Friday Four

Friday, September 23, 2011

1. There's a fun piece about Non-Bavarian German Beer styles over at Slate. It even manages to include one I'd never heard of (or, possibly, had merely forgotten about):

Gose is an obscure style of beer with an unusual set of ingredients, including coriander and salt, which may sound bizarre to some drinkers. Rooted now in the charming, former East German city of Leipzig, the cloudy, unfiltered wheat beer has a 1,000-year history that almost ended in the Cold War. Communist functionaries saw no place for the odd beer in their conformist society, and the style all but disappeared in the aftermath of World War II.

Luckily, there's been a revival in recent years and a small amount of it is bottled and exported. The beer laughs in the face of the Reinheitsgebot, Germany's famed beer-purity law, which allows only water, barley, and hops in beer. The Reinheitsgebot is no longer technically the law of the land, which is good in this case, because Gose's offending ingredients are the very things that make it special.

Gose's sour taste will appeal to fans of Belgium's Gueze style. And the bready, citrusy flavor could draw fans of farmhouse beers. It's not for everyone, but it's a must-try for any serious beer drinker. Its revival is good news for beer lovers; hopefully it sticks around this time. [format edits, link dropped]
I'm one of those strange birds who likes the Belgian style normally spelled Gueuze, so this is high on my beer hunting list.

2. The man behind the recent changes in the Ayn Rand Lexicon has posted about them at Objectivism Online. He has responded to at least one reported glitch and may announce new features there in the future.

3. If you're in the Northeast, you should consider attending the NYOS Conference 2011 (HT: HBL) this November.
Saturday and Sunday attendees will be immersed in an intellectual universe created by some of the best minds in their respective fields. Andrew Bernstein will speak on "Villainy: An Analysis of the Nature of Evil", Harry Binswanger will speak on "Psycho-Epistemology: How the Mind Operates the Subconscious", Yaron Brook will speak on "Ayn Rand's Free Market Revolution: How the Ideas of Atlas Shrugged Can End Big Government", Eric Daniels will speak on "The Virtue of Judicial Engagement", Shoshana Milgram will speak on "Ayn Rand's 'Top Secret': An Inspiring Original Screenplay about the Development of the Atomic Bomb", and Jean Moroney will speak on "How Understanding Your Emotions Helps You Think Logically". [minor edits]
The $100.00 discount for the weekend conference ends on September 25.

4. The name just about says it all: USBTypewriter. Now, all any technophobic would-be author of the next Great American Novel needs for inspiration is a packet of printer -- excuse me -- typewriter paper he can wad up periodically to really get his creative juices flowing.

-- CAV

4 comments:

mtnrunner2 said...

From Wikipedia on gueuze: "barnyard-like." Yum! Seriously, I'll have to try some.

I had a really bizarre small-batch beer at New Belgium (which is about 2 hours north of me) that was sour and just thought it was a freaky experiment. Maybe it was a gueuze!

I've often wanted to quote certain parts of Lexicon pages. Good deal. Although it took a while for pages to load. I'll check it again later.

Gus Van Horn said...

Yeah. I don't like "barnyard" as a description, but I've seen that before. Sour, as you describe it, is more like it. And coming from town (or is that The New Belgium brewery?) with a name like that, that would make sense.

What really throws lots of people off from other, fruit-flavored lambics, which I also like, is the strangeness of tasting the flavors of fruit without much of a sweet background. Some brewers will add sugar to make up for that, but I prefer that it not be done.

Snedcat said...

Yo, Gus, you write, "Now, all any technophobic would-be author of the next Great American Novel needs for inspiration is a packet of printer -- excuse me -- typewriter paper he can wad up periodically to really get his creative juices flowing."

It's too high-tech. What we need now is a virtual reality stylus that writes on virtual parchment, with a virtual pumice stone in place of a delete key. True high-tech for the true Luddite, as it were.

Gus Van Horn said...

True. After all, the monitor would be Kryptonite to such inspiration as the USB Typewriter could provide.