Tag: brewing

Johnny Appleseed, Apple Genetics, and Burnt Orchards

gordsellar0 Comments

One of the podcasts I listen to quite a bit is Stuff You Missed in History Class. They recently ran a “classic” episode demystifying the life of Johnny Appleseed, as John Chapman has become known.  Now, all I really knew about him was from the Disney cartoon and one volume about the man in the Value Tales books. (Remember those? The one about him was titled The Value of Love.) Given that, I found it surprisingly interesting, though it turns out it’s pretty hard to demystify the life of someone about whom a lot of stuff has been made up… and who …

Continue Reading

Some (Admittedly Unkind) Words for Henry Thrale

gordsellar2 Comments

I mentioned recently that I’d been reading Lee Morgan’s biography of Henry Thrale. I’ve finished it, and collected some material on beer history–what little there was in the book. For the life story of a man whose wealth was gotten in the making of beer, the subject comes up much less than you might imagine… but then, as I mentioned last time, Thrale was always more interested in fox-hunting and clever conversation with upper-class people than the business that gave him such a wealthy lifestyle. Morgan’s text is a funny sort of book: it has lots of things that make it worth reading, including …

Continue Reading

Books For Malt-Worms

gordsellar8 Comments

Today, a light post, but still relevant to beer and brewing in the early 1700s, following my recent post on “Books of Secrets.” Like all industries, beer and brewing are connected to both the industries that produce their raw materials, and spawn other industries as well. One of the more interesting industries that has been spawned by the beer business is the “beer book” business. Most homebrewers think of “beer books” as books on homebrewing–either style guides and recipes or technical manuals. Some beer history buffs will also think of books on beer history, of which a few great ones exist out there. The former has been …

Continue Reading

Geneva: a Poem. (1729)

gordsellar0 Comments

Today, another post with some fun stuff (more fun than fungemia, at least) from my ongoing novel research… Back in the early Georgian era, pamphlets were used to do the kind of advocacy and political consciousness-raising we see going on today on Youtube and other social networking sites. One of the more famous ones–and certainly, a poem of interest to anyone concerned with the conflict between gin distillers (who were linked to free-marketeers) versus brewers (who were linked to religious and social reformers) was Elias Blunt’s “Geneva: a Poem” (1729). The full title text is: Geneva: a Poem. Addreſs’d to the Right Honourable Sir R— W—. By Alexander Blunt, Distiller. In …

Continue Reading

Fungemia

gordsellar0 Comments

This week, I’ll be posting some “fun” snippets from bits of research devoted to my current novel project.  Probably mostly of interest to people who homebrew, or are interested in yeast and brewing, brewing history, and weird cultural stuff that went on in Renaissance Europe or in Georgian England. Today? Fungemia… which is: fungal infections of the blood. Don’t worry, I don’t have any gory pictures of anything, though if you want, there are plenty of those online, only one google search away. Did you know, you can get a yeast infection in your blood? Well, you can. And even some strains of humble brewer’s/baker’s …

Continue Reading