Researchers create old brews. Really old brews.
The truest alcohol enthusiasts will try almost anything to conjure the libations of old. They’ll slaughter goats to fashion fresh wineskins, so the vintage takes on an authentically gamey taste. They’ll brew beer in dung-tempered pottery or boil it by dropping in hot rocks. The Anchor Steam Brewery, in San Francisco, once cribbed ingredients from a 4,000-year-old hymn to Ninkasi, the Sumerian beer goddess.
And here I am drinking a bottle of Heineken—it seems so bland without the mugwort. Do those Amsterdam brewers have a beer goddess?
“I keep telling people that beer is more important than armies when it comes to understanding people.”
At the intersection of Paganism, beer fandom, and looking to local sources of food and drink, I often find craft breweries or brew pubs. And I get my beer from them. Rather than from national companies or imports (although I admit that in earlier times, beer fandom guided me to prefer imports). Cascadia is home to plenty of good to excellent craft breweries. A blessing!
I believe–and want to believe–that local beers carry spirits of the local land (even if some ingredients may not be local). It’s the alchemy going on in the local brewhouse!
Colorado.com, the official site of Colorado tourism, says Colorado has more than 100. Maybe it’s time to put aside the import (from the global corporation) and drink the local brews…
http://www.colorado.com/Breweries.aspx
Seriously, Heineken is the worst of Dutch beers (well, after Amstel perhaps). We way better stuff. Mass-production does not have to lead to Heineken. Perhaps you should visit Belgium or Germany, then you can really enjoy yourself.
German beers have never been the same since they took the henbane out. Ask Christian Rätsch.