A friend was kind enough to point me to a somewhat recent Slate piece about the resurgence of mead in American beer culture. The best part is that they credit geeks and nerds for bringing it back.
Without the nerdy obsessiveness of early hobbyists, we’d all still be crushing corn-fed lagers against our foreheads. Instead, we’re drinking double IPAs and imperial stouts. The many new mead-makers in America are almost all lapsed home brewers who smelled the honey.
[...]
[T]he recent interest in fermented honey has morphed it from an esoteric item that only a few bearded Dungeons & Dragons players indulged in to a small yet legitimate commercial enterprise.
Overall the article is a pleasant read, but I don’t think I enjoyed a single word of it more than I did the viking clipart gracing the margin.
If that happy character doesn’t make you want to start a home brewery, there’s something wrong with you.
For the time being, though, I guess I’ll stick with my weissbier.
I only drink victory storm king imperial stouts.
also I may finally change my twittz icon to that sweet avatar
I do miss stouts living in Bavaria. First thing to do when I get back Stateside is grab about five pints of an IPA and convince myself it was worth coming back for.
A thousand thumbs up to Operation Avatar.
I generally avoid beers that I can see light through. Imperial stouts FTW!
Weissbiers are generally cloudy enough that you can’t see through them, but they are certainly pale in hue. I don’t think I need to defend them here, though.
But the light lagers of Munich look very clear, yet are brewed with a care and punch that is normally reserved for Imperial stouts and IPAs back home.
Who knows? The only civil way to resolve this is to a buy a case of each and spend an evening meticulously researching the differences.