The Eurovision Song Contest was first broadcast in 1956. In the age before satellites, the simultaneous linking of television outlets across all of Europe was a stunning technological achievement that foretold the future of the broadcast industry. It was also the beginning of a wonderfully peculiar and uniquely European institution. The pan-European celebration of musical [...]
Look out for the bull. The Schlitz Malt Liquor bull. Nobody makes malt liquor like Schlitz. Look out for the bull. I woke up with this dusty old commercial jingle looping in my head this morning. I don’t know why. But it got me thinking about malt liquor. Not something I do very often. Recently, [...]
My friend Mark recently stumbled on an article about Sahti, a primitive beer from Finland. Mark is a Brit who is married to a Fin. He and his wife came to the Minnesota just over a year ago from Finland. When I started Mark homebrewing last summer I warned him (and his wife) that the [...]
Tis the season… The cold weather has finally arrived, at least up here in the North Country, and each week brings new seasonal beer releases. It’s the season for Christmas beers and winter warmers. What exactly is it that makes a beer a Christmas beer? To generalize, holiday ales tend to have higher alcohol content, [...]
