Pipe cleaner probably.escargot1 said:What's it taste like, though? :lol:
Ronson8 said:Pipe cleaner probably.escargot1 said:What's it taste like, though? :lol:
How long before you officially need a license, in the UK, before you can home brew?Ronson8 said:I can see the sale of beer and wine kits going through the roof!
Pietro_Mercurios said:How long before you officially need a license, in the UK, before you can home brew?Ronson8 said:I can see the sale of beer and wine kits going through the roof!
Lorry carrying wine and sherry catches fire and closes M1 near Leeds
An entire section of the M1 motorway was sealed off after a lorry carrying bottles of wine and sherry caught fire which spread to nearby fields.
THe HGV burst into flames at around 7.30pm on Wednesday night on the hard shoulder of the southbound carriageway between Junctions 47 near Garforth and 48 where it becomes the A1(M).
The driver was unhurt but the motorway was sealed off because of the dangerous amount of smoke billowing across the lanes.
The carriageways were both closed at Junction 47 with drivers diverted down the A1/M.
A West Yorkshire Fire Service spokesman said: "It (the fire) was on the hard shoulder but we've closed the lanes off as a precaution because there was a lot of smoke billowing across the carriageway so it would have been a definite danger to other vehicles. The driver was unhurt and wasn't carrying anything hazardous."
Timble2 said:So you're Pimm's Communists rather than Champagne Socialists?
Courts get 'booze Asbo' powers
Drinkers could be banned from pubs or off-licences for up to two years
People in England and Wales who commit crimes or behave anti-socially while drunk could now face a Drinking Banning Order - or "booze Asbo".
Under powers coming into force on Monday, police and councils can seek an order on anyone aged 16 and over.
Magistrates can then ban them from pubs, bars, off-licences and certain areas for up to two years. Anyone who breaches the order faces a £2,500 fine.
But critics say the measure is a gimmick that fails to tackle the issue.
Alcohol charities said the orders could work as part of a number of measures.
Culture change
Home Office minister Alan Campbell said crime and disorder linked to alcohol cost the UK billions of pounds every year.
"These orders will stop those people who are well known to the authorities, licensees and often the communities where they live, from ruining lives - and will make them face up to their destructive behaviour," he added.
It will be jelly bean Asbos for sugared-up kids next. Surely it's time to call last orders on endless new legislation
Isabella Sankey, Liberty
Send us your comments
Jeremy Beadles, the chief executive of the Wine and Spirit Trade Association which represents companies in the industry, said "tough enforcement" against offenders is "critical if we are to change the culture around problem drinking".
Don Shenker, chief executive of Alcohol Concern, gave the orders a more cautious welcome.
"Policing of alcohol-related crime must go hand in hand with more robust measures to curb irresponsible and illegal sales and improved treatment pathways for dependent drinkers," he said.
Metropolitan Police Commander Simon O'Brien, who speaks for the Association of Chief Police Officers on alcohol licensing, said the orders "add to the toolbox of tactics" in tackling drunken and persistent offenders.
Alcohol pricing
But civil liberties group Liberty dismissed the new measure as gimmicks that did not get to the root cause of the problem.
Policy director Isabella Sankey said: "How many times can you spin a new 'crackdown' without tackling the causes of offending behaviour?
"It will be jelly bean Asbos for sugared-up kids next. Surely it's time to call last orders on endless new legislation."
Professor Ian Gilmore, president of the Royal College of Physicians, believes the government needs to end the availability of cheap alcohol.
"The biggest single driver of health-related harm and, indeed, criminal harm from alcohol is the availability and that is being driven by price."
Rehabilitation courses
John Thornhill, chairman of the Magistrates Association, said he was "not happy that it will work".
He added: "We are not satisfied that these will work as effectively as perhaps some of the Asbos have. Clearly the issue is about tackling why it is these people have an alcohol dependency.
Some offenders may be referred to a course to address their drinking, and if successfully completed, could see the length of the order reduced.
The participant, not the government, is expected to cover the costs of the Positive Behaviour Intervention Courses, from £120 to £250.
In Scotland, Asbos can be used to prohibit people from drinking in the streets - the first such orders were imposed on four people in Dumfries in 2006.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8227236.stm
rynner2 said:Alcohol Concern chief executive Don Shenker said: "The fact is, being drunk increases your chances of getting into an accident in the first place. When judgement's impaired, we can put ourselves at risk."
Tippling through the agesPosted by Margaret Guthrie
http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/56124/
[Entry posted at 30th October 2009 03:14 PM GMT]
Among the few cultural traditions shared by human populations across time and geography is the abiding urge to make and consume alcoholic beverages. Alcohol was also one of the first medicines as well as a component of many early religious practices. But modern humans' choices are limited to a few alcoholic staples -- beer, wine, and "hard" liquor. Many of the beverages enjoyed by cultures past have been lost to the historical record.
Patrick McGovern, a University of Pennsylvania researcher who describes himself as a biomolecular archeologist, and Sam Calagione, founder and president of Delaware-based Dogfish Head Brewery, aim to rescue some of these forgotten brews using a mixture of science and craftsmanship.
The story of their collaboration began, McGovern said at a recent lecture at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Anthropology and Archaeology, with the discovery of a burial mound -- called a tumulus -- marking the eternal resting place of one of history's most famous kings. "Right upstairs, the debris from the Midas tumulus was waiting for me in small paper bags," he said. Fifty years ago University of Pennsylvania archaeologists had excavated the tumulus, located in eastern Turkey, and stored debris from vessels upstairs at the Philadelphia museum.
"[I was interested in analyzing] the intense yellowish residue in a sort of reverse engineering to try and resurrect old ingredients," McGovern explained. Using mass spectrometry and liquid chromatography, he determined that the ancient residue was a mixture of barley, honey and grapes. Since the subject of ancient beverages is dear to his heart and his palate, he explained, the next step was obvious -- "Why not try to recreate some of these ancient beverages?" For help, he turned to Calagione, who used equal proportions of the ingredients with saffron as the bittering agent to brew Midas Touch, which approximates the drink that likely flowed at celebrations or funerals during the time of the ancient king. McGovern suggested the use of saffron because hops would not have been used in Midas' time, and he thought the spice might account for the intense yellow in the residue. Midas Touch is an ale beautiful to behold and with a complex set of flavors; King Midas would have found it more than acceptable.
This first success merely whetted McGovern's thirst for reconstructing ancient fermented beverages. "The story of early mankind is humans figuring out how to chew all kinds of carbohydrates: stems, grains, roots, fruit, [looking for] what's fermentable, and that's led to a whole slew of beverages around the world," he noted. Specifically, it led McGovern to chicha -- a corn beer that's been consumed in South America for centuries -- which Calagione has also recreated at Dogfish Head. Chicha is brewed with corn that's first been chewed, human saliva acting as a fermenting agent in the brewing process. (The brewing process destroys harmful bacteria.)
McGovern and Calagione have also recreated a 3,200-year-old cacao-based ale called Theobroma, the recipe for which McGovern unearthed in Honduras. It does not taste chocolatey; rather it has an earthy flavor, a good fall brew that would pair nicely with stews or soups.
Calagione has recreated McGovern's earliest discovery (so far) of humankind's affair with alcohol. At its Delaware brewpub, Dogfish Head offers Chateau Jia Hu, which is based on a 9,000-year-old Chinese drink whose ingredients McGovern deciphered by analyzing ancient pottery sherds from an area called Jiahu, in China's Yellow River basin. He determined that Chinese rice, honey and hawthorn fruit had made the beverage.
So many ancient drinks have been resurrected by McGovern and Calagione that the researcher has written a book that takes readers all over the world in his search for man's earliest fermented beverages. McGovern places his research in the cultural context of each civilization and in doing so reveals arcane gems. For example, "the human foot, it seems, is ideally configured to extract the juice [of the grape] without breaking the seeds that introduce bitter tannins," McGovern writes in one chapter.
Uncorking the Past: The quest for wine, beer and other alcoholic beverages Patrick E McGovern, University of California Press, 348 pp. 38 illustrations, ISBN: 978-0-520-25379-7. $29.95.
Beer for the Dedicated
The BrewDog team have pulled off our most audacious and ambitious project to date, and smashed a world record in the process. We have today, Thursday 26 November 2009, set a new world record after creating the strongest beer in the world. Weighing in at an ABV of 32%, BrewDog’s ‘Tactical Nuclear Penguin’ beats the previous record of 31% held by German beer brand Schorschbraer.
This beer is about pushing the boundaries, it is about taking innovation in beer to a whole new level. It is about achieving something which has never before been done and putting Scotland firmly on the map for progressive, craft beers.
This beer is bold, irreverent and uncompromising. A beer with a soul and a purpose. A statement of intent. A modern day rebellion for the craft beer proletariat in our struggle to over throw the faceless bourgeoisie oppression of corporate, soulless beer.’
The Antarctic name inducing schizophrenia of this uber-imperial stout originates from the amount of time it spent exposed to extreme cold. This beer began life as a 10% imperial stout 18 months ago. The beer was aged for 8 months in an Isle of Arran whisky cask and 8 months in an Islay cask making it our first double cask aged beer. After an intense 16 month, the final stages took a ground breaking approach by storing the beer at -20 degrees for three weeks to get it to 32%.
For the big chill the beer was put into containers and transported to the cold store of a local ice cream factory where it endured 21 days at penguin temperatures. Alcohol freezes at a lower temperature than water. As the beer got colder BrewDog Chief Engineer, Steven Sutherland decanted the beer periodically, only ice was left in the container, creating more intensity of flavours and a stronger concentration of alcohol for the next phase of freezing. The process was repeated until it reached 32%.
Of the 500 330ml bottles released, 250 will be available for £35 with a further 250 available for £250 – the latter will include a share in the BrewDog company as part of its ‘Equity for Punks’ campaign which is aiming to raise £2.3m to build a new eco-friendly, carbon-neutral brewery in Aberdeen. Shareholders will have a say in important company decisions, receive annual dividends and will also benefit from a 20% lifetime discount off beers at www.equityforpunks.com
Beer has a terrible reputation in Britain, it’s ignorant to assume that a beer can’t be enjoyed responsibly like a nice dram or a glass of fine wine. A beer like Tactical Nuclear Penguin should be enjoyed in spirit sized measures. It pairs fantastically with vanilla bean white chocolate it really brings out the complexity of the beer and complements the powerful, smoky and cocoa flavours.
A warning on the label states: This is an extremely strong beer, it should be enjoyed in small servings and with an air of aristocratic nonchalance. In exactly the same manner that you would enjoy a fine whisky, a Frank Zappa album or a visit from a friendly yet anxious ghost.
In typical BrewDog style the beer comes packed not in an elaborate box or case, but a brown paper bag with a hand-drawn penguin on it. You can buy yours here: http://www.brewdog.com/product.php?id=46
You can invest in BrewDog at www.equityforpunks.com
http://www.brewdog.com/blog-article.php?id=214
It is about achieving something which has never before been done and putting Scotland firmly on the map for progressive, craft beers.