. Favourite Beer of the Week

This week's beer is from Belgium.


Belgium is famous for beer.


And chocolate.


And waffles.


The first two are in this glass -



The addition of waffles I think would have been a mistake. Although at work one day last week they served fried chicken with waffles for lunch.



Ommegang's "Chocolate Indulgence" sounds like a bit of a ladies drink to me. My dictionary describes "indulgence" thus: Claire collects shoes—it is her indulgence.

They should have called it "Chocolate Excessive Over-Indulgence - for the man who's not satisfied with how fat regular beers are making him."


Further investigation has revealed that "Indulgence" is a Catholic term for the removal of temporal punishment. Apparently, if you are a horrible sinning type, the Pope (or someone even less scrupulous) can grant you an Indulgence, which draws on the "treasure house of merit" accumulated by the crucifixion of Jesus.



Basically, Jesus was so very good that he created this enormous great surplus of goodness, and you can buy some of it to make up for all the dirty sins you have committed. Or at least reduce the amount of time you have to spend in Purgatory.


That's Purgatory in the afterlife, not Purgatory in Rhode Island.



Not even the Pope would send you to Rhode Island.

. Arts and Crafts with Sasha

. Book of the Month

'Little Bee' (or 'The Other Hand' as it is known elsewhere) is very good. Except maybe the ending. Didn't you think?


Nicole Kidman is making the movie, starring Nicole Kidman.

Next month we will be reading D'Aulaire's Book of Norse Myths by Ingri and Eogar Parin D'Aulaire.

. Idiots

David Cameron is Britain's new Prime Minister. Here he is in 2006.

. Favourite Beer of the Week

It was not my intention to get another Mikeller beer, but this one came wrapped in paper with an excellent drawing on it, so I was forced to buy it immediately.



It is called "1000 IBU" because it has an International Bittering Unit rating of 1000.

This is the formula you should use to calculate your IBU.


You will need a spectrophotometer to perform your measurements. Here's one:



And this is how it works:

Guinness is 45 IBUs. India Pale Ales and Barley Wines can be 70 or more. So you would expect a beer of 1000 IBU to be the most disgustingly bitter beer ever made. Except it's not, because apparently no one can taste the difference once you go over 100.




Brewers are in the habit of boasting about the size of their IBUs. So "1000 IBU" is some kind of brewer joke. Geddit?



Anyway, the beer is delicious.