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Milestones

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I still have a '66 Mustang (in pieces) in the garage. Barb had nothing to do with its state of disrepair!

The Mustang might still be alive if it were a Karmann Ghia!!!
The Tree watches Disney movies! Who would ever guess!!
 
Two hundred years ago today, on 22 April 1821, the Ottoman sultan decided to show the Greek rebels that Turkey means serious business. It was Easter Sunday for the Orthodox, and hanging Patriarch Gregory V, who moonlighted as the formal leader of Greek community in Constantinople, from the main gate of his residence sent a clear message.

Well, perhaps not the message the sultan intended to broadcast -- I suppose one could divine the glare of the guns of Navarino playing on that gate.
 
Two hundred years ago today, on 22 April 1821, the Ottoman sultan decided to show the Greek rebels that Turkey means serious business. It was Easter Sunday for the Orthodox, and hanging Patriarch Gregory V, who moonlighted as the formal leader of Greek community in Constantinople, from the main gate of his residence sent a clear message.

Well, perhaps not the message the sultan intended to broadcast -- I suppose one could divine the glare of the guns of Navarino playing on that gate.
Yes, there are many milestones coming up in Greece this year - we overlooked the bicentennial of the beginning of the War of Independence on March 25th. Interesting that the best coverage I find is from Xinhua News Agency!

 
On this day 140 years ago, The G&S operetta, "Patience or Bunthorne's Bride" had its first performance at the Opera Comique*, London. Sparing no one, G&S satirized the Aesthetic Movement, and, generally, all fads, superficiality, vanity, hypocrisy, and pretentiousness, as well as romantic love, rural simplicity, and military bluster.

* In an action of all-too-frequent cultural vandalism, the Opera Comique was demolished in 1902, to make way for the construction of the Aldwych and Kingsway.
1901_WychStreet.jpg
 
On this day in 1516, the Duke of Bavaria adopted the purity law, or Reinheitsgebot, which limited what ingredients could go in beer—barley, hops, and water—and set the price of the drink. This was done in an effort to keep beer prices low, prioritize wheat for bread and limit beer additives.
:Saeufer:
 
On this day in 1516, the Duke of Bavaria adopted the purity law, or Reinheitsgebot, which limited what ingredients could go in beer—barley, hops, and water—and set the price of the drink. This was done in an effort to keep beer prices low, prioritize wheat for bread and limit beer additives.
:Saeufer:
No doubt, our German readers will correct me, but I believe that these laws were only suspended for periods during both World Wars.
 
So about the beer purity law, the first I heard about was issued in the city of Weimar in 1348 and only allowed water, barley and hops. The Bavarian purity law is the better known (1516) but was strangely changed as early as 1551 when coriander and laurel were also allowed as beer ingredients. In 1616 things got worse when salt, juniper and caraway were allowed to be added to beer.
And to suspend the purity law in the former GDR, some breweries were instructed to use rice for brewing beer due to a lack of raw materials from 1975 onwards. It was a terrible brew that usually became cloudy after a few days.
 
It was still an issue after the war, since Germany used these regulations to protect its own beer market from import from other EU countries. In 1987 the use of the law for import bans has been abolished.
So the situation now is that beer brewed in Germany must still conform to the Reinheitsgebot? Or only beers with designated 'appellations of origin' or suchlike?
 
Beer brewed in Germany should still comply with the purity law (Reinheitsgebot), but recently more and more craft beers have appeared that can also contain wheat and oats and are sometimes made with fruits such as cherries. In the early 1990s, I myself received a selection of Belgian beers from the Dutch company I worked for, for Christmas. At that time in Germany completely unusual flavors pineapple beer, banana beer, cherry beer and I have to say it tasted unusual but not bad.
 
Beer brewed in Germany should still comply with the purity law (Reinheitsgebot), but recently more and more craft beers have appeared that can also contain wheat and oats and are sometimes made with fruits such as cherries. In the early 1990s, I myself received a selection of Belgian beers from the Dutch company I worked for, for Christmas. At that time in Germany completely unusual flavors pineapple beer, banana beer, cherry beer and I have to say it tasted unusual but not bad.
My first taste of Weißbier converted me to its flavour. A Kriek is lovely on a hot day for one drink at lunchtime, but if planning several in an evening session, for me the taste is overwhelming.
 
Yes, I've had wheat beer - Belgian I think it was, but maybe German - and agree, a very good refreshing taste, a nice summer beer.
Don't drink too much of it - it's about three times stronger than dear old English Bitter! :eek:

(Thus speaks the voice of experience... :facepalm: )
 
By the way, I just read that the stronger German beers still according to the "Reinheitsgebot" are "Starkbier(e)" which once were invented by monks to survive the period of fasting. They have at least a proportion of 6,5 % Alcohol and of 16 % "Stammwürze" (= the proportion of hops and malt in water before yeast is added for the fermentation), but I was surprised - no, really shocked - to read that the very strongest possible German beer still according to the "Reinheitsgebot" is "Eisbock"-Beer, which is "concentrated" beer because of freezing it once below 0 degrees Celsius. So, the "Schorschbock" is said to have 57 % Alcohol, much more than 18 % "Stammwürze", 110 kcal in 100 Milli-Liter and you should not drink it pure without a hospital near your location. (The word "Bockbier" is said to have derived from a master brewer coming from "Einbeck" in Northern Germany to Bavaria and his beer was called in the German spelling of around 1520 the "Ainpöckisch Bier" which transformed in Bavaria to "Bockbier".)

Sources:





... and it can be useful to be German, when you order German beer in a restaurant or a pub in the Germany-surrounding countries because I once was guest in a restaurant in Brussels together with a German professor, his assistant working for his doctor's degree, and a mixture of Romanian and German students. The restaurant was Italian and we were sitting outside on a sunny afternoon, when the assistant asked his professor if he could make a sip of his beer because his own was tasting like cherry. Both really tasted each other's beers and came to the very "scientific conclusion" that they were a bit cheated by different cheaper beers which could not have been German.

The professor called an obviously Italian servant, asked him to taste their beers, the cherry one last, and told him it was not what they had ordered and they would like to get what they wanted. From inside, we really heard a short time later in Italian, which was understood easily by the Romanian students: "How could you serve this beer mixed with others to Germans? Are you crazy? You go out, apologize for this mistake and give all of them a new beer - half on our and your costs!" And so, it happened. Amen.

OK, we all were probably regarded to be typical German "smart asses" on a voyage abroad in Belgium but we all got really good beer for free in the second round ...
:eek: :Saeufer: :facepalm:
 
Don't drink too much of it - it's about three times stronger than dear old English Bitter! :eek:

(Thus speaks the voice of experience... :facepalm: )
That's probably why my memory of it is a bit hazy. But I do recall it was ve ... rrrr...y good! :beer-toast1:
 
Once in 2019 (yes, it was still possible at the time) during a bus trip to Sangerhausen in the Beer museum, I only tasted about 30ml (1uk fl oz) of Eisbock because in the cellar it was almost 0 ° C and outside 35 ° C. The mistake of drinking several glasses of strong beer in a cool cellar when it's very hot, I made in 1981 in the U Fleků in Prague. We all had a few glasses of the excellent beer and then out in the city in the middle of summer in the sunshine. You can imagine the result.
 
Oh yeah, I've almost forgotten that 1900 years ago today, on 26 April 121, a boy whose name was likely Marcus Annius Catilius Severus was born to a Roman senator from Spain.

Who?

We know him as Marcus Aurelius -- a series of adoptions made him emperor forty years later, and he's one of the well-remembered ones.
 
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