Was Harriet Beecher Stowe thinking about beer?
“To do common things perfectly is far better worth our endeavor than to do uncommon things respectably.”
Just so I don’t get injured when an empty bottle that once held *xtr*m* beer rattles off my skull, it’s also OK to do uncommon things perfectly.
Thanks to all of those who chimed in on the meaning of the word “phenolic.”
Your answers prove it’s not a useful word for a drinking note.
This is where it started. When I sat in for the Sunday Session on The Brewing Network a question came up: What’s the difference between phenols and esters? I blew it off, mostly because I knew if I started I could have the audience snoozing in a matter of minutes, and still have plenty of words left over. There are several sources of phenols and we perceive them in a variety of ways (though not all drinkers equally).
This show is mostly for homebrewers so a fair question. Just one I need to come up with a short answer for. I mentioned this to my wife, the first beer writer in our family, and she had a quick answer. “Phenols are bad, right? And esters are good,” she said, tongue in cheek. “That’s they way people talk about them.”
Many of the comments prove her point.
Thanks for playing along. I suspect it will make my short answer better.
“When we lost the local ownership of our breweries, we lost something very dear to our community. I’ve been striving to bring back that heritage.”
– Greg Hardman, Cincinnati native seeking to reclaim the city’s brewing past
This strikes me as a far better way to spend your time than standing in line for the latest rare beer.
In this video Steve Hampton, president of the preservationist Brewery District Community Urban Redevelopment Corp., walks through a tunnel beneath East McMicken Street in Over-the-Rhine. The tunnel is part of the old Schmidt Brothers Brewery.
Cincinnati’s 18th annual Bockfest begins Friday, with plenty of beer and tours of the city’s historic breweries. Around 40 buildings remain standing in Over-the-Rhine and West End that were used in the operations of about a dozen nineteenth century breweries.
(For the record, the weekend activities don’t list tours of the tunnels — “We really have no idea how many of these cellars and tunnels may still exist,” Hampton said — but there’s still plenty going on. The schedule.)