Headlines from November 2017 on THE BEER BEAT.

Previously, I've explained why this blog has gone on hiatus, adding that my thoughts about beer will be posted alongside my utterances about everything else, over yonder at NA Confidential.

You'll find them there via the helpful all-purpose tag, The Beer Beat.

However, whenever the urge strikes -- I seem to have settled on monthly -- I'll collect a few of these links right here. Following are November's ruminations, with the oldest listed first.

Some of these posts are more topical than others. On occasion, there'll be references to beer in posts using "The Beer Beat" as a label, though not a title. I hope this isn't overly confusing.

Thanks for reading, if belatedly.

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THE BEER BEAT: A pint of bitter, please, because it's The Dubliners at the The Wheeltappers and Shunters Social Club, 1977.

It's the mid-1970s lineup of the Irish folk band The Dubliners, performing on a throwback British television show called The Wheeltappers and Shunters Social Club, depicting a fictional working men's club -- a form of private pub with ale and stronger drink, in addition to indoor recreation (snooker, darts), or a haven for what Americans would refer to as blue collar workers.

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THE BEER BEAT: Martin Luther, gruit, hops, brewer's droop and Industrial Disease.

Whether it's Buhner's or Bostwick's research, I've no idea whether any of this is entirely reputable. I always thought it was the alcohol itself that contributes to erectile dysfunction, but strict veracity isn't my point.

Rather, it's the phrase "brewer's droop" itself, and joyfully recalling how it was used by Dire Straits in the song.

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ON THE AVENUES: When it comes to beer, less might yet be more.

I remember being in Prague in the mid-1990s. We’d wander through downtown neighborhoods hunting beer – sometimes hopping trams, other times the subway, but most often on foot. The objective was to find drafts from as many of the Czech Republic’s breweries as possible, and having identified these beers, to drink them straight down.

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THE BEER BEAT: It's a cornucopia of ephemera, from Quaff On to Lazlo Toth.

"I used to occasionally drink your BUDWEISER Brand, that's how I know the name of your company, and all the fine products you make, light as well as Dark. I have a marketing idea that goes with your name since you have the same name as our new President, George Bush. Since he wants a 'kinder, gentler nation', I thought up the idea for you to sell a new beer, -- BUSH BEER -- A KINDER, GENTLER BEER."

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THE BEER BEAT: Your brain on coursework, or expanding the mind one pint at a time.

At one point in the oral history interview, I paused for breath following a rambling recollection of perhaps ten minutes' duration, all of it spent detailing fake IDs, Mario's Pizza, the family room at Steinert's, 4-for-1 Thursday nights at the Troubadour -- though omitting the famous case of Wiedemann smuggled into (and out of) the fraternity office via a trumpet case during the campus chemical cloud lockdown -- suddenly aware of my inability to remember anything substantive about any of my classes.

Or what happened to the trumpet.

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THE BEER BEAT: Beer news overview, featuring our Bamberg correspondent; Pearl Street Taphouse's anniversary; and a Dauntless beer dinner at La Chasse.

Kim Andersen is an evil man, taunting the terminally New Albany-bound (that's me) with this photo of delicious, freshly-poured Spezial Rauchbier, as snapped from his current vantage point in Bamberg, Germany.

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THE BEER BEAT: I brought my passport for beers at J-town's 3rd Turn Brewery.

As a final indicator of my regrettable sloth in getting around to visiting this two-year-old "new" brewery, 3rd Turn already has expanded to Crestwood, 13 miles away from J-town -- this time outside the Gene Snyder Freeway (i.e., I-265) perimeter of Louisville KY locality demarcation.

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THE BEER BEAT: Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale and a stray recipe for Eastern European Sauerkraut, Bean and Mushroom Soup.

At some point in the late 1990s and early 2000s, I'd pre-order as many kegs of Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale as North Vernon Beverage could acquire via hook or crook, and we'd pour them at the Public House for weeks on end.

Probably a keg each year was deposited directly into my own stomach. It's a wonder we ever made any money. Holiday sentimentality is utterly lacking in my interior world, and yet this annual arrival of Celebration Ale truly came to define the Thanksgiving and Christmas seasons.

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THE BEER BEAT: One excellent afternoon spent pub crawling with beer on the periphery of the wine walk.

It's entirely possible to begin a Saturday afternoon at Floyd County Brewing Company with a couple of locally brewed beers and a burger, then stroll over to Big Four Burgers + Beer for another local beer, before walking eastbound to Hull & High Water and having ... one more "craft" beer, prior to an end-of-pub-crawl night(afternoon)cap -- well, two -- at Gospel Bird, with the added bonus of a restorative dose of Fernet Angelico.

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Homebrewers, have you used yarrow?

A friend who is a homebrewer mentioned yarrow in beer. I hadn't thought about it for years, not since Paul Nevitt earned the title "Father of Herbal Brewing."

Welcome to gruitale.com

Dedicated to the revival of Gruit Ale, the beer which stimulates the mind, creates euphoria and enhances sexual drive.

In a not so distant past, beer was brewed with an extended and varied array of botanical ingredients. Herbs, roots and spices where used by our European ancestors in order to give their beers distinct tastes, flavours and properties. These botanicals where sometimes referred to as Gruit, hence Gruit Ale. Today however, beer is almost exclusively brewed with only one, single herb addition: Hops.

If any of you decide to brew with yarrow, please do me a favor and save a bottle for me.

Yarrow (Achillea Millefolium)

BREWING DETAILS

Parts used: The whole plant, preferably dried leaves and flowers.

Aroma & taste: A rather bitter, astringent taste with a mild aroma. Its taste is not overwhelming and is quite delicious in brewing, especially if the aromatics are brought into the ale.

Brewing method: Yarrow brings both a complementary bittering action and preservative action through its antimicrobial, antibacterial, and antiseptic properties. The tannins and astringent action being stronger in the leaves, these should be boiled as with hops. On the other hand, the flowering head of the plant contains delicate aromatics that would be lost in the boil, hence it is recommended to steep the flowers in the hot wort as it cools, or simply add them to the fermentation vessel in the same manner as dry hopping.

Brewer's droop, industrial disease, gruit and hops.

Evidently Stephen Harrod Buhner is the Garrett Oliver of his field. One of his books is Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers: The Secrets of Ancient Fermentation (1998), which I dimly recall being recommended to me by one of the (shall we say) more left-leaning of homebrewing club members at the time.

But the reason why brewer's droop has arisen in this context goes back to my friend Karen pointing me to Buhner's article about gruit vs. hops.

The Fall of Gruit and the Rise of Brewer's Droop, by Stephen Harrod Buhner (2003)

... To understand why hops replaced gruit it is important keep in mind the properties of gruit ale: it is highly intoxicating and aphrodisiacal when consumed in sufficient quantity. Gruit ale stimulates the mind, creates euphoria and enhances sexual drive. Hopped ale is quite different. Contemporary scientific research has conclusively demonstrated that hops contains large quantities of estrogenic and soporific compounds. In fact hops has been used for many thousands of years in traditional medical practice as a natural estrogen replacement therapy and to help insomniacs sleep. The high level of plant estrogens in hops makes hopped beer an extremely good drink for women in menopause but also makes it a very bad drink for men. Consumption by men of large levels of estrogenic compounds can lead to erection problems later in life. In fact, there is a well-known condition in England called Brewer's Droop which is regularly contracted by bartenders and brewers after years of exposure to hopped beers and ales.

I've no idea whether any of this is reputable, and I always thought it was the alcohol itself that contributes to erectile dysfunction, but veracity isn't my point.

Where had I heard the phrase "brewer's droop"?

It took a long while for it to surface, but finally I traced it back to Dire Straits and the song "Industrial Disease," released in 1982.

Doctor Parkinson declared 'I'm not surprised to see you here
You've got smokers cough from smoking, brewer's droop from drinking beer
I don't know how you came to get the Betty Davis knees
But worst of all young man you've got Industrial Disease'

Brewer's Droop apparently has a double meaning, as it was the name of a band, too. Why was the name Parkinson used? I'm not sure, but Cecil Parkinson was one of Maggie's favorites at the time of the album's incubation.

Downfall of Margaret Thatcher's number one guy Cecil Parkinson; HE WAS the golden boy of the Conservative Party in the early Eighties, by Neil Clark (Express)

A favourite of prime minister Margaret Thatcher, Cecil Parkinson had as Tory chairman masterminded the landslide election victory over Labour in 1983. Handsome, charming and highly ambitious, he was the man who - as newly released private papers suggest - Mrs Thatcher wanted to anoint as her successor.

Unfortunately, Parkinson's mistress turned up pregnant, and his star abruptly fell. No drooper, he; probably a wine drinker, and not Horace Rumpole's Chateau de Thames Embankment, either.