When the “junk heap” is steadily deteriorating

Wastewater analysis suggests increasing recreational drug use among New Zealanders. (Although there are some problems with the data.) But this isn't an issue confined to our small islands.

This is of course when recreational drugs are illegal. So drug consumers are willing to pay more to gangs for a riskier product to get their chosen high.

Two questions always come up when one advocates for drug legalisation. 

The first is that legal drugs will make drug consumption more prevalent and more sordid. This goes against both evidence and theory: Milton Friedman for one arguing that the Iron Law of Prohibition actively encourages the escalation of more virulent pharmaceuticals, to make any drug problem worse.

But the other question is this: 

Why do many people want to abuse drugs and alcohol? Why is this such a persistent problem in our culture — and would it still be a problem in a more rational culture?

Good question. And Stewart Margolis takes a good stab at answering it, beginning by drawing a distinction between drug use and drug abuse. Because clearly there are many well-functioning adults happily consuming recreational drugs including opium, alcohol and caffeine -- and if we trace the history, have been doing so since the first fermented berries were found several thousand years ago.  Indeed,

Archaeologists have found evidence of opium use in Europe by 5,700 BC, and cannabis seeds have been found at archaeological digs in Asia from 8,100 BC.

So it seems at least some adults have discovered a rational way to use mind-altering substances. A decent martini before dinner for example being one of the best ways to shake off the cares of the day.

There may be some that are simply too dangerous to ever be used, but that would be a scientific question rather than a moral one. 

But some adults won't, can't or don't want to be rational about it. If we discount the obvious (that some people are prone to addiction; that there might be genetic factors increasing susceptibility to substance abuse) we're left with the nagging idea that there might be more to it than that. 

Margolis makes the case that the problem is fundamentally philosophical:

Of course, a worldwide problem like this undoubtedly has multi-factorial causes, but I think at root drug abuse is an attempt to escape reality. 

Materially, the world has never been richer, so what are so many people eager to escape from? Despite our affluence, I think we are experiencing a philosophical crisis. 

Ayn Rand pointed out that humans need a philosophy in order to live. In “Philosophy: Who Needs It,” she wrote, 

“Your only choice is whether you define your philosophy by a conscious, rational, disciplined process of thought and scrupulously logical deliberation — or let your subconscious accumulate a junk heap of unwarranted conclusions, false generalisations, undefined contradictions, undigested slogans, unidentified wishes, doubts and fears, thrown together by chance, but integrated by your subconscious into a kind of mongrel philosophy and fused into a single, solid weight: self-doubt.”

 I think Rand was spot on, and the increase we are seeing in drug abuse is the result of the self-doubt brought on by people who have assembled a “junk heap” of often contradictory ideas. This has always been a huge problem, and has always resulted in a tremendous amount of suffering. So why does it seem to be worse now?

I think it’s because the quality of the ideas in the “junk heap” has been steadily deteriorating. 

When ... [common sense and] enlightenment ideas were widespread in the culture, average, unthinking people could randomly pick up a pretty workable set of ideas, which would allow them to prosper and attain a measure of happiness. They were not as happy and prosperous as they could have been, had they done the work of choosing and integrating the right ideas, but they could do all right.

But today, many of the ideas floating around in the cultural are anti-enlightenment. If you unthinkingly accept a collection of these ideas, you are unlikely to prosper or find happiness.

It's perhaps also the case that governments' increasing  economic mismanagement has been making it increasingly difficult for younger folk to get ahead economically -- they can sense that even if they can't see that explicitly -- so that there's part of of them ready to give up on the "old" idea that hard work will pay off.

You [might] notice that you’re not doing as well as your parents did, either economically, romantically, or socially. As a result, you will be filled with doubt, with dread, with a sense that something is wrong with the world — but you don’t know what or how to fix it. I believe this is the feeling that people desperately want to escape — and so they turn to drugs that numb or relieve these feelings, at least temporarily.

While I’m sure there are benefits to be found in a variety of drug and alcohol treatment programmes, I don’t think we’re likely to make much progress on substance abuse until people deal with the underlying philosophical crisis driving the abuse. 

In the meantime, though, making drugs legal would provide a huge benefit, both to those struggling with abuse issues, and more importantly, to those of us who don’t use drugs or who are able to use them responsibly.

... and it's Bloomsday!

Marilyn catches up on Molly's breathless soliloquy in Joyce's Ulysses

 ... and of course, it's Bloomsday! June 16, the day Leopold Bloom famously and fictionally wandered across Dublin to rediscover life and love.

All the events of which are (somehow) modelled on the ten-year trip back from Troy taken in legend by Odysseus, yet somehow all taking place in Dublin the day and evening of 16th June 1904, as seen mostly through the eyes and interior monologue of Joyce’s greatest creation, Leopold Bloom.

Hence, Bloomsday.

"What people really want to do on Bloomsday is dress up, read aloud and drink lots of Guinness," says the manager of Dublin's James Joyce Centre. Nothing wrong with that. Just like Bloom himself, who enters a Dublin pub "blue mouldy for the want of that pint."

We know how he felt entering yonder establishment 'cos his interior monologue is most of the script. Bloom is a fellow whose interior monologue is easy to enjoy.

There are Bloomsday celebrations every year from Montreal to Buenos Aires, even "Bloomsday breakfasts" featuring Bloom's favourite, "grilled mutton kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine.” Nice if you like that sort of thing.

James Joyce once said his novel Ulysses was meant to provide a picture of Dublin so complete that if the city suddenly disappeared, it could be reconstructed through the book. But Joyce said many things, only some of them seriously.

Ninety years after its first appearance (and seventy after its last ban), Joyce’s novel still divides opinion. Even among folk I admire. Ayn Rand enthusiast Harry Binswanger, for example, dismisses it as “trash.” "The book," he says, "is practically impossible to read — the reason for its snob appeal."

Joyce's style [alternates] between gibbering wordplay ("mellow yellow smellow") and ponderous, woozy abstractions ("tentative velation"), the style conforming to Plato's dichotomy between perceptual concretes and ineffable abstractions.

And yet it seems to me he's missing something -- not least the joy. (Maybe he needs to spend more time drinking Guinness in the company of Irishmen? Not a bad policy anyway, I find.)

Embracing the joy and wordplay (and helping to explain much of it) another of my favourite novelists, Anthony Burgess, reckons Joyce wrote the book “not just to rival classical achievement, but to contain it.” Not to

 dismiss romanticism but to extend it. Not to give meat to cloistered pedants and “bloody owls,” but to entertain, to enhance life, to give joy… 

    Ulysses is a great comic novel.. it is part of a total, cosmic laughter that takes in drains, love, politics, and the deathless gods, and feels guilty about nothing. Joyce…accepts the world as it is and relishes man’s creations (why, otherwise, glorify and art or science in every chapter except the last?). 

It is ultimately an affirmative journey around the traps (the book ends with a "yes"-- a whole exhilarating series of them). Burgess maintains Joyce offers us a challenge, and as Ulysses’s Molly Bloom asserts at the end of the novel, part of being fully aware, fully alive, is saying “yes” to that challenge:

When we have read Joyce and absorbed even one iota of his substance, neither literature nor life can ever be quite the same again. We shall be finding an embarrassing joy in the commonplace, seeing the most defiled city as a figure of heaven, and assuming, against all odds, a hardly supportable optimism.

He's right you know.

It’s not a quick read. But nor should you want to hurry. (Think of it, if you like, as an Infinite Jest but for adults.) One reader recounts the challenge:

I first started reading Ulysses in the late 1990s, as an undergraduate at University College Dublin. It seemed so vast to me, like something I'd never be able to crack. There it was with its sepia and green cover, with an image depicting the River Liffey. It was almost as if its size and physicality were mocking my love for the instant gratification provided by frivolous computer games (and my comically short attention span).
    But I dived in. I read it with expert annotations, read it with friends, read it alone, gave up, started again, laughed, cried, and then gave up once more. It became like a friend, though. One I felt I partially understood, and yet would probably never fully know. To this day, I have not read it through over a continuous period. Instead, I have digested it in parts over about five years.

Take the advice and Dive In! You won't regret it. Ulysses is nine-hundred pages of brawling, sprawling, fabulous, crapulous, life-giving reflection and rambunctiousness. Like that reader above, I've only twice read it straight through, but mostly in parts at a time, enjoying their relation to the whole. And like Atlas Shrugged, I look forward to enjoying reading, re-reading and thinking about it for the rest of my life. (I don't see that I need to choose between them.)

Enjoy!

[Pics from Robert Berry's graphic novel Ulysses Seen]

'Hazy' is the lager of craft beers

Expensive lager.

It needs to be said.

"Hazy" is the lager of craft beers.

Now, hear me out.

As my friends will tell you, I've been an annoyingly enthusiastic advocate for craft beers since I was fortunately introduced in my comments section to their existence by the gentlemen Stu McKinlay and the late lamented Neil Miller. Just as they promised, I was introduced to "a flavour explosion," to beer tasting of real hops, to the delightful bitterness of the hop balanced against the malt of the mash ...

Sorry, I just had to dash to the fridge.

So ... we did get what craft beer promised, and for two decades we've been rolling in it: we've had beer with dry hops, with wet hops, hopped beer with single hops, with blended hops ... and when it all comes together ...

Flavour!

Taste! 

Hops!

And now, after two decades of exploring the outer boundaries of flavour in a pint glass, we've been fobbed off instead with another bride—with a bland sickly sweetish concoction called a Hazy.

It's there left behind in your fridge after a party. It's there taking over every craft-beer bar, where beer with real flavour now struggles to be found among the ciders, alcoholic lemonades, and a welter of assorted Hazys. And it's all the 'craft beer' you'll ever get offered in those other excuses for a bar.

It's what happens to pioneering in every field: The tree breaks clear of the forest, and the fungus creeps out to reclaim it.

Hazy is a fungus.

An abomination.

It's the beer lager drinkers drink now there's less lager around to be found. "I'll have a Hazy," your friend says, who'd really prefer something ever closer to the sugar fields. But this is what he gets.

Why are they so popular: " Because, says a trendsetter's website, they are "less bitter and offer lovely sweetness that’s liked by everyone." Their "fruity, juicy profile is approachable even to non-beer drinkers." And they all taste the bloody same. So non-beer drinkers can drink them to feel included, even if what they really want is an ice cream. And real beer drinkers are elbowed out to somewhere less convivial.

But you're not paying lager prices to drink this dross. You're paying real money to drink slops.

You're paying good money to drink expensive lager, while good beer with real flavour is discarded out the back of the beer menu.

We need to rebel!

Bring back the flavour.

Bring back the hops!

Beer. Real beer.

Appalling news.

 

KIWIBLOG: 'Alcohol consumption plummeting'

• Since 1986, alcohol available for consumption per capita has dropped by a massive 29%
• Since 2008, it has dropped 18%
• In the last year it has dropped 12%

The Perfect Martini

 

Pic from Spruce Eats

I JUST REALISED THAT it's been a while since I posted my recipe for a perfect martini (as opposed to a Perfect Martini, a specific drink which has two kinds of vermouth, and both bitters and a sweetener!)

First thing to say (and I'll say it again later) is that a martini does not have adjectives – except words such as “cold,” “dry, or “perfect.”

It most especially does not have adjectives like “apple” or “espresso.” If you must order that last ill-named sugary drink, I implore you to call it by its proper name, a vodka espresso, instead of the name intended to  steal the lustre of this real drink, the martini.[1]

Second thing to say then, is that we all have our own favourite, and only one of us is right. (Best tip when getting lost in the bush is to first get out your martini-making equipment and begin stirring, at which point someone will inevitably emerge from the bush to say "That's not how you make a martini!" And you can then ask then the way out.)

The main thing, however, is that the martini is not something to drink alone. The perfect martini starts therefore with ordering up the perfect friends with whom to take the bark off. Shouldn’t be too hard, since who wouldn’t want to share a perfect martini with friends. (And if they don’t, they shouldn’t be your friends.)

The martini itself is three drinks in one. Get each part right, and you have what HL Mencken once described as “the only American invention as perfect as the sonnet.” In other words: the perfect drink.

The first third of this perfection is about that cold breathe of alcohol on your throat and nose as you take your first sip. So start your drink the day before by putting your glasses, mixing jug and your gin in the freezer.

You can use vodka for that strong alcohol hit, but the vodka martini is like an empty soul in the middle third of your drink just when you want to taste your base ingredient. (This, by the way, is why Ian Fleming chose it for his wounded hero.) So use at least a Bombay Sapphire gin for flavour, or a Sipsmiths to be extra dry, to make sure your middle third tastes right. And do make sure you freezer it, 'cos you care (if you're visiting cocktail bars that don't, then they don't), and because you want to keep the drink cool all the way through.

The vermouth and the garnish dominate your drink’s final third. So don’t stint on either. And do make sure you refrigerate both --first off so they're cold; but mostly because vermouth, a fortified wine, starts to go vinegary once it's opened.

And always (always!) use extra dry vermouth. On that much everyone agrees. And most can agree on the brands -- Dolin being good; Noilly Prat being better than good; Martini brand being barely good enough. But the proportions of gin to vermouth are as controversial as a roll of sandpaper in an Australian cricket bag. My own view however is that this is very much up to your own taste, and your own taste will change over an evening, over a year, over a lifetime.

You need more than just a shot of light through the vermouth bottle, but 25:1 can be a fine drink on the right extra-extra-dry occasion, even if the hint of vermouth is barely detectable. This drink (what Hemingway called a “Montgomery” because of the general’s alleged liking for that kind of numerical superiority before mounting an attack) goes perfectly with either cocktail onions or a lemon peel garnish, with that lemon peel being expressed over the top of the drink before serving.

But unless you like what’s called an “upside-down” martini, you wouldn’t want to go over 2:1 – a drink that goes perfectly with three unpitted olives on a toothpick, with just the tiniest dash of brine in the glass before serving. This was how FDR is said to have served his martinis.

My own preference at present is around 6 to 1. But that’s for a variation called a Vesper, perhaps the most perfect martini yet invented (the creation of the aforementioned Mr Fleming) while not actually being a martini at all. So if I were tied up and held down and had a very cold very dry martini forced upon me, today’s preference would be for around 5:1, with cocktail onions. In bartender terms, since you’re ordering, this drink is called a Gibson.

So for each person, if you’re making my Gibson, start by putting into your chilled jug a handful of very coarse ice and a generous half-shot of vermouth for each drinker, swirl it to coat the ice, and let it sit to chill while you prepare your garnish, and your glasses.

Now, each decent martini is around three-and-a-half shots. Make sure your glass will hold this and no more. (Too big a glass looks like meanness when you’re pouring, and like gaucheness when you’re drinking.) When all is ready, add to the jug around three shots of your chosen gin. And then stir gently for about twenty-five seconds, when cold martini-odour begins to effuse. 

Did I say stir? I did, sir. You may shake, if you want a cloudy and more watery drink, but stirring is preferred. Yes, Ian Fleming does have James Bond order a vodka martini "shaken not stirred," but this is intended to tell us about his character, not about an ideal drink. (Contrast its icy, frozen, tasteless heart with the Vesper he drinks earlier in the first book, before his first love betrays him.) 

So shake if you must, and shake well, but not extensively. (No more than 15 seconds.) And to a waltz rhythm. The aim is to make the drink ice cold, not a drink made mostly with ice chips.

And when the stirring or shaking is done, pour and enjoy.

THE MARTINI IS ALL ABOUT the ritual, so make you get your time right (before dinner, at the Cocktail Hour), and your artefacts correct. Garnish: fresh and clean. Toothpicks: simple and unobtrusive.  The jug: crystal, not plastic. The glasses: not buckets, but just large enough to hold the drink; and simple and elegant – if they look like a good match for an umbrella, they’re not a good home for your martini. 

Ice is important – maybe more than you think. This is because ice becomes one of the drink’s four main ingredients. Chipped ice melts especially fast in a shaker, diluting the drink too much. Coarse ice is better, either stirred or shaken, and it very much must be clean, and without assailing fridge odours!

And so is music. A martini is best served with music that creates elegance and supports conversation -- something without vocals (which competes with your talking), with lots of melody (so you can keep track while you're talking) and plenty of space between the notes within which to converse. Something like the Benny Goodman Small Groups is ideal, with Benny out front on clarinet, and Lionel Hampton, Teddy Wilson and Charlie Christian supplying the endless melodic invention in support.

And finally, two words of warning. The first is this: a reminder that the only adjective that should be put in front of the martini are words like “perfect,” “cold,” “exceptional” and “damned fine.” Adjectives before it like “espresso,” “apple,” “pear” or “bikini” however do not denote a martini, but someone’s excuse to douse you in flavoured sugar. Avoid such persons.

The second word of warning about your martini is this: Respect it. Above all, treat it gently. You are drinking a glass without a mixer, while still aiming to be one yourself. The almost-great Dorothy Parker observed 

"I like a martini, 

Two at the very most, 

After three I’m under the table, 

After four I’m under my host.”

Dorothy is often a good guide.

* * * * 

[1] Yes, there are plenty of variations on the martini. John Doxat suggests around twenty. Frank Moorhouse in his Martini memoir offers nearly forty variants (from the Kangaroo, i.e., made with vodka instead of gin, to the Black Thorn Faux Martini, which “only sounds like a martini”) along with an additional  five “crazy drinks” (from the Flirtini to the Times Square Tootsie). But don’t confuse the crazier drinks for the real thing.

Beer O'Clock: "I was blue mouldy for the want of that pint ..."

 

Just in time for your Friday pint is this line from James Joyce's Ulysses's 'Cyclops' section, said to take place in Barney Kiernan's pub.

The two men [Hynes and the Nameless narrator] enter Barney Kiernan’s, where the Citizen is passing time with a mangy dog called Garryowen, waiting on someone to arrive with money enough to stand rounds. The Citizen and the Nameless One are spongers - people without money who’ll drink up whatever someone else will buy for him. Hynes offers to buy a round, and the men place their orders.
    In an interruption, the Citizen is described in fantastic terms: this middle-aged former shot-putter becomes a “broadshouldered deepchested stronglimbed frankeyed redhaired freelyfreckled shaggybearded widemouthed largenosed longheaded deepvoiced barekneed brawnyhanded hairylegged ruddyfaced sinewyarmed hero” with “rocklike mountainous knees” and whose “heart thundered rumblingly causing the ground, the summit of the lofty tower and the still loftier walls of the cave to vibrate and tremble” (12.151-67). The technique listed for this episode in the schema is “gigantism,” as this passage exemplifies.
    Terry, the publican, brings the three pints, and Joe Hynes puts down a £1 coin to the amazement of the Nameless One. The Citizen then reads the marriage announcements and obituaries from the newspaper. As the narrator takes his first sip, he offers a truly wonderful string of phrases to describe the satisfaction of his thirst: “Ah! Ow! Don’t be talking! I was blue mouldy for the want of that pint. Declare to God I could hear it hit the pit of my stomach with a click” (12.242-43).

Alright, get that pint downya. Make it click.

[Cartoon from the Ulysses "Seen" graphic novel project. Bernard Kiernan's pub from the Ulysses Guide website.]

Beer

 

Cartoon by JesusAndMo.Net

“…this country’s beverage of moderation…”

 

HT Mad Magazine Fan Club

Spring Songs

 

No longer winter, not quite summer, still a bit unsettled, but drinks on the deck are getting more comfortable ... so what do you play to best evoke the essence of spring. Here are some of the best spring-related songs going around for your relaxed spring listening.

Nina Simone - It Might as Well be Spring

Benny Goodman - Swingtime in the Rockies 

Flaming Lips  - Can't Stop the Spring

Go Betweens - Spring Rain 

Gary Shearston - The Springtime it Brings on the Shearing 

Don McGlashan + David Guerin - Rain  

Gustav Mahler - The Drunkard in Spring

Stravinsky - Rites of Spring

Ed Kuepper - Electrical Storm

John Butler Trio - Spring to Come

Hello Sailor - Fugitive for Love 

Jimmy Cliff  - I Can See Clearly Now

 Vivaldi - 'Spring'  

Donovan - Lullaby of Spring

Roger Eno + Brian Eno - Spring Frost  

Brian Eno - On Some Faraway Beach 

Belle + Sebastian - Lazy Line Painter Jane

Lou Reed - Crazy Feeling 

Antenna - Come on Spring

Magnet - Maypole  

Richard Wagner - "Winter Storms Have Vanished" (Siegmund's Spring Song)

Richard Wagner - "You Are the Spring" (Sieglinde's Spring Song) 

Duke Ellington + Coleman Hawkins - Limbo Jazz 

Lester Young + Oscar Peterson - Sunny Side of the Street

Graham Parker - Watch the Moon Come Down 

Thin Lizzy - Little Girl in Bloom

Wire - Playing Harp for the Fishes

Don McGlashan - John Bryce 

Uri Caine Ensemble - Song of the Earth: Drunkard in Spring

Estelle Perrault - You Must Believe in Spring

Benny Goodman Sextet - Gone with What Wind

Vaughan Williams - The Lark Ascending 

Richard Strauss - 'Frühling'

Greig - 'Morning Mood' (Peer Gynt Suite)

Schubert - 'Fruhlingstraum' (Winterreise)

Schubert - 'Im Frühling'

Sibelius - 'Kevankay' (Spring Version)

Joseph Suk - Spring Idyll

Debussy - 'Rondes des Printemps'

Bjarte Engeset - 'Rustle of Spring'

Beethoven - Sonata #5 for Piano + Violin  

Greig - 'Last Spring' 

Tchaikovsky - April: Lily of the Valley  

Red Garland Trio - Spring Will Be a Little Late this Year

Wynton Marsalis - April in Paris

Dave Brubeck Quartet - Strange Meadow Lark

Massimo Farao Trio - Spring Will Be a Little Late this Year

Duke Ellington + John Coltrane - In a Sentimental Mood

Nina Simone - Another Spring

What would you add to the playlist (which will, I expect, be changing over the day) ?  

Beer O’Clock Tribute: All Hail Pale Ale

Way back in the mists of time, i.e., about 14-55 years or so BC*, back when craft beer was just something talked about on obscure blogs by large oft-bearded men wearing Hawaiian shirts, the late and much-lamented beer writer and raconteur Neil Miller was one of the two main contributors to our (ir)regular Friday afternoon Beer O'Clock column here at NOT PC -- in which in his own entertaining fashion he introduced most of us to just what was going on with this weird new stuff that frequently tasted of something called hops.

So in tribute to his good self, I'm going to just as (ir)regularly post some of those columns that you might remember -- this one, for example, in which he introduced us to something we'd never heard of, something called Pale Ale...

Beer O’Clock: All Hail Pale Ale

From 2007: in which Neil celebrated one of his favourite beer styles – Pale Ales ...

I’m a great believer that beer needs to be drunk in the proper context. Ordering a jug of Speight’s at the excellent Leuven Belgian Beer Café is very poor form. Conversely, drinking 8.5 per cent Duvel at the cricket will have you completely trumpeted by tea time.

The quest for proper context was my excuse at least for eating gourmet hot dogs and watching the opening match of the NFL while sampling the first bottle of Emerson’s American Pale Ale (6 per cent). The star-spangled label would outrage Nick Kelly and Keith Locke - always a huge bonus. It pours a deep burnished gold which would not be out of place in Fort Knox.

This is a big, strong and independent beer delivering plenty of rich orange and grapefruit notes – like snogging a Californian fruit salad - before a unilaterally firm finish. The day this beer is released each September should be a public holiday. No one would really miss Labour Day.

American Pale Ales (APA) are the boisterous new cousins of the traditional English style pale ales. Historically, pale ales are firm, fruity, nutty and relatively bitter. A fine example is the Croucher Pale Ale (5 per cent) from Rotorua. The brewer, Paul Croucher, is a reformed university lecturer who is fiercely passionate about food and beer.

His Pale Ale throws a punchy malt nose with lashings of stone fruit. In the glass, it has a full, biscuity body with pronounced orange and caramel notes. A lingering dry finish leaves the drinker immediately ready for the next taste.

One of the popular beer genres is India Pale Ale. This style of beer was developed when Britain still ruled the Raj. The troops – heaven forbid – would not drink local brews, so barrels of good old English pale ale (pip! pip!) were shipped in from Portsmouth.

Given that beer does not like heat or movement, the rough, steamy ship journeys tended to see the beer arrive in an undrinkable state. Long before refrigeration, the brewers turned to their two main weapons against infection – alcohol and hops (a natural preservative). The result was a strong, bitter style known as India Pale Ale (IPA) which, ironically, has still never been made in India.

Made from authentic ingredients and true to style, Tuatara IPA (5 per cent) is a luxuriant beer with a deep spicy nose, mellow marmalade body and a long, imperial finish. It is great to see this beer appearing in supermarkets around town.

Another university lecturer who went on to gainful employment is the effervescent Dr Ralph Bungard who runs the boutique Three Boys microbrewery in Christchurch. He says his Three Boys IPA (5.2 per cent) is unique because it uses a selection of New Zealand-grown hops which produce similar aromas and flavours to modern IPAs and APAs, “but extends those styles in a genuinely New Zealand direction.”

His golden beer has a herbal and citrus nose, a well balanced body with lashings of grapefruit and a cleansing finish. Another magnificent beer and one more reason to All Hail Pale Ale!

Cheers, Neil

* BC = Before Covid

John Doxat's "Fantastical Martinis"

Alright, so as the sun at the end of this short working week rolls quietly around toward Cocktail Hour, to get you suitably chilled for that first quenching sip I offer you my slightly revised version of John Doxat's list of literally fantastic martinis from his excellent wee book on the world's greatest drink Stirred--Not Shaken: The Dry Martini (1976):

Author's Note: These are not proper martini-esque mutations, but rhyming names for the Dry Martini in particular or peculiar situations -- actual, fictional, or improbable: readers may care to add their own fancies to this initial list.

SPY MARTINI: The allegedly true instance of a Dry Martini with a 'bugged' olive, to pick up an espionage agent's conversation. (But what happened if he ate it? The C.I.A. declines to comment.)

CRY MARTINI: The sixth or seventh successive double Dry Martini which has induced sentimental or belligerent lachrymosity.

LIE MARTINI: The Dry Martini you tell your partner is your first, when in fact you've had two already.

BANZAI MARTINI: The Dry Martini you charge into. Or charge up.

NIGH MARTINI: Almost a cocktail -- so weak, and insipid, as to barely qualify as a Dry Martini. [See also "making love in a canoe" - Ed.]

TRY MARTINI: If in quotation marks, this is advice to the love-lorn from a practical cynic. Otherwise it is the first, experimental Dry Martini in a bar previously unfamiliar with the drink. Treat with caution.

BULLS-EYE MARTINI; The one that's so good you feel it click when it hits that spot.

FLY MARTINI: Exhortatory slogan composed, after a Three-Martini Lunch, by an advertising copy-writer having trouble with a campaign for a new airline.

THIGH MARTINI: Either the one that clumsy idiot on the next bar stool spills over your trouser leg, or the one that induces the young lady on the next bar stool over to reveal a little more.

SHY MARTINI: The one that induces immediate loss of speech.

FRY MARTINI: A tepid - or heated Martini. In no way recommended.

MY MARTINI: As in, "Just a moment, Buster, that's my Martini you're drinking!" 

PIE MARTINI: The glass half-filled by vegetable matter -- huge stuffed olive, outlandish onion, grotesque slice of lemon -- leaving sparse space for liquor. 

HIGH MARTINI: One in which your olive may be off. 

SLY MARTINI: Order one Dry Martini and one orange juice. Drink the first and have the glass removed. Enter partner: "Are you ready yet?" You respond: "Just let me finish my orange juice."

Speaking of orange juice (which we should rarely do) reminds me of W.C. Fields's famous flask of Dry Martini, kept about him at all times, referring to it as his "orange juice." One the set one day some stage hands emptied the flask and refilled it with the juice. Later came the stentorian Fields's trumpet: "Who's been putting the orange juice in my orange juice?"

PI MARTINI: Short for Pious Martini. A Dry Martini without the gin. Or the pleasure.

TIE MARTINI: A waste of money -- the one you spill down your neckwear.

EYE MARTINI: A dangerous drink signalled by the near verticality of the toothpick, requiring extra caution when elevated to the imbibing position. 

PSY MARTINI: A Dry Martini served Gangnam Style. 

DRIVE MARTINI: The forth or fifth double Dry Martini after which all vehicular activity should be confined to the passenger seat(s). [See DIE MARTINI for the possible consequences should this advice be ignored.]

via GIPHY

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PS: Bonus points if you can name the movie...

Cocktail Hour: "With the martini we reach a fine and noble art ... you need not sing, for presently there will be singing in your heart."

"With [the martini] we reach a fine and noble art ... 

     "The proper union of gin and vermouth is a great and sudden glory; it is one of the happiest marriages on earth, and one of the shortest lived. The fragile tie of ecstasy is broken in a few minutes, and thereafter there can be no remarriage... 

    "There is a point where the marriage of gin and vermouth is consummated. It varies a little with the constituents, but for a gin of 95 proof and a harmonious vermouth it may be generalised as about 3.7 to 1... 

    "The goal is purification [of the mind] and that will begin after the first round has been poured, so I see no need for preliminary spiritual exercises. But it is best approached with a tranquil mind, lest the necessary speed become haste. Tranquility ought normally to come with sight of the familiar bottles. If it doesn't, feel free to hum some simple tune as you go about your preparations [the Blue Danube being an excellent choice] ... [but] do not whistle, for your companions are sinking into the quiet of expectation. And you need not sing, for presently there will be singing in your heart." 

          ~ Bernard De Voto, from his book The Hour: A Cocktail Manifesto 

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"When evening quickens in the street, comes a pause in the day's occupation that is known as the cocktail hour. It marks the lifeward turn. The heart wakens from coma and its dyspnea ends. Its strengthening pulse is to cross over into campground, to believe that the world has not been altogether lost or, if lost, then not altogether in vain." #QotD

"When evening quickens in the street, comes a pause in the day's occupation that is known as the cocktail hour. It marks the lifeward turn. The heart wakens from coma and its dyspnea ends. Its strengthening pulse is to cross over into campground, to believe that the world has not been altogether lost or, if lost, then not altogether in vain."
          ~ Bernard DeVoto, from his manifesto to this civilising ritual, 'The Hour'

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QotD: “'We have this idea of freedom through beer,' he smiled."

“We have this idea of freedom through beer,” he smiled.
~ Greig McGill from the Hamilton brewery Brewaucracy explains how they came up with the name ...

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Tuatara goes to the dark side

 

Good news and bad news on the local craft beer front.

The good news is that if you’re forced to drink in DB-tied establishments, you should shortly be able to find a drop of Tuatara to make your session better. The bad news: that’s because Tuatara has just been sold to DB.

The award-winning Tuatara Brewing Company has today been sold to DB Breweries.

See. Told you.

Tuatara will continue to produce its award-winning craft beer from the current premises located on the Kapiti Coast and the pilot brewery – The Third Eye, in Wellington.
    Tuatara founder and master brewer Carl Vasta says he continues to be passionate about the New Zealand craft beer industry and is committed to being part of Tuatara and its future growth.
    “We’re changing the shareholding, we’re not changing the recipe.
    “Brewing beer and talking about beer is my passion. With the support of my family, we have been able to grow Tuatara into a successful business,” says Carl. “In order to take things to the next level we need assistance. That’s why we’ve teamed up with DB. Now, I intend to get back to the brewing and step out of the business end.”
    Simone Vasta will continue in her role as logistics manager and their son, Adam, an accomplished brewer in his own right, will also stay at the Kapiti Coast brewery to ensure continuity and quality beer.

Good to hear the whole family intend to “stay in.” Which should help keep the quality going.

And the experience with Panhead and Emerson going over to Lion suggests that it may not be so much losing a craft brewer as gaining much wider access to their product (they’d be astonished, the bottle stores and boozers in which you can enjoy their stuff now). So maybe Yeastie Boys’s Stu McKinlay is right to remind us all that …

It's fuckin' hard work starting, running, and growing a business – especially one that brews more than 2 million litres a year in little old New Zealand, a population half that of London, spread across a land mass bigger than the UK and Ireland.
    When I see a business sell, I just think of the holidays people never had; the ridiculous hours they worked; the times they were shitting themselves about decisions they'd made; the untold times they weren't sure if they could go on; whether they'd use commas or semi-colons in this section.
    And then, think of how the next time I see them they'll most likely be smiling like Richard Emerson.
    This deal involves people (past and present) who have kindly helped me with my brewing, my general knowledge and history of beer, supported our business, or just been good fun to have a beer with. We haven't always agreed, but I feel rather agreeable today.
    Best wishes to them all! Especially to Carl, Simone, Sean, Colin and Fraser. Can I borrow a fiver?

No news on the fiver yet. But we do have a …

People’s Savings Bank in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, by Louis Sullivan - 1911

 

Architect Louis Henri Sullivan was Frank Lloyd Wright’s mentor, the father of the skyscraper, and one of the “godfathers” of modern architecture, In the last phase of his career, Sullivan built several exquisite wee banks in the American midwest that he called “jewel boxes,” stunningly crafted small buildings celebrating the primary symbol of capitalism in each of these prosperous small towns.

The People’s Savings Bank in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, was probably the least of these small jewels, but has enjoyed perhaps the best repurposing.

The bank has been restored, and is now a very fine Italian restaurant and cocktail bar – Sullivan’s Bar, appropriately – just the sort of place I could easily spend a week doing serious research. A blogger recently spent the day there:

We gawked at Allen E. Philbrick’s murals depicting “Banking, Commerce, and Industry” ... The murals feature idealised forms of capitalism in front of pristine forests and open fields. Man and nature appear in harmony with golden sunshine flooding the dimly lit bar with the promise of future prosperity -- a prosperity Cedar Rapids works towards as earnestly as the farmer with his plough.

A fine use of the elegant space. And the perfect backdrop to enjoy a Negroni or a God Father. Or several.

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Build yourself one now while you watch this short clip of the first bank he brought into the world …

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Quote of the Day: On the social benefits of drinking

 

“The basic fact is that conversation, hilarity and drink are connected in a profoundly human, peculiarly intimate way. There is a choice of conclusions from this. One would be that no such healthy linkage exists in the case of other drugs: a major reason for being on guard against them. More to the point, the collective social benefits of drinking altogether (on this evidence) outweigh the individual disasters it may precipitate.”
~ Kingsly Amis, from his book Everyday Drinking: The Distilled Kingsley Amis

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If you’re going to drink up this Christmas, do it properly

 

My Christmas present to myself this year (thank you, readers) is  these IPA glasses.

While a stubby holder, a pilfered pub tumbler and the occasional stemmed pilsner glass have been my main beer holders over the years, it's now time to up my game. 

So if you have beer and nothing to put it in, you can look at The Spiegelau Store. Fine people. Quick delivery. And they have wine glasses for those unfortunate enough not to drink beer – and cocktail glasses for those astute enough to need them.

Fill your boots up.

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“The Top Ten Greatest Beers in New Zealand”

 

It’s important, it’s official – and just in time for summer, Michael Donaldson at Beer Nation has revealed their Top Ten New Zealand beers for 2016. Or as he likes to call their list, The Top Ten Greatest Beers in New Zealand.

He has criteria, It includes:

• Ratings on sites including Untappd and Ratebeer;
• Gold medals / trophies won at the Brewers Guild of New Zealand Awards and other competitions;
• The influence the beer has had on the New Zealand brewing scene;
• Enduring quality;
• Personal taste preferences.

It’s hard to argue with the carefully-crafted selections. The top three are produced by what’s arguably the country’s three top brewers – and the fourth by a fine chap who was once a beer writer at this very blog, before somehow going on to fame, fortune and world conquest without us.

Every beer in the top ten, every beer bar one, is a killer brew that has all but become a staple of sundry great beer fridges and the centre of many a local beer drinker’s social drinking sessions. And every one of the beers has a great story to tell!

But see if you can spot that odd one out.

And don’t panic if you don’t agree with the Beer Nation’s Top Ten List. You have a whole summer to make up your own.

How bad a project could that be?

PS: You can find the beers they ranked 20-11 here; 30-21 here; 40-31 here and 50-41 here.

Go wild!

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It’s Oktoberfest … and beer is freedom

 

Beer is freedom, and German brewers are worried at foreign innovation – about beers so hoppy they’ll melt your face.

Matt Kibbe explains what Ludwig Von Mises has to do with it. Drink up:

 

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