Back in November I linked to an essay from George Orwell about picking hops. Now Charles in Canada has added an article Orwell wrote about his favorite pub, Moon Under Water.
If you are asked why you favour a particular public-house, it would seem natural to put the beer first, but the thing that most appeals to me about the Moon Under Water is what people call its “atmosphere.”
And then there was the Dallas brewpub by the same name. If you blinked in 1996 you missed it. As I recall, it took more than a million dollars to open and caused quite a stir. It closed in, what?, about a month. In a state known for brewpub failures this was probably the most grand.
Reviewing Moon Under Water, the Dallas Observer offered commentary that seemingly haunts Texas brewpubs 15 years later: “Brewpubs are kind of like West Texas cows: It takes a lot of acreage to support even one.”
I note a cross reference to one of Martyn’s posts, this time on drinking vessels: http://zythophile.wordpress.com/2007/06/29/a-short-history-of-beer-glasses/
And if I may, the essay is a fantasy about his dream pub.
Great essay by him that I discovered when searching for Beer Quotes to make our twitter feed more interesting (ie…I had no idea what the hell to tweet). Anyway, I now basically use this quote “it is the puritanical nonsense of excluding children —and therefore, to some extent, women—from pubs that has turned these places into mere boozing-shops instead of the family gathering-places that they ought to be.” quite frequently as an almost mission statement and when people complain to me that we allow children in our pub.