Beverage Weekend

[Scheherazade]

It is the Bank Holiday Weekend in the UK, when people either do DIY or drink. Some do both but that usually leads to unplanned trips to the A&E.

What is your favourite beverage? Stories?

Extra brownie points for those who can find beverage references from Literature as well!

[cacian]

My favourite drink is RED WINE.
Nothing compared to it because it is versatile and you drink it with food which makes it easy to digest.
My other favourite beverage CHAMPAGNE.
Only the most expensive will do. :p

Here is some literature I found on wine:

Wine Lore and Laughter

From Mesopotamian clay tablets dating back almost five thousand years, through the classical Greek and Roman writers, to the Bible, then by way of Shakespeare, down to the great writers and artists of our time, wine has been a potent source of inspiration.

This theme takes a humorous look at some of the creative literature surrounding wine drinking with a selection of cartoons (including 12 especially commissioned for the State Library), stories, verse and songs, from the solemnity of the Bible and the wit of Shakespeare, to the bawdiness of the eighteenth century, to nineteenth century books for children, and the traditions of today.

Wine, the most delightful of drinks, whether we owe it to Noah,
who planted the vine, or to Bacchus, who pressed juice from the
grape, goes back to the childhood of the world.

Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, -the physiology of taste-

Ancient times
According to Persian mythology, wine was discovered by a woman. She drank the fermented juice from grapes stored in a jar, went to sleep, and surprisingly woke up cured of a headache, instead of suffering from the world's first hangover as one might have expected.

Wine became the drink of the gods, whether they were Egyptian, Sumerian, or Greek, and the early deities of wine were often women, since they were also associated with fertility. The symbolism of wine, as well as its effect, became potent as it was adopted into religious ritual.



The modern Egyptian papyrus illustrated here reproduces ancient Egyptian winemaking techniques, and was a recent donation to the Library.

Another source of potent images, the sea, which was crucial to early transport and communication, was given the feminine gender by the Greeks. When the ancient Greek poet Homer sang of "the wine-dark sea" he was linking two forces central in Mediterranean life to create an image which continues to have great emotive power.

In the musical comedy Roman Scandals, produced in 1933, Eddie Cantor finds himself in Imperial Rome where he is employed as the food taster for the evil emperor Valerius (Edward Arnold). Could the last glass of the emperor's favourite wine have been poisoned by his wife Agrippa? Eddie is just about to find out!

The Bible
The Bible has many references to the vine and wine. The first recorded mention is in Genesis, in the ninth chapter, where we learn that Noah planted a vineyard, and that "he drank of the wine and was drunken". This incident was sometimes featured in illustrated versions of the Bible, including an English manuscript of around 1320 known as the Holkham Bible. The State Library's facsimile edition of this manuscript, published in 1954, shows Noah and his sons harvesting grapes, followed by a vivid portrayal of the first recorded drunkard.

The Book of Proverbs has several things to say on the subject of wine:

Proverbs:

Wine is a mocker

Look not upon the wine when it is red

Forsake not on old friend

Wine is as good as a life to a man

Neither do men put old wine into new bottles

Drink no longer water


And here is the rest of it all for further reading
http://www.winelit.slsa.sa.gov.au/winelore.htm

[prendrelemick]

"Newcastle Brown: Helping ugly people have sex since 1927"

[Helga]

COOFFFFEEEEEEE

it's always black coffee on the top of my list. I am a simple girl with simple needs.

To quote my friend Dale Cooper 'Black as midnight on a moonless night'

[Lokasenna]

TEA!

...that is all.

[Helga]

and for the extra points.... (I'll be expecting them next to my name by the end of the weekend)


an article about coffee scenes in literature:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/mar/26/benjamin-obler-coffee-best-books

and a poem I posted here a long time ago about this love in my life:


I think of you
in the morning
you are what I want
everyday
First thing I look for
when I come home
last thing I see
before sleep

I can smell you
I can taste you
on my lips
running warm
through my body

Too much of you
and I shake,
too little, I ache

Can't be without you
you're bitter, you're sweet
you are perfect
for me.

[LitNetIsGreat]

I want to drink...beer.:drool5:

Let's put some music on to start the weekend.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64R6dMEnqxo

I have a little Leffe to finish from last night and then I have placed an order with Mrs N to bring me back some Golden Hen, so I'm going to drink a couple of those too later on. I'm going to finish my book first though.

I don't like bank holidays as a rule mind.

[papayahed]

Margarita!

[Emil Miller]

"Newcastle Brown: Helping ugly people have sex since 1927"

In that case order me a crate.




I don't like bank holidays as a rule mind.

Neither do I, if only because the pubs are crowded. For a long time I've thought that it would be much more sensible to give everyone the time off in lieu instead of having the congestion at airports and the other inconveniences that occur when a large proportion of the workforce is off work.

Anyhow, here's an appropriate track for this thread,

http://youtu.be/cRv9tyz1XVc

or perhaps this is even more so.

http://youtu.be/DRP8ZfQye6M

[MANICHAEAN]

A long glass, crushed ice, two fingers of Appelton rum, a slice of lime and topped up with coke.

Gets me in training for the Notting Hill Gate Carnival, Sunday & Monday.

[cacian]

A long glass, crushed ice, two fingers of Appelton rum, a slice of lime and topped up with coke.

Gets me in training for the Notting Hill Gate Carnival, Sunday & Monday.

Haha Appleton is cool my partner's favourite so you go MANICHEAN!!:p
Can't stand the carnival though too crowded noisy and a struggle to find a way out.
I have done two Carnivals now and never again.

[Pensive]

and for the extra points.... (I'll be expecting them next to my name by the end of the weekend)


an article about coffee scenes in literature:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/mar/26/benjamin-obler-coffee-best-books

and a poem I posted here a long time ago about this love in my life:


I think of you
in the morning
you are what I want
everyday
First thing I look for
when I come home
last thing I see
before sleep

I can smell you
I can taste you
on my lips
running warm
through my body

Too much of you
and I shake,
too little, I ache

Can't be without you
you're bitter, you're sweet
you are perfect
for me.

:D
I could relate, I think we all can. Have you written it yourself?

[lilimarlene]

I shall be drinking wine..........

Ode To Wine by Pablo Neruda


Day-colored wine,
night-colored wine,
wine with purple feet
or wine with topaz blood,
wine,
starry child
of earth,
wine, smooth
as a golden sword,
soft
as lascivious velvet,
wine, spiral-seashelled
and full of wonder,
amorous,
marine;
never has one goblet contained you,
one song, one man,
you are choral, gregarious,
at the least, you must be shared.
At times
you feed on mortal
memories;
your wave carries us
from tomb to tomb,
stonecutter of icy sepulchers,
and we weep
transitory tears;
your
glorious
spring dress
is different,
blood rises through the shoots,
wind incites the day,
nothing is left
of your immutable soul.
Wine
stirs the spring, happiness
bursts through the earth like a plant,
walls crumble,
and rocky cliffs,
chasms close,
as song is born.
A jug of wine, and thou beside me
in the wilderness,
sang the ancient poet.
Let the wine pitcher
add to the kiss of love its own.

My darling, suddenly
the line of your hip
becomes the brimming curve
of the wine goblet,
your breast is the grape cluster,
your nipples are the grapes,
the gleam of spirits lights your hair,
and your navel is a chaste seal
stamped on the vessel of your belly,
your love an inexhaustible
cascade of wine,
light that illuminates my senses,
the earthly splendor of life.

But you are more than love,
the fiery kiss,
the heat of fire,
more than the wine of life;
you are
the community of man,
translucency,
chorus of discipline,
abundance of flowers.
I like on the table,
when we're speaking,
the light of a bottle
of intelligent wine.
Drink it,
and remember in every
drop of gold,
in every topaz glass,
in every purple ladle,
that autumn labored
to fill the vessel with wine;
and in the ritual of his office,
let the simple man remember
to think of the soil and of his duty,
to propagate the canticle of the wine.

[Pensive]

Maybe it's a bit unrelated but I really wonder if anybody knows a poem on water!

[lilimarlene]

Maybe it's a bit unrelated but I really wonder if anybody knows a poem on water!

Going for Water
By Robert Frost
1874-1963
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The well was dry beside the door,
And so we went with pail and can
Across the fields behind the house
To seek the brook if still it ran;
Not loth to have excuse to go,
Because the autumn eve was fair
(Though chill), because the fields were ours,
And by the brook our woods were there.
We ran as if to meet the moon
That slowly dawned behind the trees,
The barren boughs without the leaves,
Without the birds, without the breeze.
But once within the wood, we paused
Like gnomes that hid us from the moon,
Ready to run to hiding new
With laughter when she found us soon.
Each laid on other a staying hand
To listen ere we dared to look,
And in the hush we joined to make
We heard, we knew we heard the brook.
A note as from a single place,
A slender tinkling fall that made
Now drops that floated on the pool
Like pearls, and now a silver blade.

[Helga]

:D
I could relate, I think we all can. Have you written it yourself?

yes I was annoyed cause there was a love poem competition for Valentines day ( I don't like it when people on the ice try to adapt american holidays as our own) so I wrote a love poem for my lovely cup

[JuniperWoolf]

A swell glass bottle of coke with a straw, and a cheeseburger too, just like Lolita.

http://i426.photobucket.com/albums/pp349/cellar_door17/th_166581_185602788122748_7737513_n.jpg (http://s426.photobucket.com/albums/pp349/cellar_door17/?action=view&current=166581_185602788122748_7737513_n.jpg)

[Scheherazade]

Margarita!Tomorrow night while watching the movie!

:hurray:

[Calidore]

Maybe it's a bit unrelated but I really wonder if anybody knows a poem on water!

I don't drink a lot of water
But I'm told I really oughter

[billl]

Rather than look like an alcoholic, I decided to go with another beverage I am passionate about, especially this particular brand that I haven't had in years.

[Gilliatt Gurgle]

Wild Turkey in poetry:

Wild Turkey in the morning
pecks the gravel from your eye.
Wild Turkey in the evening
makes you gobble at the sky.

by Gilliatt Gurgle August 24 2012


http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/78/WildTurkeyBottle_no1.jpg/80px-WildTurkeyBottle_no1.jpg

The following excerpt from Wikipedia:

'Wild Turkey is known for being a favorite drink of journalist Hunter S. Thompson, and is mentioned in his 1972 book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (as well as the film of the same name), and the 1973 book Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72. In Stephen King's book It, when asked what the bar whiskey is, the bartender replies, "For everyone else in this dump it's Four Roses, but for you I think it's Wild Turkey." David Foster Wallace's seminal novel Infinite Jest has James Incandenza as an alcoholic filmmaker and tennis academy head who drinks Wild Turkey; and in Scott Sigler’s science fiction book Infected, main character Perry Dawsey is described several times as drinking Wild Turkey. In Patrick Neate's 2004 book "City of Tiny Lights" the private investigator anti-hero and narrator of the tale, Tommy Akhtar, subsists on a diet of mostly Wild Turkey and Benson and Hedges cigarettes, referring to them as "Benny and the Turk".

[MANICHAEAN]

GG
It gives me a bad head. When I was introduced to bourbon, (by a Southern boy I might add,) it was Jack Daniels gold, Jim Beam silver & Wild Turkey bronze. In the meantime, I discovered Old Knob and some of those great micro brewery's down there. It never ceases to amaze me how the US can produce such fine hard spirits and such terrible beer.
M.

[billl]

Was it Knob Creek, maybe? Woodford Reserve is another good one, in case this information ever becomes handy. Like WT, they have the somewhat high alcohol content that really brings out the fireworks.

[LitNetIsGreat]

GG
It gives me a bad head. When I was introduced to bourbon, (by a Southern boy I might add,) it was Jack Daniels gold, Jim Beam silver & Wild Turkey bronze. In the meantime, I discovered Old Knob and some of those great micro brewery's down there. It never ceases to amaze me how the US can produce such fine hard spirits and such terrible beer.
M.

There are some good beers coming out of the US though, try anything from the Brooklyn Brewery, Sierra Nevada or Anchor Brewery. Goose Island is supposed to be good as well. Something to do with a flying dog as well? Of course I can only get hold of a tiny, wee fraction of beers here but I think after Belgian beers, which cannot be beaten ever, the American beers are right up there. At least I am very excited by the American brews.

Here's a top 100 list from rate beer:
http://www.ratebeer.com/Ratings/TopAmerican.asp

25 new American beers:
http://www.maxim.com/booze/the-25-best-new-beers-america

Not sure about the quality of that webpage or the 'Porkslap' beer but some of those sound OK too.

It has to be frustrating that there are all those wonderful beers out there and the likes of Budwater is so marketed to death that it's the first name in American beer. They are a rip off company anyway. They stole the name from Czech beer of the same name.

http://www.budweiserbudvar.co.uk/

[MANICHAEAN]

Billl
Your absolutely right "Knob Creek"and I've tried "Woodford Reserve" as well. Both damm good.

Neely
Thanks for the links. They will further my education on the important things in life. But I take issue with you on country choice in beer. After my trip to Munich last December, those German beers are up there on the podium.

[Emil Miller]

Billl
Your absolutely right "Knob Creek"and I've tried "Woodford Reserve" as well. Both damm good.

Neely
Thanks for the links. They will further my education on the important things in life. But I take issue with you on country choice in beer. After my trip to Munich last December, those German beers are up there on the podium.

I have to agree with Neely here. As someone who spent a good deal of his younger days in Germany and especially Munich, I found that the beers were better than those elsewhere but, then again they don't have anything comparable to English ale except for 'dunkles bier' that, although darker than lager, tastes nothing like bitter.
I thought that about wrapped it up until I took up with a Belgian girl and on a visit to Charleroi she took me to a monastery where the monks brewed beer and sold it to visitors. It was the best beer I ever drank and when other monastic brews later became available on the UK market, I bought them in favour of the German beers. I still like to drink German beer occasionally but for preference I would choose Belgian.

[LitNetIsGreat]

Oh there's absolutely no beating the Belgian beers, hands down, especially the Trappist and Abbey beers - it is folly to think other wise. As for German beers, well their strength, like the Czechs, lies mostly with the lagers/pilsners, although I love the German wheat beers as well. As I say though, if you disregard some of those tangy American craft beers, it will be to your loss.:hand:

[Emil Miller]

Oh there's absolutely no beating the Belgian beers, hands down, especially the Trappist and Abbey beers - it is folly to think other wise. As for German beers, well their strength, like the Czechs, lies mostly with the lagers/pilsners, although I love the German wheat beers as well. As I say though, if you disregard some of those tangy American craft beers, it will be to your loss.:hand:

I agree that the smaller breweries in the US are turning out some good beers but they have only recently surfaced in the UK and there is still a way to go before they are here in significant numbers. It's great to see private enterprise challenging monsters like Budweiser which in its American incarnation it just about equates to Fosters: a beer so weak and tasteless that it amazes me why anyone would want to drink it. I tried it when it first arrived here and that was the first and last time.

[prendrelemick]

Edit: here it is.

"Beer brewers shall sell no beer to citizens, unless it be three weeks old. To the foreigner they may knowingly sell younger beer."
-- German Beer Law, 1466

[Emil Miller]

Edit: here it is.

"Beer brewers shall sell no beer to citizens, unless it be three weeks old. To the foreigner they may knowingly sell younger beer."
-- German Beer Law, 1466

Have you been at the Newcastle Brown again?

[Lokasenna]

Actually, whiskey does sound like a good idea after the day I've had. A dram of Old Bushmills is nestling in my hand, even as I type (one handed, obviously).

Whilst it might not be literary in its own right (or is it?), there is an old Dublin street ballad about whiskey that had a rather profound impact on James Joyce:

Wasn't it the truth I told you? Lots of fun at Finnegan's Wake (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7yR-U4m_dw).

[Calidore]

Goose Island is supposed to be good as well.

Despite not liking beer at all, local pride forces me to echo the shout out to Goose Island, as the brewery (and attached restaurant) are right here in Chicago, maybe ten-fifteen minutes away from me. They make a pretty decent root beer as well.

[YesNo]

The last memorable beer I had was in Phoenix, Arizona, called Tatonka Stout. Since I don't know much about beer, and figured I better get something as far away from BudWater as possible, I picked the darkest beer on the menu. (I've enjoyed Goose Island beers many times in the past.)

It tasted great, but after one 16 oz glass I was glad someone else was driving.

http://beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/3042/24483

[LitNetIsGreat]

Despite not liking beer at all, local pride forces me to echo the shout out to Goose Island, as the brewery (and attached restaurant) are right here in Chicago, maybe ten-fifteen minutes away from me. They make a pretty decent root beer as well.


The last memorable beer I had was in Phoenix, Arizona, called Tatonka Stout. Since I don't know much about beer, and figured I better get something as far away from BudWater as possible, I picked the darkest beer on the menu. (I've enjoyed Goose Island beers many times in the past.)

It tasted great, but after one 16 oz glass I was glad someone else was driving.

http://beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/3042/24483

Oh thanks for the heads up. I will definitely drink some Goose Island beer the next time I am in the Dev Cat in the coming week, more than one. I set up to head off this afternoon but just as I was about to go out the rain, thunder and lightening came down like something out of the Bible so I sat back down on the sofa.

Just a quick look at the top 100 list I posted earlier shows that stouts seem to be a favourite. Thanks also for posting the beeradvocate link as it also reminds me that I am a member of that site and forgot all about it.

[LitNetIsGreat]

I had a couple of Goose Island beers tonight (before we went to the Italian). I had the Goose Island IPA and Goose Island Honkers Ale. Both were very good, especially the IPA which was extremely 'moreish' and very hoppy. A very nice beer. I will certainly having that one again for sure.

Other American beers I like are the Anchor ales.

I might also try the Flying Dog beers. Though I have been put off of them because of the names, such as Flying Dog, Doggie Style or similar, (worse), which strike me as crude, call me prudish, but I don't fancy asking the attractive barmaid for a 'doggie style' - at least on first acquaintance! It is a shame that such companies have to name their beers as such, when apparently the beer is an 'American classic' and is top quality.

Anyway, I very much enjoyed the Goose Island IPA and am very envious of the Chicago folk who have such a stunning beer on their doorstep.

I still remain very impressed by the American craft beers. :patriot:

[YesNo]

When I'm traveling, I usually get whatever beer is locally made. Some of them have rather bizarre names. Here's a list of some strange beer names:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/06/the-funniest-beer-names-o_n_779928.html#s177706&title=Elysian_Mens_Room

Of those on the list, I've had Kilt Lifter in Arizona.