Intellectual Ferment of a Different Kind
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Guidebooks and websites describing Bratislava often begin almost apologetically with something like this: “Bratislava is no Vienna, but XYZ.” The XYZ clause contains some sort of justification for why you’d want to visit Bratislava anyway. Don’t let these rather tepid introductions put you off. …
~Another Round of So Many Beers, So Little Time~ Now that travel season is in full swing, chances are you’re looking for some new beers to try. And it just so happens I’ve got you covered with another tranche of twenty-five beers to …
You can’t go wrong with any of Munich’s breweries, be they the “Big 6” or smaller ones like Giesinger or the Forschungsbrauerei. But for me, one brewery stands a few centimeters taller than the rest: Augustiner. What I love all the more about the …
Guiding Lights A few years back I wrote a series that began with a post called Accounting for My Tastes in Beer and ended with a list of twenty-five beers that had caught my attention over the previous year. Last year I did something …
How cool is this? A few weeks back, the good folks at Big Friendly, one of my absolute favourite Oklahoma breweries, emailed me with a pleasant surprise. They’d be releasing a Märzen in early November, the first one they’ve ever brewed. And not just …
My Kind of Beer Around this time last year I penned a series that began with an account of my tastes in beer, followed by an exploration of the kinds of beers I like. The series ended with a list of twenty-five beers that …
Accounting for My Tastes in Beer It’s axiomatic that we drink what we like. But what shapes our tastes? And how do we account for our tastes in beer? In the first part of these reflections, I considered taste on a general level before …
Beer before hops, Or, What Is Gruit? Gruit conjures up images of medieval goblets and mysterious mixtures of herbs and spice. Gruit is also a reminder that the ale Europeans drank right up to the dawn of the early modern era was worlds …
~Or, what do Melville’s white whale, a cathedral in Prague, and Weihenstephan’s Vitus have in common?~ I’ve been drinking Weihenstephan’s lush and expansive Vitus for years now, especially when the weather turns cool. I can’t get enough of that subtly spiced honey and …
Bruges is Brussels’ alter ego. Swans floating languidly on canals, quiet cobblestone lanes, and magnificent Flemish architecture add up to a far cry from the gritty bustle of Brussels. But in things beer, the two cities are equals. Bruges boasts a few breweries and …