Category: Beer poetry
Twenty beer quotes that deserve to be better known
There are plenty enough well-known quotes about beer. Some of the best-known, unfortunately, are made up. However, it’s still possible to come across great, genuine yet little-known snippets. Here are 20 of my favourite beer quotes in need of wider broadcasting: “If [beer] is … the people’s beverage – and nobody, I take it, will… Read More Twenty beer quotes that deserve to be better known
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Why extremophiles are a danger to us all
I was going to ignore the latest claim by Ratebeer to have found “The best 100 beers in the world as rated by tens of thousands of our worldwide tasters” on the grounds that nobody in the real world cares what a bunch of loopy extremophiles drinks or thinks. Especially when there are far more… Read More Why extremophiles are a danger to us all
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Poems on beer, good and bad
Someone has put Carol Ann Duffy’s poem “John Barleycorn”, a “lament for, and a celebration of, the Great British Pub”, from the BBC Culture Show programme, up on YouTube: you can find it here and, if you haven’t heard it yet, I feel confident in saying you’ll enjoy it greatly. Duffy’s poem is a rare… Read More Poems on beer, good and bad
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How to brew like an Anglo-Norman knight
There are almost no descriptions of brewing processes in Britain from the medieval period, a reflection of the universality of ale and the universality of the knowledge of how to brew it: similarly “everybody” in the British Isles today knows how to make a cup of tea, and nobody wastes their time writing down a… Read More How to brew like an Anglo-Norman knight
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St Brigid and the bathwater
One of the perks of being a journalist is that you can get married in St Bride’s, the church at the foot of Fleet Street in London which continues to be the “journalists’ cathedral”, even though the hacks and blunts have all moved out of Fleet Street and their former offices are now occupied by… Read More St Brigid and the bathwater
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An 800-year-old beer drinking song
The anonymous minstrel who, some time around 1210, took Laetabundus (“Full of Joy”). a popular Nativity hymn to the Virgin Mary written by St Bernard of Clairvaux, and rewrote it in Norman French as a song in praise of beer, Or Hi Parra, was taking a risk. It was certainly a clever parody, leaving the… Read More An 800-year-old beer drinking song
