My apologies for missing the past few weeks! Anyway, lets jump right back into it with some history links:

A look into early wine and cheese pairings. 

"With hundreds of attendees, the Wine and Food Society’s wine and cheese tastings had become sophisticated affairs. I’d think tickets were sold to the public. It seems unlikely, although possible, that the Society counted that many members at the time. Perhaps a current analogy is the whiskey festivals which occur regularly in large Western cities."
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Your BCS translation for the week! This time, one of the earliest references to barley and wheat by the Greeks.
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A study on working-class life in 70's era Britain, featuring the Black Horse pub.

"​Over the course of the book we learn that the downstairs of The Black Horse was converted into a disco but then, with rumours of sex and drug use among the teenagers, tensions arose and the estate elders withdrew their support. The pub was then systematically wrecked and then burned down in what the authors describe as a ‘professional job’."
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The Pop Culture Conference 2017 was recently held, and they have decided to hold another session on Beer Culture. The folks over at OHBA have done a fantastic job summarizing the different talks that were held, so it's a bit hard to pin down which session to link to, so be sure to check it all out!
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A recipe to brew Berliner Weisse according to Grenell.
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A great summary on brewing in Mesopotamia.

"As in many (perhaps most) other societies, both past and present, beer occupied an ambiguous position in the Mesopotamian social world. It was consumed and enjoyed by many people on a regular basis, but there was also a fine line between enjoyment and overindulgence, between acceptable and unacceptable levels of inebriation. The tavern, in particular, provided a distinct space within which this line (and others) could be crossed. The very existence of this conflicted stance toward beer and its potential effects provides some indication of the power of beer and its unique capacity to transform individual people, groups of people, places, and occasions."

Same as above, but replace Mesopotamia with China.

A print of an old punch recipe which is giving me strong rum cravings...

"A Washington, D.C. newspaper in 1903 gives a recipe for Planter’s Punch which is both simple and very good. This has to be one of the older references to the drink in the U.S., perhaps the oldest."
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A reference to Thracian beer from the play Lycurgus.

"Although beer was rife with such additions in antiquity, it is unclear what and when the additions were added to beer according to Thracian beer culture."
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The story of David Pollard, one of Britain's first-wave microbrewer.
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A dig into some records concerning cream ale, and what it really means.

"If style can be applied to the concept at all, cream ales at best probably represented styles. They were not a response to pilsners as they predate Gillig and were in mass production happily in their own right though the mid- and latter 1800s."
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But they're really important, at least to brewing history. This is a look into taxes around the 1870s.
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For those out in Oregon, there is an exhibit coming up on May 3rd which explores minority land ownership, featuring a talk from the OHBA!

The oldest pub in Devizes will be celebrating its 450th anniversary with a special beer on March 30th - April 1st.
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Antimicrobial properties of the starter culture for the indigenous brew Tchoukoutou.
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A quick how-to video on making prehistoric pottery.
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