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The Coffee Shop

  • Thread starter The Fallen Angel
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That tale is told in Ireland, the opposite one in Scotland, in fact no-one knows. Fermenting fruits and grains to make alcoholic liquor is certainly evidenced from neolithic times, and concentrating the alcoholic strength by distilling was probably discovered pretty quickly after that. More efficient methods were known to the usual suspects - Babylonians, Greeks, Arabs etc. I don't think there's any particular reason to think it came to Britain and Ireland with Christian monks (though it seems the earliest missionaries may have sailed from the Mediterranean along with the amphorae of wine and oil traded with British chieftains for furs, precious metals and slaves) But modern stills were developed in the later middle ages for medical purposes and alchemy. So I guess anywhere where barley and other suitable grains were grown, prehistoric people got the idea of brewing beer, and after that of distilling the malted liquor to make a spirit, and their skill in doing it developed over the centuries and millennia.
All of this heat over something (like leavened bread) that happened by accident when some brave soul eons ago tasted something that looked a little weird because it had been left out a little too long and found it tasty.
This back-and-forth of "just so" stories reminds me of the good old days when the US Senate was more collegial. Senators used to make bets about the superiority of their state's chili over that of rival states. (This despite the fact that chili is Mexican, and like most spiced up meat dishes is designed to disguise both the provenance and flavor of the meat. Chili can be made with American "bush meat"--rabbit, opossum, armadillo--in the southwest, at least, as well as meat from various wild and domestic ungulates.) In the Midwest, chili comes with pasta, which makes a southwesterner cringe.
Then some clever soul discovered that with vodka one could dispense with all the sophistic arguments about flavor and go right to the heart of the matter--semiconsciousness.
Merry Christmas, and a reminder from Sergeant Bill Mauldin that there have been worse years than 2020.

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All these silly claims! There are certainly Canadian Whisky, Irish Whiskey, and Scotch Whisky. Their inferiority is evidenced by their need to claim national origin with no other claim to fame.
In the US we have Bourbon, Rye, Tennessee, Sour Mash, Bottled in Bond, and Blended.
 
They are truly silly arguments. Everyone knows that Texas Chili and Texas BBQ are the best. What's the point of arguing about second best?
The only truly succulent barbecue is pork, due to the nature and high content of the fat, say, in a Boston butt (technically, upper shoulder cut). And the original Southern barbecue is slow cooked (10-12 hours) pork. Anything else is derivative from that original product as perfected by Southern slaves long before Texas had any beef cattle. Which, by the way, produce wonderful steaks, but not real barbecue.
 
While I'll agree with PARTS of that statement...Well, the next time you're down central Texas way, you let me know. I'll take you to Black's and change your mind. You haven't truly lived until you've had the fat end of a Black's brisket.
 
While I'll agree with PARTS of that statement...Well, the next time you're down central Texas way, you let me know. I'll take you to Black's and change your mind. You haven't truly lived until you've had the fat end of a Black's brisket.

I do like beef barbecue, just not as much as pork.

I was in Amarillo a couple years ago and had some excellent sliced brisket at a place called Tyler's. But I still prefer my Carolina pulled pork. (Of course, neither is as good as a Maryland soft crab. But that's like comparing apples to oranges.)

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Everyone stopped giving a toss about social distancing etc as soon as the vaccine was announced?
It's colder, so people got together indoors for the holidays. Plus, we have lots of nutty medical types (at least in the US--"the Great Barington Declaration") saying we protect "vulnerable" people (in some unspecified manner) and let it rip otherwise to get "herd immunity". Of course, that means the virus has more chance to mutate, and we get the new "English" strain. Still some people in the US who say "it's a hoax", too--one nurse said that she had patients die thinking that the virus wasn't real and something else was wrong with them. Many US hospitals are running out of ICU beds.. At the same time, the monoclonal antibody drugs that saved Trump are not being used extensively because doctors aren't certain which patients are candidates and because they require infusion in a hospital and most don't have a lot of space or time for that. People over 70 still account for most of the fatalities, but younger people ("long haulers") can have significant issues including psychiatric ones when the virus affects the brain. There are still people who won't wear a mask. This situation is beyond asinine.
 
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