Yeah, but the Germans learned how to refrigerate them....and as far as I know, most North Americans prefer cold beer, even ale.
I take it any which way.
Used to drink tons of steam beer, but no one's got it on tap here and it's way too expensive in the bottle.
Yes guys, we Brits are responsible for any number of both good and bad cultural products. We have thru our Indian cousins invented 2nd generation curries and by own hands we have brewed thousands of different ales.
Love us or hate us, we Brits have enhanced or ruined millions of lives around the world. We've dealt in gold bullion and millstones, and we've given the world it's true international language.
I thought the Normans started that global language thingy...
Two notes here . . .
The American language became the international lingua france in the 1950's--decry how they would the "Ugly American," them boys and girls weren't late for their appointments with the investment capital crowd or the factory site survey team; this was reinforced by a strong move on the part of the West Germans after 1955, when they used the "economic miracle" (hmm, half-a-million G.I.'s, plus almost another half-a-million Brits, Dutch and Belgians, and no army of their own to pay for . . . miracle?) as a springboard to export their products, their technology and their technicians around the world--Krupp set the bar high by going out to sell entire streel prouction plants, on the location of your choice, price on a sliding scale dependant upon how quickly you wanted it built, and how good your government's credit was--and they were speaking the American language, because they understood that this was an advantage to both German and Yankee in the international development gold rush.
The second point is about the refrigeration of beer, ale, porter, etc. In 1875, an economic depression hit Europe without warning (no economic indicator statistics, no securities watchdog agencies, no computerized currency exchanges--they really didn't see it coming), and it lasted for almost 20 years. America suffered a little from the loss of raw materials exports to Europe, but the human imports just kept right on comin' from the various "Old Countries," and that gave many European businesses pause to consider. European investors began coming to the U.S. to find investment opportunities (thereby indirectly increasing U.S. imports of European goods, which contributed to a very slow recovery in Europe).
The biggest impact was on the beer business in the United States. That's right, i said beer. Southeast Missouri has so many caves, the end of civilization as we know would not cause homelessness there. The interiors of these caves remain in the 40-50 degrees Farenheit range all year long. Big British and German brewing conglomerates duked it out in St. Louis for the lucrative and constantly growing beer market in the U.S. The St. Louis area and the wesern portion of southern Illinois are home to huge German communities, and both area were filled with small brewers, often selling beer and ale made to recipes already known to be popular to the German communities there. Most of these got run out of business, all but Griesedich (that's right, greasy dick -- had the broadcast concession at the Cardinals ballpark locked up so tight, they kept it even after Budwieser bought the park) and Anheuser's. Anheuser had established the Bavarian brewery before the civil war. Another guy shows up just at the beginning of the war--Adolphus Busch. In 1861, Franz Sigel lead German militia, who were not a part of the pro-Confederate Missouri State Guard, into St. Louis to secure the Federal Arsenal. The southern-sympathizing members of St. Louis were, for about a decade, out of power, and the Germans moved right in. Adolphus Busch was not behind hand, he married Lilly Anheuser. Seems the old man wasn't to thrilled, but he caved in and hired the boy in 1864. In 1869, Adolphus proved he'd learned, and please his father-in-law by introducing an instantly popular new brand--Budweiser. Budevice (Budwies in German) is in Bohemia (Czech Republick today), and the Budwieser produced there was considered to be the best in Europe--it was the "official" beer or more Royal and Ducal families in Europe than any other. They called it "the Beer of Kings." Knowing his clientele, Adolphus initially produced a high quality lager with a Bohemian flavor, and called his "the King of Beers." (Don't know what happened in the interim, they probably used Prohibition as the means to cheapen the recipe, and produce the swill which is now bottled under that name.) He convinced the now aged Anheuser that they should dip as deeply as possible into their credit resources and buy out as many small brewers as possible. The Brits and the Germans got in, but they got nothing like the market share they had expected.
And one further result--with the death of so many small breweries which had shipped to German communities all over the United States, smart brewers in the countrie's largest German-speaking area were quick to take advantge of their positioning, and grab up market share in those communities--and that meant the dramatic transformation of the brewing industry in Milwaukee.
ok, bullshit's over, as you were . . .
Man, if Setanta had been my high school history teacher, I would have paid way more attention....it seems that Bud is also King of Beers among the youngsters in Ireland as well. When the wife and I honeymooned there, we were floored by this fact....what with all the good Guinness and Murphys about...
Oh man, Murphy's Stout is the crème de la crème of porters . . . that's just disgustin' . . . i really didn't want to know that . . .
Budweiser is brewed in the UK. People drink it cos it's fashionable, easy to drink and has very little taste. Porter and ale you need to learn too drink and appreciate.
oldandknew wrote:Budweiser is brewed in the UK. People drink it cos it's fashionable, easy to drink and has very little taste. Porter and ale you need to learn too drink and appreciate.
When i was very small, my grandfather still occassionally took strong drink. My sister and i (we're one year apart) would each take hold of the bail of an old-fashioned tapped-beer pail, and go to Casey's to get his porter. When we got home, he'd let us sip the head off the contents of the tin before he filled the pitcher. The first time i tasted American lager, although i kept my mouth shut because i didn't want to appear uncool, my immediate thougth was: "Who pissed in my bottle?"
Hmmm. Me own dear da' would give me nips of his bumbling home brew when I was a wee lad (or words to that effect), so that when I had American mass-market pils-piss I thought it was wonderful...
Set, And we're all sure you know how piss tastes.
c.i.
I've a friend who is part owner in a vinyard, and takes his portion of the proceeds in kind. He then makes about 120-160 gallons of wine each year, for family and friends. It's not bad, but i'm no judge--one red wine glass full will make me badly ill for days. But he and i got some dark molasses one year, and some dark, hopped-barly malt, and made our own ale. I was shooting for something similar to Smithwick's, the once famous red beer of Kilkenny (i've heard they declined or went out of busines or summat). I may not have achieved that, but we got a very palatable ale, with one proviso. It ran 9 to 13 % alcohol per batch, and even the blending process of all the 5 gallon containers only reduced the alcohol content to between 10 and 11 %. Two quarts of that, and you can forget about going out for the evening.
It's that molasses what done it. You start adding sugars beyond what you have in the malts and you start getting into strong ale territory. Made a very, very light brew one summer with pale malt, tossed in some ginger to give it a spicy bite, and spike it with a bunch of plain old sugar. What I got wasn't beer, but it sure did change some of those summer afternoons.
Well, we did the whole "natural" brewing schtick . . . we "kreuzened" it (what the English and Irish call "charging" the brew) by taking three gallons of the brew, equally from all containers (they had been brewed separately, and the enthusiasm of the brewers yeast combined with the not terribly but still significant errors in our measuring made for differences in alcohol content--when you do 100 gallons in five gallon containers, quality control assumes a whole new meaning), and we then added five pounds each of the original mollasses (sp? . . . for dog's sake, someone tell me how to spell the word, and put me out of your misery . . . ) and the barley malt into ten gallons of water, and then added the first brewing beer. Bringing that to a boil, we then set it aside to cool until it was still hot, but not sufficiently to kill the active yeast in each of the jeriboms (can't spell that one, either). The product was divided equally, and returned to the five-gallons whatsits, and then kept in a walk-in at 45 degrees for four months. This obviated the need to add carbonation, and it meant that it continued to brew and age in the pint and quart bottles after it was finally poured off. (You know, when you can see the yeast settle in the bottom of your unpasteurized beer?) Two years down the road, you could get a contact buzz by opening a bottle and sitting next to it.
Damn, you kids make big batches. Mmmmmmm, and a sunny afternoon waiting for me out there....
Set, You know how to tell a tall ale.
c.i.
I do not understand Setanta.
No human brain can physically contain that many facts. :wink:
I am beginning to hypothesize that "he" is actually a multinational conglomerate of researchers and specialists, hired for the purpose of conducting subtle educational experiments upon the residents of A2K.
But I will need more data. Researching...
we are not . . .
: p [/b][/color]
Ah... Denial is always the first indication of what is true...
