Hi again beer lovers! Come on in, say hello and share a cold one!
There's a good crop of beer news to check out this week.
Here at home the San Jose Mercury News gave me stories about rye beer and about beer desserts.
Here are a couple of fascinating gadgets: an arcade game that pays off in beer, and a beer-powered phone charger.
And the Weekly Pint informs us that today is International Women's Day and points to some of the notable women of craft brewing. Though I don't know how they managed to write two articles on that subject without ever mentioning the Pink Boots Society.
Brewing was often women's work in pre-industrial times, but like most women's work it gets little respect from male commentators. I'm reading "A History of Beer and Brewing" by Ian Hornsey, which I will quote more from in the future, and the section on Tudor-era England includes this:
The tavern, ale-house or inn, with their own brewhouses... were the domain of the brewster and that celebrated haradan (sic) the ale-wife. The latter species was immortalised by John Skelton in The Tunnyng of Elynour Rummynge, which in short lines describes the drunken frolics of some women at Mrs. Rumming's ale-house... Skelton portrayed Elynour as the typical ale-wife and spoke of her as a detestable old creature with a crooked nose, humped back, gray hair and a wrinkled face.
Be glad I can't include the nasty caricature that goes with that description; it's crude even for a 16th century woodcut and looks more like a scarecrow than any kind of human.
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I've got Torpedo IPA (on sale for $12.99/12 this week) and a Hop Stoopid (yum). What are you drinking? Is anyone brewing?