Intellectual Ferment of a Different Kind
Imbibing Culture
A Tectonic Shift At first blush, the Munich Baker-Brewer Dispute might look like a curious footnote in the annals of medieval history.[1] But it’s much more than that. Flaring up sporadically between 1481 and 1517, this inter-guild dispute is not only a colourful …
Beers I Like A few weeks back I wrote about the cultural dynamics that influence our taste, while also giving an account of what has shaped my own tastes in beer. I followed up with an exploration of the kinds of beers I …
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 …
In between evenings of losing myself in my annual “big book” (Don Quixote this year), I’ve been reading Terry Theise’s What Makes Wine Worth Drinking: In Praise of the Sublime. Theise makes a compelling case that people who write about wine or who sell …
~Travel has picked up again, and beer gardens in Bavaria are in full swing. If you’re traveling to Germany in the near future, chances are you’ll end up in a beer garden at some point. Here are some tips on how to make the …
Of Lemons and Lemonade It was almost two years ago to the day that I wrote an upbeat post about what 2020 had in store. I was starting work on a book project, and had a number of other writing ideas on the go. …
For those who just want to get things over with and sign up for my Beerscapes Newsletter, here’s a link that’ll take you to the subscription form. For those who want to know what’s in store, read on! It’s been awhile since I …
Updated March 27, 2020. The big news is that the Oklahoma ABLE Commission is now allowing home delivery. One major drawback: “Online payments prior to delivery remain restricted at this time.” You can read the entire document here. If there ever were a time …
Never in recent memory has the phrase “support your local brewery” meant more than it does now. I published an article in the local newspaper a week ago about the inaugural Oklahoma Craft Beer Awards. It began like this: “Oklahoma may have been a craft …
Writing about the history and culture of beer in Central Europe invariably involves acts of translation — not only translation of the German-language sources that I read, but also translation in a broad sense. The Russian linguist Roman Jakobson identified three modes of translation, including …