We (and I hope that includes you) toasted the life of Michael Jackson tonight, the words he gave us, and the beers for that matter.
I’m sure we will be again next week during the Great American Beer Festival.
This story from Martyn Cornell will be good to share then. The key paragraphs:
When I was researching the etymological roots of various European beer-related words, I discovered there had been a Gaulish personal name, Curmisagios, which translates as “the beer seeker”, or, if you like, “the beer hunter”. Among the tribes who lived in Gaul, home of Curmisagios, were the Belgae, whose own name was borrowed in 1790 by the subjects of the then Austrian Netherlands for the short-lived Etats-Belgiques-Unis – United States of Belgium – they set up during a soon-crushed rebellion against the Emperor in far-away Vienna.
The name Belgium was revived 40 years later, in 1830, by the Roman Catholic Flemings and Walloons of the old Austrian Netherlands for their own new country after they rose against the Protestant Dutch who dominated the post-Napoleonic United Kingdom of the Netherlands. In the 20th century the beers made in Belgium were championed by Michael Jackson, who – some of you can see where this is going already – called himself the Beer Hunter, and who was thus, in the language once spoken in ancient Belgium, the Curmisagios.
Cornell also is right to recommend Michael Jackson’s Beer Companion if you are going to read only one from the Beer Hunter.
I hope to read, and re-read, everything the beer hunter wrote.