Sunday Reading

They treated the rest of that day as though it was a Sunday, that is to say what you should expect of a Sunday. You need time for big and complicated new concepts to shake themselves down in your brain slowly, without damaging what is already there.

— Terry Pratchett & Stephen Baxter, The Long Earth

Pretty Things 'Jack d'Or' (My house, 15 December 2013)
Pretty Things ‘Jack d’Or’ — on a Sunday, just not this particular Sunday

I’ve got a few longer-form and more-detailed ponderings on the go at the moment — a catch-up on All Things Moa in the year-and-some since their infamous IPO, and an attempt to build a bulwark against some of the more-annoying and more-absurd bits of the recent Moral Panic around beer (too-often standing in for “booze in general”) and the reflex to restrict its availability. But it’s a Sunday, and they never feel like the occasion for such heavy-lifting — except perhaps in the garden — so I’ve instead happily been going through my pile of Interesting Miscellaneous Things To Read.

Back when I was a paperboy, we relished January as a month of lighter-than-usual deliveries thanks to the end of holiday advertising a the general Slow News Month. In the beer world, at least, it seems there’s no such effect:

Kerbal Space Program: A unfortuantely-doomed attempt at orbit
Kerbal Space Program: An unfortunately-doomed attempt at orbit

1: Speaking of which, as I mentioned the other day when writing up my own (at the time accidental) manifesto on the same, I also hugely recommend Matt Kirkegaard’s recent radio ramble on that point (while pimping a Brisbane beer festival). His recent ‘Tao Of Beer’ musing is also absolutely worth a look — and interestingly also clipped the same Hipsters Love Beer video that The Wireless illustrated my piece with; it seems that satire also struck a chord, or even a nerve (as it should). 
2: Something that my day job also just succumbed to
3: Which reminds me: welcome to the fold, Buzz and Hum — a very promising new blog on one man’s love of good beer and good music. Exactly what I was in the mood for after the Jono Galuszka podcast

4 thoughts on “Sunday Reading”

  1. Thanks for the tips! I enjoyed the beer and biodiversity short. Though wouldn’t mind seeing a “part two” where a rata seed lands on a big tree, sends down a load of vines to the ground to hog all the water, relentlessly enveloping and suffocating the big tree in a long but inevitable “big tree death” and marking the beginning of a beautiful forest of rata in which people can enjoy the flowers(or take them home) regardless of the time of day so long as they are responsible.

  2. Cheers for the welcome back, Phil. I have to say though, in my case, contract brewing (or the weird hands-on version we practice) means I effectively have two jobs, and makes for less time if anything! I just decided it was something I missed and needed to get back into the habit of doing.

    I love that you picked up on the trough-dwellers ensuring they are looked after first, re: Bellamy’s. As it is with the small things, so it is with the big…

  3. Hey Phil, the Trappist Dancecard is getting longer still.

    I tried the new NL Trappist Zundert in Cafe Rose Red (a bar which specialises in having ALL the Trappist Beers in stock), Brugge last weekend – a 7,5% amber/dubbel which I thought quite good in its proper glass. Smooth, neat and intelligent in the usual Dutch beer way.

    The Mont Des Cats is nothing-special golden ale and most Flemish Beer Folk do NOT consider it a proper Trappist, as it seems Chimay is doing pretty much everything for them. The Austrian flagship brew is OK, I much prefer their Benno, a cloudy/golden type ale of 6,5, very more-ish.

    Haven’t heard much about the Spencer US one yet, hasn’t got much past its home state as far as I know.

    Bought some Westvleteren 8’s (blue cap) for my cellar a Eur 8,95 a pop in the beer shop just off the Main Square in Brugge, they also had the green (@ 6,95) and yellow caps (@11,95), plenty of stock. Hope you get to Belgium sometime soon, mate, it’s a beer lovers PARADISE.

    Cheers! B

    1. I’d love to get some proper Beer Tourism done. I wasn’t even Of Age last time I was out of Australasia!

      Cheers for the pointers. But now I’m really craving a big gloopy Belgian beer, which doesn’t really suit this weather. Or 3 o’clock in the afternoon!

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