Hieronymus of Appellation Beer and Jay Brooks of the Brookston Beer Bulletin.
On the first Friday of every month, a pre-determined beer blogger hosts The Session, choosing a specific, beer-related topic, inviting all bloggers to write on it, and posting a roundup of all the responses received.
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For The Session: Beer Blogging Friday #134, on 6 April 2018, I am that pre-determined host. And I've determined that my topic is ...
On a warm summer evening, I love to watch the light filter through the leaves of the dogwood and viburnum, with a beer in hand salad on the table, listening to the conversation of friends. "Why is it," I wonder, "that food and beer taste so much better together when we're in the beer garden.— Dinner in the Beer Garden, by Lucy Saunders.
— Via Pete Brown.A few years ago, everyone from BeerAdvocate to All About Beer declared craft dead. Which was the ABI [Anheuser-Busch InBev] plan all along – first break your terminology, then break and infiltrate your culture, then subsume you. All with your approval. I have to hand it to them – they’ve done a great job. I’ve heard British craft brewers talking about “Fuller’s isn’t craft” and “Sierra Nevada isn’t craft”. These people are out of their minds. American craft beer culture is BASED on what we went and saw in the UK, Germany and Belgium. Everyone on earth copied everything from Fuller’s ESB to Duvel, and then have the gall to say that these breweries aren’t craft breweries?
If you want to know what craft beer is, this is your lucky day. I’m going to tell you. Craft beer is beer made according to an individual vision. If almost no one in the company knows who the head brewer is, it’s not a craft brewery. You can be one million barrels and a craft brewery and you can be 5,000 barrels and have sold out on your first day. I’ve seen both. So yeah, actually it did matter, at least in the United States. And it could matter again, under the “craft” name or another. Nomenclature matters. And when you give that up, both your power and your culture go out the window. Ask any French chef.
— Via The Pub Curmudgeon.Possibly because craft beer continues to position itself as fighting some kind of moral crusade against corporate interests, the whole issue of affordability touches a raw nerve. But wouldn’t it be better all round if the “craft beer movement” could accept that it was just another somewhat pricey niche middle-class enthusiasm and stop pretending it's trying to change the world?
— Via Beer Pulse.Aluminum used to make beer cans is not a national security threat.Aluminum is critical to the well-being of America’s beer industry as more than half of the beer produced annually is packed in aluminum cans or aluminum bottles.
— Via Jeff Alworth (and Stan Hieronymus), at Beervana.As recently as 2005, hop growers still planted little more than 100 acres of Centennial. In 2017, they harvested more than 5,200 acres.
— Via Mike Snider, at USA Today.'hasn't seen any intentional exclusion of minorities.' Rather, with craft beer, 'there’s not much advertising budget. It's a word of mouth thing, and if you look at the people that were originally involved in craft beer, it was white men. And we tend to associate with people that look like us.' That's changing. 'As more black, Hispanic and Asian people get involved in craft beer, they are going to bring more of their friends in,' Blodger said.”
— Via Will Hawkes, at The Guardian.Stung by a reputation as gentrification’s outriders, craft beer breweries [in London] are trying to bring in more women, working-class people, and people with disabilities to both drink beers – and make them.
— Via Washington Post.“If I had one wish,” Frank Sinatra was said to have remarked, “it would be for Vic Damone’s tonsils. Vic has the best pipes in the business.”
— Via John I. Haas.Instead of the piney, resiny, grapefruit part of the hops spectrum, New England IPA leans toward orange, fruit, peach, mango, guava…it’s almost juicy. There will be a lower RDF [real degree of fermentation] which gives you that drop of sweetness that brings the juiciness out. So, in some ways, it’s a kinder, gentler IPA.
— Via Washington City Paper.My wife and I worked. We don’t feel like cooking or doing dishes. It’s Tuesday night. Can we go out and each get a drink and food and not spend $200?
— Via Adrian Tierney-Jones, at Called to the Bar.A barista-influenced cream-flow foam, 2-cm high, undulating in its surface, collapsing slowly, like the Roman Empire, a province at a time.
What else do I see, a dark, dark, dark blackness, a dark night of the soul, a night in which the old moon is dead and the new is waiting to be birthed, a darkness of invisible hands and beasties imagined and conjoined, the lacing of the foam as it subsides coating the glass like a congenial virus, a puzzle of foam, a query, a cantankerous head of foam refusing to vanish.
So what does it taste like? Burnt toast with a thin layer of butter and marmalade that suggests acridity, fruitiness and sweetness and then within nanoseconds there is a dryness that crackles and cackles like a coven of witches rehearsing for Macbeth; there’s a chewiness, an appeal for mastication, as well as a creaminess suggestive of softness and childhood.
And what does it taste like? A cover disturbed, aromatics of mocha, chocolate, toast and fruit (cheap marmalade if caught from the other end of the breakfast table).
Someone, and I cannot recall who, suggested that this beer could be closer to porter’s original outlook on life. I’m not sure, I will leave that to the beer historians and their soaked volumes of statistics from a time that went long ago. Whatever, it’s a damn good beer, unflinching in its approach to acridity, and dense in its character on the palate."
#VeggieDag Thursday. DISCLAIMER: The attached photo features a #beer-with-food pairing performed in a controlled environment by an expert curator. Do NOT attempt to re-create or re-enact this activity at home. https://t.co/9zwIHoxr8U pic.twitter.com/0rzLJM6Noq
— YFGF (@Cizauskas) February 22, 2018
Since 1997, Cask Marque has been ensuring that the cask ale you drink in pubs in the U.K. has been in perfect condition. Qualified ass...
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