Do You Believe In Magic?

[Equidae]

Before we set out to accomplish this I think we should all preemptively hook our kidneys to a dialysis machine.

[DaRC]

*stands on her Beer Snob Soapbox*
Agreed. Weisse beer and bocks mean Germany wins! Second would be Trappist beer, and they're primarily Belgian.

OK I feel a challenge coming on. Weiss Beer and Bock beer are also available here in decent quality. I will join the Eastern neighbours in their October Feste so I will try to compare.
Trapists are nice, I agree. Although I am more prone to the blonds.

Sorry to drag the comparison further, but each season has its beers and tastes. I like a good white beer on the beach in summer, but in the fall a decent Bock. I think the tour the beer should be prolonged.

Personally I will skip the Pilsners, like Stella, Heineke, Amstel etc. Unless it is a Grolsch.

I believe you Lager Boys s/Gals should try real ale... http://www.beer-pages.com/stories/wychwood.htm
Shiner Bock's ok although it did use to give me the most evil hangovers and Stella is busy trying to advertise it's way away from it's UK nickname = "Wife beater".

But proper beer is best - Dark Star are my favourite local Brewery, my wife prefers the fruity flavours of Badger Ale's "Golden Glory" & "Champion" but British breweries are built around the seasons; they produce dark rich winter ale's, followed by lighter spring / summer ale's, then they'll have a session ale etc... Dark Star also have a love of american hops -
http://darkstarbrewing.co.uk/beer/

[DJ Droood]

So it seems in our different worlds, we all share the same beer paradigm...a couple of brewing monopolies who sell us fizzy wee wee that we are forced to drink from time to time at friend's bbqs and sporting events, the same monopolies pretending to be "microbreweries" and selling us their very best wee wee, and a handful of obscure regional brewers that we can search out if we want to drink something real....and it tastes like magic!

[Red Raven]

I've always had a taste for Scots beer and now I live up here... well, what can I say! Lots of choice, they even make their own wines which are also excellent. Favourite beer atm...
http://www.williamsbrosbrew.com/beerboa ... eather-ale
and favourite wine maker...
http://cairnomohr.homestead.com/

RR

[Equidae]

*stands on her Beer Snob Soapbox*
Agreed. Weisse beer and bocks mean Germany wins! Second would be Trappist beer, and they're primarily Belgian.

OK I feel a challenge coming on. Weiss Beer and Bock beer are also available here in decent quality. I will join the Eastern neighbours in their October Feste so I will try to compare.
Trapists are nice, I agree. Although I am more prone to the blonds.

Sorry to drag the comparison further, but each season has its beers and tastes. I like a good white beer on the beach in summer, but in the fall a decent Bock. I think the tour the beer should be prolonged.

Personally I will skip the Pilsners, like Stella, Heineke, Amstel etc. Unless it is a Grolsch.

I believe you Lager Boys s/Gals should try real ale... http://www.beer-pages.com/stories/wychwood.htm
Shiner Bock's ok although it did use to give me the most evil hangovers and Stella is busy trying to advertise it's way away from it's UK nickname = "Wife beater".

But proper beer is best - Dark Star are my favourite local Brewery, my wife prefers the fruity flavours of Badger Ale's "Golden Glory" & "Champion" but British breweries are built around the seasons; they produce dark rich winter ale's, followed by lighter spring / summer ale's, then they'll have a session ale etc... Dark Star also have a love of american hops -
http://darkstarbrewing.co.uk/beer/

That's funny because in America Shiner Bock is a niche beer, and it's mostly bought by beer enthusiasts. PBR used to be the wife beater drink before the hipsters got a hold of it. Currently Keystone and Milwaukee's Best seem to have assumed the title. Natty Lite is a frat boy beer with one of the most obnoxious marketing campaigns I've ever seen. Budweiser and Miller are for people who haven't figured out that beer is supposed to taste good.

[Equidae]

So it seems in our different worlds, we all share the same beer paradigm...a couple of brewing monopolies who sell us fizzy wee wee that we are forced to drink from time to time at friend's bbqs and sporting events, the same monopolies pretending to be "microbreweries" and selling us their very best wee wee, and a handful of obscure regional brewers that we can search out if we want to drink something real....and it tastes like magic!

Doesn't InBev own over half the world beer market?

[Merlyn]

I have to believe in the magic of beer...
It really does work.
After about...so many...my wife becomes 10 years younger

All that goes away though the next day, and well...I feel 10 years older....
Gotta watch that magic if you are single and in a bar...

[Lily]

me's just enjoying a wee dram of magic - waters of life or uisghe beatha

[StephenThomas]

It's been a while since I've been on the boards. I'm glad to see you folks came around to my wy of thinking about magic!

Single malt magic is best. It turns me witty beyond belief and invincible!

[Equidae]

I've been wanting to try one of those home beer brewing kits, and fortunately for me I never get hangovers . I like all kinds of beer, not just lagers, but Hefeweissan will always be my one true love! The brand with the monk on the front was the first beer I could legally buy, and indefinitely confiscated the giant drinking glass with the beer logo on the front. The main exceptions for me are that fermented piss swill that you can buy by the suitcase, smokey beers, and wine coolers. I know that isn't beer, but it's an evil tasty delicious that will get me to drink over a six pack waaaaaay too fast.

[Equidae]

It's been a while since I've been on the boards. I'm glad to see you folks came around to my wy of thinking about magic!

Single malt magic is best. It turns me witty beyond belief and invincible!

Hey, it's better than those liquor lovers who somehow think it's a show of manhood to drink something that feels similar to kicking kicked in the face by a mule.

[DJ Droood]

Hey, it's better than those liquor lovers who somehow think it's a show of manhood to drink something that feels similar to kicking kicked in the face by a mule.

ahhhh yes...tequila....the Mayan doomsday machine....I like to think of liquor as not so much a test of manhood as a time-management device....contact with the Divine, which can take the beer drinker hours of effort and trips to the loo, can be achieved quickly and efficiently with the help of only a little salt and lemon.

[Merlyn]

AHhhhh.....Tequila has it's own magical spells....unique to gender.
It seems that robust doses of tequila will result in women ending up sky clad and often in a rather wild mood.
For me I find it always results in a shape-shifting and in extreme cases additionally finding myself in some other place or even time...

Then there is the worm...of Mezcal..
The maguey was one of the most sacred plants in pre-Hispanic Mexico, and had a privileged position in religious rituals, mythology and the economy. Cooking of the “piña” or heart of the maguey and fermenting its juice was known. The origin of this drink has a myth. It is said that a lightning bolt struck an agave plant, cooking and opening it, releasing its juice. For this reason, the liquid is called the “elixir of the gods


The worm

It is a misconception that some tequilas contain a 'worm' in the bottle. Only certain mezcals, usually from the state of Oaxaca, are ever sold con gusano, and that only began as a marketing gimmick in the 1940s. The worm is actually the larval form of the moth Hypopta agavis that lives on the agave plant. Finding one in the plant during processing indicates an infestation and, correspondingly, a lower quality product. However this misconception continues, and even with all the effort and marketing to represent tequila as a premium—similar to the way cognac is viewed in relation to brandy—there are some opportunist producers for the shooters-and-fun market who blur these boundaries.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mezcal

The lore and magic of this sacred drink is surrounded by Myth

[DaRC]

It seems that robust doses of tequila will result in women ending up sky clad and often in a rather wild mood.

Ahh the hard stuff I've always found that Goldschlager does that: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldschl%C3%A4ger
Whilst the 4 stages of Tequila can be fun I've always found Jagermeister to have a certain magic. Of course at home I ensure that there is a selection of Single Malts for tippling.

But beer in the UK is a much deeper relationship & local breweries aren't micro breweries. The local water influences the beer and people grow up drinking their local beer - generations have grown up drinking that beer.
There are micro breweries in the UK but local breweries are bigger and can expand to be very large (such as Greene King or Hall & Woodhouse) but are independent of the multi-nationals (and proud of it).
In fact lager (aka American for beer) sales are in decline whilst real ale sales are not.

[Merlyn]

Appalachain Brewing Company is a kind of "local" brew here in the US. It began as a small thing and grew a bit.
http://abcbrew.com/

Appalachian Brewing Company is located in a historic downtown building. The impressive three-story brick and heavy timber structure, was built circa 1915. The lagering room portion of the brewery dates to 1890. Throughout the brewery, antique brick walls, massive wooden beams, hardwood floors and ceilings provide a warmth and inner glow rivaled only by the beer itself. We are proud to be the first brewery in the Pennsylvania State Capital since 1951. ABC serves fresh innovative cuisine to match our tremendous handcrafted ales and lagers!

They serve a sampler, with a small portion of each brew, then we pick one we like for the evening
The whole place is kind of magical, as is the brick oven pizza! (yum)

One must recycle, and turn in the old bottles to be sure.

[DJ Droood]

Appalachain Brewing Company is a kind of "local" brew here in the US. It began as a small thing and grew a bit.
http://abcbrew.com/

Hey, I think I visited the Camp Hill one on Pa. when we did our Civil War battlefields tour a couple of years ago!

[Equidae]

Hey, it's better than those liquor lovers who somehow think it's a show of manhood to drink something that feels similar to kicking kicked in the face by a mule.

ahhhh yes...tequila....the Mayan doomsday machine....I like to think of liquor as not so much a test of manhood as a time-management device....contact with the Divine, which can take the beer drinker hours of effort and trips to the loo, can be achieved quickly and efficiently with the help of only a little salt and lemon.

So tequila was invented just to get back at us for those smallpox blankets? The funniest results I've seen tend to happen via Wild Turkey. The only liquor that tastes halfway decent is Goldschlager, and I was ruined on that because I drank too much too fast and got horribly sick. Now just the smell makes me want to hurl.

[Merlyn]

Knowing that alcohol is more likely going to cause harm, best to take it's magical charm in moderation eh?

Of the more magical things... we are learning that Hemp has a number of magical qualities, and I am not speaking to the ones that make the mind wander..
If used as a veggie, it can heal in a wide spectrum of ways. Just how the body reacts and then corrects its immune system is becoming a science, and science is just the other side of the fine line we know as magic.

Our government in the US has flipped out over pot since the reefer madness days, and wiped off every page of our history books, that fact Hemp was a mandatory crop and still could be an answer to so many problems we have on just about every front.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgEP9FdI ... re=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ew8rkv5s ... re=related
We do know that the human mind can be aware of magical realms...and some use ways not so good for the body....
And we do however need to deal with the problems....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hqFYC8p ... re=related

Prohibition is beginning to abate, as time moves on. Of the odd magical plants we see that such a vastly usable plant like Hemp would transform so many things, from paper to fuel, if it wasn't being prohibited.

Heaven forbid.. we get stoned... it then of course makes one passive and that is just not in the line of government thoughts. . .

It is the healing ability of the plant when eaten that is under the scientific microscope now and that the claims of dangers of the plant were fabricated and frankly false.
This of course goes hand in hand with other magical remedies like Golden Seal, Echinacea, and so on, that have been ignored and replaced with very dangerous drugs that have verified serious side effects that are deadly when used for long terms, and that the progressive problems we have IMO are directly related to the absence of our age old use of herbal remedies.

What was told to us in the Regan era, is false. Feeding a monkey a year's worth of cannabis in one day and then claiming brain cells die (due to the lack of oxygen) and other "scientific" studies done at the time were of course gerrymandered science by government grant money used to make answers not true science.

[DJ Droood]

Our government in the US has flipped out over pot since the reefer madness days, and wiped off every page of our history books, that fact Hemp was a mandatory crop and still could be an answer to so many problems we have on just about every front.

"Two of my favorite things are sitting on my front porch smoking a pipe of sweet hemp, and playing my Hohner harmonica."

-Abraham Lincoln

[Merlyn]

It's no doubt that the making of many musical styles come from the magical influence of mind altering substance. And just as inspiring, even more so, the magic of nature and the natural wonders.
Music, in its own right, can be a magical thing..

Like so many things, magic plays its music in the harmony of mind and body. The dance expressions of music will speak in ways words cannot.