Beantown Brews: A Boston Beer Blog

Waiter - there seems to be something in my champagne.

Happy New Year’s Eve to everyone out there. Be sure to drink responsibly, designate a driver, and keep safe – tonight and every night in 2011.

It is a very Happy New Year’s Eve out there for package store owners as tomorrow, January 1st 2011, marks the official end of the alcohol tax in Massachusetts.

Also, for anyone interested in a good read, check out Boston Magazine’s article, Loko Madness.Here is a quote to entice you -

There is little doubt that Boston – the ultimate college town – and the culture at large will be better off without buzz-craving students swilling 23.5-ounce cans of biliously colored, faintly fruity malt liqours amped up with caffeine and 12 percent alcohol. What the culture will not be as a result of the furious nannying of the FDA is free of binge drinking. That would require policies that work, not knees that jerk.

Great stuff. Whether you agree with the direction of the article, which goes on to suggest lowering the drinking age,  it makes for a stimulating read (but not so much to be banned by the FDA).

The good news – it seems that our coffee beers and liquors are safe for now.

From The Hour Before Dawn, by William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)

A great lad with a beery face

Had tucked himself away beside

A ladle and a tub of beer,

And snored, no phantom by his look.

So with a laugh at his own fear

He crawled into that pleasant nook.

‘Night grows uneasy near the dawn

Till even I sleep light; but who

Has tired of his own company?

What one of Maeve’s nine brawling sons

Sick of his grave has wakened me?

But let him keep his grave for once

That I may find the sleep I have lost.’

What care I if you sleep or wake?

But I’ll have no man call me ghost.’

Say what you please, but from daybreak

I’ll sleep another century.’

And I will talk before I sleep

And drink before I talk.’

And he

Had dipped the wooden ladle deep

Into the sleeper’s tub of beer

Had not the sleeper started up.

Before you have dipped it in the beer

I dragged from Goban’s mountain-top

I’ll have assurance that you are able

To value beer; no half-legged fool

Shall dip his nose into my ladle

Merely for stumbling on this hole

In the bad hour before the dawn.’

Why beer is only beer.’