In response to a number of requests (well, one is a number, is it not?) I though I would try to start a thread that discusses drink-related words.

Since England is primarily a beer-producing country (although we do produce significant quantities of wine) I thought I would start with beer-related terms.

So how about:

Liquor (not the name for a drink)
Fuggles
OG
Wort
Single-varietal
Goldings
Beer-engine
Mother-in-Law
Porter
Sparge

Anyone who can get ten out of ten is surely an honorary member of the Grand and Ancient Order of Boozers!

Richard English

OK, I have been thinking about this all day. I know NOTHING about beer! But let me take a stab at a couple of these (no googling here..just WAG's)

Single-varietal ~~ Could that be made out of one type of grain?

Mother-in-Law ~~ Either a very bad beer or one that causes a hangover?

OK...like I said...WAG's (Wild A** Guess)

Richard I've been drinking beer for a very long time. I visit beer festivals. My local hostelry is a splendid establishment that has a rotating selection of ten real ales changed every week. I even used to brew my own.

I only managed four out of ten on my first go, I added another after some memory searching.

Have you considered establishing a less esoteric vocabulary for yourself ?

Habent Abdenda Omnes Praeter Me ac Simiam Meam

Read all about my travels around the world here.

Zero for 10 here. Richard, I obviously am in need of you to further my education.

But I can add one more word:

gambrinous: full of beer

I managed answers for eight out of ten. Mother-in-Law and Sparge have me foxed though.

Zero for Kalleh!

I don't know how long it is customary to wait but I'll post the answers now since there have been several replies already.

Liquor (not the name for a drink) = the water used for form the wort (qv)

Fuggles = a variety of English hop

OG = Original gravity. The sepcific gravity (and therefore fermentable solids) in the wort before fermentation begins and thus a measure of the probable alcoholic content of the final drink. 1.070 is high and will produce a beer of around 7% alcohol; 1.030 is low and will produce a beer of Prohibition era strength.

Wort = The mixture of malt and water before fermentation starts

Single-varietal - Beer made using just one variety of hop

Goldings - another variety of English hop

Beer-engine = the pump used to raise the beer from the cellar to the bar. Typically operated, in those countries fortunate enough still to have them, by a truncheon-shaped handle on the bar counter.

Mother-in-Law = Old and Bitter. A mixture of Old Ale ( heavy beer more commonly drunk in the winter) and Bitter (the most common type of English beer - usually quite hoppy in flavour)

Porter = a beer style popular in London around the 1880s but revived in the 1990s. Dark, like a stout but not so heavy.

Sparge = To spray the malted barley with water to dissolve out the malt ready for fermentation.

Richard English

Well on my two WAG's, I didn't do too bad! Too bad I hadn't a clue about the other eight words though!

Hey, Richard, how about some more?

Perhaps you'd like a draft ... (of a limerick that is).

There once was a girl named Anne Heuser
Who swore no man could compromise her,
But Pabst took chance
At the Schlitz in her pants,
And now she is sadder Budweiser.

As Mr Bumble said!

I will, but later as I'm away today.

Richard English

Richard, you mentioned that wort is "the mixture of malt and water before fermentation starts". I looked up "malt" and found that it is "grain, usually barley, that has been allowed to sprout".

Why would the brewers not use plain, ordinary unsprouted grain? What is the purpose of sprouting it?

Quote

"Why would the brewers not use plain, ordinary unsprouted grain? What is the purpose of sprouting it?"

Simply because it would not make beer! Beer is made from malt, a form of sugar that is produced when barley grains sprout. Malt extract (you can buy it from any good chemist or health food store if you don't have a home-brew supplier handy) is a brown, sweet sticky substance and this is what's fermented to make real beer.

The process for making malt is relatively expensive and this is why brewers of the very poor beer substitutes found in most of the world use adjuncts such as rice - which ferments to produce alcohol but no flavour. Anheuser Busch even portray this as a benefit by listing rice as an ingredient on their bottles (though maybe this is obligatory in the US).

Those readers who are unfortunate enough to live in beer deserts could do worse than try a home-brew kit - I'm sure they're available on the web if they're not sold in shops - and at least get an idea of what real beer should taste like.

Richard English

It seems that the majority of my contributions are related to drink!
Richard suggests that beer desert inhabitants should try some home brewed beer. This is a sound idea, but take care to follow the instructions. As a child I brewed a few gallons in my mother's airing cupboard, and followed the instructions to the letter apart from the bit where you are supposed to add a teaspoonful of sugar to each bottle to "give it some sparkle." One teaspoonful seemed insufficient as far as sparkle goes so I added several extra. Apparently this has an effect on the alcoholic strength of the beer. I drank one bottle of the brew, bypassed the drunkenness stage and lapsed into unconsciousness within five minutes. Be warned!
I apologise for any grammatical or spelling mistakes in advance because I've been testing a new remedy for Irritable Bowel Syndrome. In my case this is brought on by stress ( I have plenty to spare if anyone wants some). I have tonight used alcohol as a relaxant in the form of a half bottle of Bailey's Irish Cream plus half a bottle of Grant's whisky ( drink all of it) and I can heartily recommend it to fellow sufferers. It definitely helps with the pain but an unwanted side effect is that it makes you post rubbish on message boards whilst you are under medication.

quote:

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...a new remedy for Irritable Bowel Syndrome. In my case this is brought on by stress ( I have plenty to spare if anyone wants some). I have tonight used alcohol as a relaxant in the form of a half bottle of Bailey's Irish Cream...

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Oh, dear God, I love this man!

I too used to brew beer at home but my problem when putting in too much sugar at the bottling stage was rather more dramatic than simply passing out while drinking it.

The normal procedure involves leaving the bottles to clear for some time as the sediment settles. Unfortunately the addition of the sugar causes secondary fermentation which gives the beer its 'sparkle'.

Beer bottles are pretty tough but believe me when I say that they can be made to explode !
Thirty two bottles of beer exploding on the same night make one hell of a mess of your kitchen.

si hoc legere scis nimium eruditiones habes

Read all about my travels around the world here.

OK...all this home brewing reminded me of my childhood, actually, my younger brother's. He and his friends (10 to 12 years old) got ahold of a wine making kit. One night they got together and made a batch. The folks all laughed and thought nothing more about it.

About a month later, my brother has a sleep over in the screen house in the back yard. By morning, two of the boys had gone home and the other four were sick as dogs! Mom was trying to figure out what she fed them that was bad, when someone popped up and said they had all had some of the wine.

Sure enough, there were six paper cups and an empty gallon bottle. Funny, my brother, to this day, won't touch wine!

My younger brother brewed his own beer as well and excellent it was, too! We never had 32 bottles explode, but on one occasion two went off. That caused enough mess for us!

This is one recipe where the instruction, "weigh out the ingredients carefully" applies in full measure.

One of the problems with home brew is that of over-priming the bottles and this can lead at best to an over-ively brew and at worst to bottle explosion. One of the main reasons for this is bottling before the brew is ready. If there is residual sugar in the wort and then additional priming sugar is added, over-priming is inevitable.

One easy solution (only possible if you're using re-sealable bottles such as screw or swing cap) is to bottle without any priming sugar. When the bottle falls clear (usually after about three days) loosen the cap and check. If there's insufficient sparkle, add some priming sugar and re-seal; too much fizz, let the bottle settle and re-seal.

It is possible to avoid this problem by eschewing the use of bottle altogether and storing the beer in pressure barrels. These are readily available from brew-shops in England and the brew cannot over-pressure as the barrel contains a release valve. Another advantage of this method is that the brew is more like that served in a pub and one can serve a pint, a half or even a gill!

The disadvantage of this system is that the beer will not keep for long - maybe a couple of weeks -and so, unless you are a serious drinker, it's best left for parties.

Home-brewing is not all that popular in England as we are blessed with an abundance of good beers; I don't know how popular it is in the US but I'd have thought it would be a market wide open for exploitation!

Richard English

quote:

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Another advantage of this method is that the brew is more like that served in a pub and one can serve a pint, a half or even a gill!

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I know what a pint is, but what is a half and what is a gill?

I know what a _pint_ is, but what is a_ half_ and what is a_ gill_?[/QUOTE]

A half is simply half a pint.
A gill (pronounced jill) is a quarter pint.

Spirits in England have traditionally been sold in measures based on the gill. For example a single whisky would typically be one sixth of a gill.

There are regional variations however. In some areas if you ordered a gill of beer you would be given half a pint.

Halves of beer tend only to be drunk by women and cissies. Real men drink pints.

Thanks for that info, Stan! I, like Angel, hadn't a clue about those terms.

If you walked into a bar around hear and asked the barkeep to get you a "Jill", you could be in serious trouble.

>>A gill (pronounced jill) is a quarter pint.

Learn something new every day.
I'd always thought it was pronounced with the hard g of "girl", as in "drunk to the gills".

Your confusion is understandable.

There are four quite different words spelt gill, and there are two different pronunciations.

Gill, with a hard g, means either the breathing aparatus of a fish (and similar animal and vegetable appendages - including the underside of the human chin!) or a deep, wooded ravine.

Gill, with a soft g, means either the liquid measure or a female ferret (and it's a girl's name as well, of course)

Richard English

Richard, could you take a look at the definition of beer engine in the Beer Dictionary, and let me know if that's the same thing? Thanks.

The definition in the beer dictionary is quite correct although less comprehensive than my own.

Richard English

Here are some more enjoyable beer words, found by letting AHD online search for the term. I was mildly surprised to find nothing in english that sounds like the familiar spanish word cerveza.

seidel: A beer mug
longneck: A glass beer bottle with an elongated neck
shandygaff or shandy: A drink made of beer or ale mixed with ginger beer, ginger ale, or lemonade
tall boy: slang A beer can that holds 16 ounces
kvass: A Russian fermented beverage similar to beer, made from rye or barley
hoser: Canadian Slang A clumsy, boorish person, especially an uncouth, beer-drinking man
boilermaker: slang A drink of whiskey with a beer chaser
ambeer: Chiefly Southern U.S. Saliva colored by tobacco chewed or held in the mouth; tobacco juice. etymology: Alteration (influenced by beer, with reference to color and foam of the spittle) of amber (from its color)
growler: Informal A container, such as a pail or pitcher, that is used for carrying beer
schooner: A large beer glass, generally holding a pint or more
sherbet, sherbert: Australian An alcoholic beverage, especially beer
fox: To make (beer) sour by fermenting
shell: A small glass for beer

Shandy??? You Brits will drink anything.

Interesting that in Australia sherbet means an alcoholic beverage. I wonder if they also use sherbet to describe an iced fruit dessert, as we do.
Actually, sherbet is an interesting word in itself in that my dictionary doesn't have the sherbert spelling, though we've all seen it that way. Furthermore, the first definition in my dictionary is, "cold drink of sweetened and diluted fruit juice". Can't say that I've ever seen it used that way before.

Officially a shandy (or shandygaff) is beer and lemonade. If it's made with ginger beer then it's a ginger beer shandy; if it's made with lager then it's a lager shandy. Some publicans will not serve ginger beer shandy since the mixture is cloudy and they feel that this is a bad reflection on the quality of their product.

Shandy is, in fact, a very refreshing drink of low alcoholic content (only about as strong as B*dw**s*r - but much more tasty, of course) and it is therefore very popular in the summer months.

Since the sugar in the lemonade tends to drive out dissolved gasses, adding lemonade to "chemical" beers will drive out much of the injected carbon dioxide and remove the carbonic acid bite that is so characteristic of such concoctions. Whereas this will not turn any of them into a good drink it will, at least, make them slightly more bearable and less likely to create flatulence.

Richard English

I came across the following saying and thought of this thread:
'Whiskey after beer, have no fear. Beer after whiskey, mighty risky.'
Why, beer lovers?

The theory is that, if you drink a small amount of whisky after a belly-full of beer all that will happen is that you'll get a little more drunk. If you drink beer after getting drunk on whisky, your stomach may not be able, in its intoxicated state, to handle the volume of liquid and you'll be sick.

I suspect it's a matter of moderation in truth!

Richard English

But Richard, as wordnerd stated above: "boilermaker: slang A drink of whiskey with a beer chaser". Yet you state: "If you drink beer after getting drunk on whisky, your stomach may not be able, in its intoxicated state, to handle the volume of liquid and you'll be sick." So, does this mean it depends upon the amount...rather than the order?

"The problem with the designated driver program, it's not a desirable job, but if you ever get sucked into doing it, have fun with it. At the end of the night, drop them off at the wrong house."

--Jeff Foxworthy

As I said, that is the theory. However, as I also said, I believe it's more a matter of moderation.

Richard English

The theory is that, if you drink a small amount of whisky after a belly-full of beer all that will happen is that you'll get a little more drunk. If you drink beer after getting drunk on whisky, your stomach may not be able, in its intoxicated state, to handle the volume of liquid and you'll be sick.

However, if you consider the amount of alcohol in beer vs. whiskey, it does make sense. Thanks, Richard!

Well, this seems to be the most appropriate place for this question. Do Europeans drink warm beer? I heard a report on the radio that a German visitor detested the cold beer in America. He said that Europeans always warmed it up with their hands. Is that the case? I always think the colder, the better.

As a rule, the poorer the drink, the colder it needs to be drunk. American "beers" like B*dw**s*r" are complete and utter rubbish. They are made mainly of rice and other poor quality ingredients and the most expensive components in their makeup are profit and promotion. They are drunk ice-cold to disguise their complete lack of flavour and character.

Compare the drinking temperatures for cheap wine and top quality Bordeaux if you need any convincing.

English Real Ale is drunk cool, not warm - but it is not served ice-cold. Around 40-45 degrees Fahrenheit would be about right and this will allow the glorious and multifarious flavours to come through.

Sadly, good beers are still difficult to obtain in the US and it is thus not easy for those of you living there to test my assertion. Try Anchor Steam (San Francisco) to get an idea of what beer should taste like (and always did before B*dw**s*r and its ilk discovered how easy it is to rip off their customers).

Richard English

I do drink Anchor Steam, Richard, and I love it. It has become my new favorite beer (replacing Harp). And, that happened before you talked about it in this thread so I feel like a true beer connoisseur now.
There are many stores in America that pride themselves is selling a great variety of beers from around the world. There must be some of the really good English beers available here, right? What would I look for?
Oh--and I found a new (to me) wonderful beer word:
gambrinous - meaning "full of beer".

[This message was edited by Kalleh on Sun Dec 15th, 2002 at 7:36.]

As I have said previously, there are over 5000 beers brewed in the UK and I do not know how I could find out which ones from this huge range that are available over there.

Beer is, of course, around 95% water, even the better varieties, and it is thus a very expensive commoditity to transport - which is why most of the international brands such as B*dw**s*r do not move it around but have it brewed locally under licence. Since their brands are very cheap and easy to produce and can be sold with massive margins for the producers and seller alike this practice is very common.

My favourite bottled beer is Fullers 1845, brewed by Fuller, Smith and Turner of London. I also like Youngs Special London Ale, brewed by Youngs of Wandsworth. I doubt that either are available over there.

One easy way of telling a top-quality beer from a less good (or even awful) beer is to look for the words "bottle-conditioned" on the label. This means that the beer has undergone a secondary fermentation in the bottle (just like champagne and unlike cheap sparkling wine). This allows the brew to develop a far greater roundness of flavour.

If the expression bottle-conditioned does not appear (it tends not to be shown on some Belgian beers) then the one sure way to tell whether a beer is bottle-conditioned is to hold the base of the bottle up to the light and swirl it gently. It it's bottle-conditioned you will be able to see the yeast sediment moving about.

The only major UK brand of bottle-conditioned beer that might have found its way to you is Worthington White Shield. This is the ONLY bottle-conditioned beer from the Bass brewing group so don't bother with any others bearing the name Worthington. White Shield is the only genuine one.

There are, incidentally, several US beer enthusiasts' sites now and you might care to research them. I have certainly come across advertisers who claim that they can supply imported UK beers.

http://www.cask-ale.co.uk/real/realale.html gives information about Real Ale and has links to some suppliers and I have just checked http://www.bunitedint.com/index.html.

They have several good bottle-conditioned beers and one I can particularly recommend is Hogs Back T.E.A. This is brewed about 20 miles from me and is a fine drink which isn't too strong at 4.2%.

It has won several awards and, unusually, is brewed by a brewster, not a brewer.

Happy searching and even happier drinking.

Richard English

Richard, I went into 2 beer specialty stores and asked for "Worthington White Shield" and "Hogs Back T.E.A". They both gave me blank looks ("have you had too much Anchor Steam, my dear?"), though they both promised to ask their distributors. I should know by Wednesday. One of them found "Hog Black Traditional English Ale" in his computer. I assume that is the same as "Hogs Back"?

By the way, do not think that we in America like Budweiser. I know no one who does. It really is for the college kids who just want something cheap to get drunk on.

quote:

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Originally posted by Richard English:
It has won several awards and, unusually, is brewed by a brewster, not a brewer.

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Looked up "brewster" in dictionary.com but all they listed were several proper names (mostly cities and one Pilgrim) but, if memory serves me, isn't this a term that specifically identifies the brewer as female? Don't know why this would be the case. Is lactation involved??

This is a semi-educated guess since the proper name "Baxter" (again, if memory serves which, as time goes on, it does less and less) is the female form of "Baker." So, R.E., whaddya say?

"...isn't this a term that specifically identifies the brewer as female?...This is a semi-educated guess..."
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Your educated half is right, C J. While brewster doesn't have the "female brewer" definition in the AHD, it does in the OED, which should be good enough for Richard.

The 1989 OED (2nd edition):

brewster [f. BREW v. + fem. suffix -STER: cf. baxter. See also BROWSTER.]

1. orig. A woman that brews, a female
brewer.
2. Extended to both sexes: A brewer. (Only north Eng. and Sc. since 15th c., exc. as in 3.)
3. Comb. and attrib. brewster-wife (Sc.), a woman that brews or sells malt liquors; brewster sessions, sessions for the issue of licenses to trade in alcoholic liquors.

And your memory served you well, this time. Those old gray cells haven't completely atrophied.
The OED reports:
baxter
A baker:
Obs. or dial.
[OE. bæcestre, fem. of bæcere, f. bacan to BAKE: see -STER. A true feminine in origin, and used of women as late as 16th c.; but already in OE. used also of men (see Gen. xl. 1, of a eunuch), and in ME. used of both sexes, as the Vocabularies expressly show; in later use only masculine, being the regular northern, and esp. Sc, equivalent of baker, in which use it still lingers dialectally. In 16th c. a new feminine BACKSTR-ESS was formed upon it; cf. songstress, seamstress.]

a. applied to women.
b. without distinction of sex. Apparently not used in southern English after 1400.

And from Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, 1998:

baxter

\Bax"ter\, n. [OE. bakestre, bakistre, AS. b[ae]cestre, prop. fem. of b[ae]cere baker. See Baker.] A baker; originally, a female baker. [Old Eng. & Scotch]

The OED Online is a fee service, but you can often access it for free through your local library. That's what I do. And all from the comfort of home!

Tinman

I would guess that Hog Black is a mispelling for Hog's Back, since T.E.A. does indeed stand for Traditional English Ale. It should be easy enough to check from the brewery address which is in Surrey, England, UK. Incidentally, I do not know whether the over-protective US laws allow for beers to be sold that contain a sediment (nothing would surprise me about a legislature that instructs schools to exclude children who carry miniature toy guns on their key rings!). If the expression "Bottle Conditioned" does not appear on the label and if there's no tell-tale sediment (T.E.A. normally throws a very heavy one) then your drink will be but a shadow of its potential self!

A Brewster is, indeed, a female brewer. Once very common, brewsters became less so when brewing became an industry around 2 hundred years or so ago. Before then it was mainly a "home-industry" and hundreds of pubs brewed their own beers.

Although it may be true that most US citizens don't like Budweiser, Anheuser Busch is the world's largest brewer - so somebody's buying their unspeakable conconctions, like them or no. They can't all be students!

Richard English

[This message was edited by Richard English on Tue Dec 17th, 2002 at 1:21.]

I didn't know "brewster" was a woman brewer. My knowledge is growing by leaps and bounds on this site!
Richard, of course not everyone who drinks Budweiser is a student; I was definitely exaggerating. However, truly, Budweiser is known as a very lowly beer here. From my experience (albeit rather limited), it is only bought because it is alcoholic and cheap--not for the taste.
I do want to comment about your assertion that kids are kept out of school because of toy guns on their keyrings. Schools here have become unreasonable and militaristic, in my view. Recently an 8-year-old boy was too poor to have school supplies so he borrowed a container of crayons from a relative. Little did he know that among the crayons was a bullet; no gun, just 1 bullet. What happened? Expelled for the rest of the year! I heard that a student who used her asthma inhaler got expelled for drugs! It is unconscionable.

The expulsions and punishments you cite are, I know, common and it is, as I understand it, due to the concept of zero tolerance of minor misbehaviour.

Randy Cassingham's "This is True" newsletter frequently cites the most ridiculous examples of this policy. The strange thing about guns is that in the UK it is now very difficult for adults to own a gun of any sort, even if they have good reason for it (such as if he or she is a gamekeeper, say). However in the USA the right for adults to bear arms is enshrined in the Constitution. Children, though, are allowed to carry toy guns if that's what they want to do (although, to be fair, not many do these days).

So, in the UK we lock up adults who carry real guns without authority and, at worst, chastise children who use toy ones inappropriately; in the US it seems that the opposite applies!

Richard English

Well, with the excellent beer & reasonable attitude toward guns, I think I will move to the UK!

Another note on guns: Even though I may sound like a card-carrying NRA member, in fact, I am anti-gun. There was a shooting in my kids' elementary school several years ago, killing a darling second grader, critically injuring others, and devastating our community. I just think that we have to be more logical, as is the case in other countries.

The shooting lobby would claim that it's not guns that kill people, it's people that kill people. Sadly, though, guns just make it easier for people to do!

I quite like shooting (and my son used to be a gamkeeper so I got to know quite a lot about it). Unfortunately, even with our draconian restrictions on gun ownership there is still a lot of gun crime from those who hold guns unlawfully.

In spite of this, our police are still usually unarmed and respected by most for it. In the main we live in a fairly safe and comfortable country.

Richard English

Little did he know that among the
crayons was a bullet;
******************************************
Was it ONLY a bullet, or a complete cartridge? Many people, especially those who have no experience with firearms, mistake the bullet for the cartridge. The bullet itself is just the projectile, usually a piece of copper-wrapped lead, which is no more harmful than a crayon by itself. The cartridge includes the cartridge case, the primer, a charge of powder, and our little friend, the bullet. A live cartridge can be dangerous, since a sharp blow to the primer will cause ignition, with potentially disasterous results.

There, I'm done shooting my mouth off

Asa, I really don't know because I do not know much about guns. However, I was under the impression (from the news) that it was a benign piece of metal and that the boy had no idea it was there. If that is the case, I feel that a year's expulsion for that is too much. An 8-year old not going to school for a year? Since he is from a poor family, I can only assume that he won't be going to a private school instead. I fear that we have lost this little boy because of a stupid rule. But, then, I may be wrong. God knows, I have been wrong on this site before (though at least I admit it! ).