The Hymn to Ninkasi is a 4,000 year old song to the Sumerian goddess of brewing, and it’s also a recipe for beer. (There’s a brewery in Eugene, Oregon named after her, but I have yet to try any of their beers.) History often shines a miraculous light on what we take for granted. Who [...]
Archive for the ‘history’ Category
Hymn to Ninkasi
December 13, 2011
What Survives
December 23, 2009
Near Finsbury Park Station there’s a boarded up old pub, a matte lapis facade festooned with a remnant of London’s disappeared beers: Meux’s Original London Stout. In every corner of London a mysterious detail hides a story; to note them is to chase ghosts. Ghosts of the drowned; of the sudden, absurd death. Even death [...]
Bronze Age Microbreweries
May 19, 2008
(In borrowed gear at the excavated burnt mound near the Tomb of the Eagles, Orkney) While in the Orkneys last year, I noticed the plethora of “burnt mounds” on the OS map, and I wondered what they might have been for. While in the visitors centre of the Tomb of the Eagles, one of the [...]
