Interesting about the Coke and peanuts, I'd never heard of that before. Thanks for the links Barrett, I could imagine reading somethng like that first linked reminiscence in a Flannery O'Connor story.
I fell way behind on this thread, but enjoyed catching up.
Tonight I’m enjoying something new (to me) that I picked up in the duty free store in Reykjavík, Iceland yesterday:
It’s a liqueur that is flavored with birch. In fact, there’s a birch twig in every bottle. I’m not sure it’d be to everyone’s taste, but I quite like it. Good straight, and also with tonic as shown here.
I figured it was fitting to pair it with another Nordic export that I enjoy.
Cheers, everyone. Have a great weekend!
Cool stuff my friend. Did you try maté in Argentina? I believe we've yet to see a maté gourd in the Beverages and Blades thread, it'd certainly go well with a puñal knife. I've tried the brew with some of my Uruguayan friends, it's kind of an acquired taste, I suppose, like kava.
Curse those Kiwis with their full flavoured dark beers and really cool labels.
Anyone support my theory of beer getting darker as the weather (southern hemisphere) gets cooler? And then as it warms up again around september they get lighter again. Weird eh?
Yeah, I do the same, Meako. As winter bites, the taste definitely turns to Porters, Stouts and dark ales, but I won't even look at them all summer. I had some fantastic local brews last winter, looking forward to sampling them again. Look out for Hargreaves Hill stout and Coldstream Porter if you get them up your way.
This one was a tasty brew as well:
I don't travel much, Greg, but I know from visiting my daughter in Spain AFTER becoming interested in pocket knives that whenever I DO travel from now on, I'll be looking to pick up a sharp souvenir!
I think I'll be starting a new tradition this year of stopping in Mackinaw City just before crossing the Mackinac Bridge into Michigan's Upper Peninsula for our annual vacation in August. Mackinaw City has a hardware store that claims to be Michigan's largest Case dealer and first Platinum (?) Case dealer, and my new tradition would involve hand-picking a Case knife to buy rather than rolling the dice online (where I've had some disappointments in terms of dye jobs on bone from Case).
Old pic, but this is what I had last night before attending what was probably the last "Teacher Commissioning Ceremony" of my career:
Another old pic, but this is what I drank tonight after attending what was definitely the last "Graduation Ceremony" of my career:
- GT
Congratulations GT. I've been minded to share a pic of the Guinness brewery at St James Gate before, when reading your posts here, but now with my hostage pics released by PB, I can access them a bit easier.
Looking out over Dublin from the Brewhouse pub at the top of what used to be the old grain storage and malting silos IIRC.
(Yeah I know, I was all Guinnessed out by that point!)
Apparently the secrets of Guinness are access to good water, a very specific barley roasting temperature to induce a Maillard reaction, and the yeast. I've heard of famous old European bakeries locking their mother yeast in a safe at the end of the day, but this was the first time I've heard of a brewery doing it. This is the safe that was used:
This
video of the coopers on site at work is very interesting as well. (The sound quality's not the best, unfortunately.)
Apparently at a social event, one of the Guinness family scions said to writer and IRA man, Brendan Behan 'Oh the Guinness family have done a lot for the people of Ireland.' Behan replied 'That's nothing compared to what the people of Ireland have done for the Guinness family.'
I think the production of St James Gate was around 3 million pints a day, 2 million of them destined for export...
Scuttlebutt has it that the best Guinness actually comes out of the Kenyan plant... I have no idea if this is true, but more than a few of the Irish I met were fond of relating that information.
