Drink!

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Re: Drink!

Postby Boreades » 8:19 pm

TisILeclerc wrote: Has anyone mentioned the holy connection with water, booze and other things yet?


Ma wee cousin MacBoreades tells me this is still widely celebrated in Scotland, via a much favoured brew: Buckie. Or to give it its proper name, Buckfast Tonic Wine (a 15% wine fortified with caffeine), first brewed by the industrious Benedictine monks at Buckfast Abbey.

The recipe for the Tonic wine is attributed to the original French monks who settled at the Abbey in the 1880's.

http://www.buckfast.org.uk/tonic-wine_105.html

Buckfast Abbey is also famous among beekeepers. Britain's native black honeybee is a suitably Celtic bee. It is dark and hairy, and regarded as too lazy and aggressive. That's in comparison to the Italian bees the Buckfast monks imported. The immigrants work harder and achieve more, and are more pleasant while they do it. (Careful, we're only talking about bees). The honey from the bees is important in the production of mead, also still made on the Holy Island of Lindisfarne.

Lindisfarne Mead is a unique alcoholic fortified wine manufactured here on the Holy Island of Lindisfarne. The honey which is used in the production of Lindisfarne Mead is drawn from the four corners of the world and here, on the island, it is vatted with fermented grape juice, honey, herbs, and the pure natural water of an artesian well and fortified with fine spirits to produce this unique drink.


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Quality controllers at work.

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Tha'sh the fourth bottle, an' it still doen tash' right.
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Re: Drink!

Postby TisILeclerc » 9:44 pm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i24E6wQ3eMs


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szGNXMAxgs4

Iz is wha' ra mean jammy?

I'm not sure whether Lindisfarne mead has anything to do with monks, although I may be wrong.

What is interesting about monks and bees is that the bees not only produce honey which can be a salve or a drink or a food but they also produce wax which was very useful for candles and other waxy things. They also pollinate the crops which is quite useful even if Monsanto disagree.
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Re: Drink!

Postby Boreades » 10:10 pm

i've just been reminded by a virtuous pilgrim how grateful we should be for the clerical transcriptions of the worthy.
Here's one they prepared earlier:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ij5mw_eqKuc
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Re: Drink!

Postby TisILeclerc » 10:59 pm

That reminds me. All those colliery brass bands and steel working brass bands.

Is this a megalithic leftover?

Is it tied in with those Keralian brass players mentioned earlier? Although the Irish seemed to go for wood eventually rather than metal. Did the Cornish and Welsh stop supplying them with metal?
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Re: Drink!

Postby Boreades » 10:07 pm

Did Vikings drink gin?

Plans for an Orkney craft distillery – the first in the islands – have been given the go-ahead by the Islands Council.

“As people will hopefully see from the images of the new distillery, we’ve tried to create an attractive building that fits in well with its harbour front location. The siting of the distillery was particularly important for us, given the seafaring and Norse themes in our branding, so we’re really delighted to get the go-ahead.”


http://www.orcadian.co.uk/2016/06/green ... ery-plans/

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Orkney Distilling Limited’s distillery, visitor centre and shop, on Ayre Road

Kirkjuvagr Gin would be officially launched in Kirkwall in early August, with the first batches sold exclusively in Orkney. “Over the past few months we’ve fine-tuned our recipe for Kirkjuvagr and are confident we’ve created a gin that’s going to make a real impact on the marketplace,” he said. “It’s a gin that’s going to be uniquely Orcadian, reflecting the qualities our islands are renowned for. There’s a nod to our Viking heritage in the recipe, but Kirkjuvagr is very much a drink for the modern, discerning gin enthusiast.” -


https://caterlyst.com/caterlyst3/insigh ... px?n=13872
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Re: Drink!

Postby Boreades » 11:03 pm

Ma wee cousin MacBoreades keeps sending me stuff. Latest is advertising for the Isle of Islay.

Islay, the 'Queen of the Hebrides', is probably best known for its peaty, smoky whiskies. Some say they are the best in the whole world. Home to eight working distilleries, Islay definitely has the process of making the stuff down to a fine art. Sláinte!

Peat is still cut from the mosslands, giving the 'Islay malts' their distinct flavours. The island is perfectly placed for whisky production, with its pure water source, sea spray and fertile lands for growing barley. The distilleries welcome visitors to watch the production process and, even better, sample their delights.


Well, that's all very well for people that like the stuff. Personally, I can't stand it. But that's an artefact of my misspent youth. See the Bells bottles.

My question is : how long have they been brewing the stuff in the Western Isles?
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Re: Drink!

Postby Boreades » 4:18 pm

My neighbours have reinvented a benefit of the purity of chalk aquifers.

Vodka.

On the rolling chalk downs of Wiltshire, we grow a very special wheat. It is distilled, filtered and blended with water from an ancient aquifer to create a vodka with a distinctly English accent.

"A distinctive and enigmatic character, with a broader range of characteristics than certain other vodkas in the deluxe sector" Ian Wisniewski, author - Classic Vodka

http://www.ramsbury.com/distillery


In TME-times, surely they would have been producing gin?

Any "ancient aquifers" means they are using "Fossil Water"

“Fossil water” or paleowater is a somewhat broadly-used term to describe water that has been contained in some undisturbed space, usually groundwater in an aquifer, for millennia or longer ... “Fossil groundwater” can be defined as “water that infiltrated usually millennia ago and often under climatic conditions different from the present, and that has been stored underground since that time.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil_water


If that's the case, they may well be brewing now with water that fell when Avebury was being built.
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Re: Drink!

Postby Mick Harper » 7:38 pm

In TME-times, surely they would have been producing gin?


Certainly Wltshire is juniper-country according to this site
http://www.wsbrc.org.uk/GetInvolved/50S ... plate.aspx
though we'll have to go some to get distilling invented before 1100 AD or so. Maybe they were doing it on brochs.

On the rolling chalk downs of Wiltshire, we grow a very special wheat. It is distilled, filtered and blended with water from an ancient aquifer to create a vodka with a distinctly English accent.


I smell the hand of a PR man. Note the word 'blended'. I don't know anywhere in Britain where wheat is other than rain-grown. Even in droughts I can't remember pix of farmers spraying water -- and it would be newsworthily iconic if they ever have. A bloke with a watering-can just to pass the Advertising Standards Authority would be my guess.
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Re: Drink!

Postby Boreades » 8:10 pm

RTFM?
"It is distilled, filtered and blended with water " - that's the vodka distillate, not the wheat.

I wish you hadn't emphasised "blended" - that brings back memories of very bad experiences with Bells Whisky. :-( :-(
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Re: Drink!

Postby TisILeclerc » 8:25 pm

All you need really is a very cold climate and you can freeze distil alcohol. What you need is the basic alcohol like cider and after a while you've got a spirit.

Freeze distillation: As you probably well know, alcohol freezes at a lower temperature than water. Historically Applejacks could only be made during the winter (for obvious reasons). During the colonial period producers would leave Apple cider out in the cold. Every morning they would go out and wipe off all the ice that had accumulated. The colder the apple cider got, the more it would freeze. The more ice they took out, the higher the alcohol content.


http://www.distillingliquor.com/2015/02 ... tillation/
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