Fact or myth? With Thanksgiving right around the corner, I take a look at the story of the Mayflower and the Pilgrims’ beer stash.
I love paging through old newspapers, a task that’s enhanced with Google’s newspaper archive search engine. While researching this week’s column, I dug up this cool-looking Bud ad . (Click on the ad for a hi-res pdf.)
Joe Sixpack reg’lar brsrkrbob reminds me, upon reading my piece a couple of weeks ago on John Stuart Mill’s choice of beer, that Monty Python’s Flying Circus may have written the greatest tribute to Beer & Philosophy. For those who’ve forgotten the lyrics:
Immanuel Kant was a real pissant
    who was very rarely stable.
Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy beggar
    who could think you under the table.
David Hume could out consume
    Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel,
And Wittgenstein was a beery swine
    who was just as sloshed as Schlegel.
There’s nothing Nietzsche couldn’t teach ya
   ’bout the raisin’ of the wrist.
Socrates himself was permanently pissed.
John Stuart Mill, of his own free will,
   after half a pint of shandy was particularly ill.
Plato, they say, could stick it away,
    ‘alf a crate of whiskey every day!
Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle,
    and Hobbes was fond of his Dram.
And Rene Descartes was a drunken fart:
    “I drink, therefore I am.”
Yes, Socrates himself is particularly missed;
A lovely little thinker, but a bugger when he’s pissed.
This week’s column is posted, and it urges you to turn to John Stuart Mill to answer one of the great beer-drinking questions of the ages.
And speaking of drinking, I’m headed to Germany tomorrow for a week of research and I’m not sure if they’ve got the Internets over there. So this blog might be silent for a few days. Hang in there.
My look at Sam Adams and its support for homebrewing is posted. And don’t forget to check out New Stuff, including a pair of over the top bottles that’ll set you back a day’s pay.
Philly-area brewers had their best ever showing at the Great American Beer Festival last weekend. Several well-known standards, including Victory Prima Pils, Troegs Troegenator, Sly Fox Pikeland Pils & Stoudt’s Weizen were among the winners. Even more notable: The region ruled lagers. Read the full column here.
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