When cycling through the fields, mostly strawberry and asparagus, I was bowled over this May with the scent of strawberries in the air. You would come around a corner and it hit you: STRAWBERRIES. Definitely more than a whiff. But it lingered and I could keep smelling a faint strawberry scent for hours afterwards. And now, with summer gone I just need the slightest whiff of a single strawberry and I am back in the fields thinking of the quote “Doubtless God could have made a better berry, but doubtless God never did” (by Dr William Boteler, quoted via Roger Williams – or possibly somebody else).
Sometimes it’s not so much being serious and keeping up the apprearance of being serious. Now this guy has the art of keeping a straight face down patt.
I understand that the students on their bicycles are breaking free after being cooped up the whole morning. But why do they have to do it on my commute?
This beer froth – however much there is of it – is only a place holder for the beer froth I want to tell you about. Unfortunately, no pictures of that one. You’ll see why.
Open fermentation vats are part in the process of beer brewing. The liquid that will be beer is covered with a foam that is much stiffer than the stuff that ends up in a glass.
When we went to the Czech Republic to a place called Chodovar we booked into a “beer hotel”. Part of the experience was to have a beer bath.
You take a hot shower, get covered in a hot hops and barley rub, rolled in thick towels and left to stew. Then you lower yourself in a bath tub filled with this pre-beer liquid with stiff foam floating on top – very flattering particularly if you end up in a two or more people tub, it is definitely not see-through. While you lie there enjoying yourself the attendants hand you a glass of beer. They only speak Czech so whenever you want to ask something they assume you are still thirsty and they hand you another beer – if you say no they won’t force it on you but bring you a different kind of beer – pils or lager or dark or stout, take your pick.
Don’t plan anything after your beer bath. You will sink in your bed, clean as you have never been before, your skin soft like a baby’s, and oh! so tired. Whether this is from the beer you lay in or the beer you drunk, who can tell?
pictures imperfect blog 