bauhauswerk

Dear Coilers, Brew! is back with the beer style which is one of the most produced and drunk around the world. The one from Vojvodina will be tasted in Coil’s Taproom for the subscribers.

PALE LAGER - is the standard international beer style and is the generic spin-off of the pilsner style. Pale lagers are generally light to medium bodied with a light to medium hop impression and a clean, crisp malt character. Quality, from a flavor point of view, is very variable within this style and many examples use a proportion of non-malt adjuncts such as rice or corn. Alcohol content is typically between 3.5-5 percent ABV, with the upper end of the range being preferable if one is to get a true lager mouthfeel.

The International Pale Lager, often marketed as Premium Pale Lager, is a highly attenuated bodied, pale straw to gold colored lager without strong flavors, typically well balanced and highly carbonated. International lagers tend to have fewer adjuncts than standard American lagers. This is a broad category of international mass market lagers ranging from up scale all malt lagers to the typical export Lager. Often confusingly labeled as a Pilsner. Generally more bitter and filling than American lager. Less hoppy and bitter than a German Pils. Less body, malt flavor, and hop character than a Czech Pilsner. More robust versions can approach a Munich Helles in flavor, although with more of an adjunct quality.

It is beer style for broad masses, cheaper to produce and easier to drink than most of the styles.

Again, the quality range is very broad so expect everything from the all malty heaven to the corn syrup poison.

In Coil’s Taproom I’ll present you: APATINSKO PIVO by Apatinska Pivara.

Apatin brewery was founded in 1756 as the “Imperial Brewery” in Apatin.

There are records on the production of 12,000 hectoliters of beer in the 18th century. The brewery was privatized for the first time at the end of the 19th century, initiating a new development phase characterized by large investments.

In the period before World War I, the production amounted to 16,000 hectoliters of beer annually. In 1950, 40,782 hectoliters of beer were produced already, and the number of employees rose to 120.

During the 1970s, the process of automated high-volume lines was introduced, which resulted in producing as much as 634,681 hectoliters of beer in 1977, and expanding the product range with refreshing orange, lemon and blueberry non alcoholic drinks from 1969, and Alps herbs later on.

In 2012, Apatin Brewery became a member of one of the largest global brewing companies, Molson Coors Brewing Company. Annual operating capacity of Apatin Brewery amounts to four million hectoliters. It is interesting to note that during just one day 15,000 hectoliters of beer are produced in the Apatin Brewery, which was the total annual production in the second half of the 19th century. Today, Apatin Brewery has 750 employees and supports and sponsors a number of cultural, music and sport events, on the national and regional level.

Dear Coilers, I thought to post new Dram! blog and vlog today but due to some non planned situations it’ll wait few days.

So I’ll tell you the thing I’ve just discussed with the Devil himself. We met in a bar as I’ve told him to come and pay me for the advocate work I do for him questioning everything and everyone, giving an impression opposite of a saint which I, as a fact, am.

Anyway, he has told me about the good corporations and their CEOs with whom he made a plan.

Ofcourse, people themselves would execute the plan and corporations will enter the battle as the allies full of empathy, aching to help the same poor people.

How is it possible? Hear then...

“Imagine the situation” – said Devil – “if we could make people destroy and burn their own communities?! Brilliant isn’t it?” 😈

The plan they’ve made was to destroy places where ordinary, next door people have their small businesses.

Now listen the story...

Imagine a 56 year old lady who was working low payed jobs all her life while dreaming of her own, small, home baked pies shop. She was saving every possible cent for that dream to come true one day.

After 32 years since she started saving the money, an old neighbour of her said he will relocate to Florida to live his last years in warmer climate which will benefit him to ease his arthritis problems. He offered her his shop, placed just under her small apartment, the same shop she helped cleaning last 18 years. The price was more than fair but she still didn’t have enough.

Luckily there were good people in a bank who agreed to give her a loan to be able to pay the owner out.

She redecorated the shop with love, modest but beautiful, her personal touch being seen wherever you looked. Real candy. Pure love.

She started working last autumn and the business became famous in the neighbourhood. Her pies were famous since forever. As every time when someone of her friends from the community had some celebration, her pies were on the table as her present. Many asked her if they could order them from her but her answer was always the same: “One day you will be able to, I live for it!”

But then an invisible enemy came from the Far East. Her business was closed due to lockdown and there were no income to pay the bank for the loan.

Luckily, smart and frugal as she was, she put some on the side, not for the lockdown but for possible health problems which would disable her to work for some time. Not much but enough to be able to go through a few months.

As the business was closed, she was asking her neighbours, which were in the same situation, how are they sailing through this rough sea. All told her the same, that they were good for some months but they hope the lockdown will not last too long.

And it had not. They have opened their businesses and life slowly started to look like the one before the bad days...

...Lady cleaned her shop and climbed the stairs to go to well deserved sleep she needed badly after a long day of baking her pies.

Last she remembers was a brick crashing her shop window and the smoke she felt coming from the downstairs soon after...

She spent the night in the community church together with many of her neighbours.

In the morning, when she came to her beloved home, she could only see that she has no home anymore.

Not just her home. Half of her neighbours were homeless... one night was enough, just one night... made homeless by The people...

Two months passed and on the place of the building in which all her past was turned to ashes, a new, big and beautiful building was being raised. Well known corporation was investing in the project and other well known corporations already signed the contracts for the shops that were going to be placed within the first three floors.

The corporations were so good that they offered employment to all the people who had lost their small businesses which were their lifes.

The lady was offered to work as a baker in a donut shop. Minimal wage, 12 hours a day, 6 days a week. In 10 years she will be able to pay the bank. She doesn’t have to pay rent anymore, she lives in a tent in an ex community church yard. There is no church anymore, it burnt...

He drove to his first professional match in 1960 in a pink Cadillac and took home a $ 2,000 prize. None of the spectators who were watching that fight against Tunney Hunsaker, haven’t even dreamt that the beardless Cassius Clay would become one of the greatest sports figures of the 20th century in the years that followed.

Muhammad Ali passed away on June 3, 2016 at a hospital in Phoenix. Just a few days earlier, a worried family had called an ambulance because Ali had trouble breathing. Everything was further complicated by Parkinson's disease and the world was left without the greatest boxing legend. The greatest of all times. Forever.

He was a true champion, out of 61 fights he won 56, 37 by knockout, he introduced a new style in boxing and everyone had to adapt to it. A style perfectly described by his cult statement “float like a butterfly, sting like a bee”.

Olympic medal before pro champ

The summer before entering professional waters, he won Olympic gold in Rome by defeating Zbigniew Pietrzykowski by unanimous decision, UD.

At that time, he did not yet belong to the heavyweights. The fight with the great Olympic boxer from Poland took place under the light heavyweight class, but it was only an overture to his transition to the pros, and what would follow marked an entire boxing era. Muhammad Ali became the ruler of the boxing world.

He grew up in Louisville where, at that time, was a great racial division between the white and black population. His father was a billboard painter and his mother was a maid. The Clay family was not poor, but they were far from wealthy. He decided to leave everything else behind and dedicate himself to just one thing. Boxing.

“When he was 12 or 13, I would come back from work and he would run up to me. He always wanted me to raise my arms so he could hit them. Even then he had a sting in his fist. Most of us thought he was a little crazy, but he proved it to us all differently. He was hitting a tree in front of the house non-stop” said Clay's family friend Lawrence Montgomery.

First fight: He was like lightning

He entered the ring against a 12 years older and much more experienced opponent. Tunney Hunsaker was a police chief by profession. He was more experienced, but he ran into Ali at the wrong time. He lost six matches in a row and wanted to regain his glory through Ali. But Ali dominated him so much that it was clear to everyone that his time had passed, but also that something special was being born.

“I tried to use every trick to throw him off balance... But it was an impossible mission. It was simply like lightning” said Hunsaker.

“Anytime, anywhere I can go ten rounds” Ali said after the fight that started the perfect run to the world heavyweight title.

Beware of the Croat

But on the way to the title match in which he defeated Sonny Liston, several opponents awaited him.

Although everyone knows about his cult matches against Joe Frazier and George Foreman, two fights against the Canadian Croatian Juraj Čuvalo (or George Cuvalo) in 1966 and 1972 are among Ali's greatest victories.

Although Ali won both, he remembered Cuvalo well.

“Cuvalo was the toughest boxer I've ever fought. He received my best blows” said Ali after the fights against a strong Croat born in Herzegovina.

Cuvalo never fell in the ring, nor was knocked down by the great Muhammad Ali. He lasted a full 15 rounds in the first match, and 12 rounds in the second.

“I will always say that I have never lost in my life. So it was with Ali.

I remember those fights well. When we first fought, he deliberately raised his hands and asked me to hit him in the body. He only did it once. After the fight, he bled and ended up in the hospital, and I went to the dance with my wife. Who is the winner here ?!” said Cuvalo, whose fights with Ali allegedly inspired Stallone to film “Rocky”.

“Stallone in the film shows his picture, and it's actually a photo from one of my matches. But I don't know if I inspired him for the film, I never asked him.” laughed Cuvalo, who had only 17 days of preparation for the fight in 1966.

Beaten Liston for the title and changed the name

In his 20th professional fight, Ali defeated Sonny Liston and took the WBA and WBC titles.

Shortly after defending the title, Cassius Clay, influenced by the “Nation of Islam” movement, converted to Islam and initially changed his name to Cassius X. The leader of the movement, Elijah Muhammad soon gave him a new name, Muhammad Ali.

That period of Ali's life was also marked by a struggle with the law because he refused recruitment for the Vietnam War. Authorities therefore stripped him of his title and interrupted his career for three years. He was sentenced to five years in prison, fined $10,000 and banned from boxing for three years. His license was returned to him in 1970, and a year later, the Supreme Court overturned his verdict convicting him of refusing military service.

The Rumble in the Jungle

Even today, Ali’s incredible matches with Joe Frazier, who broke his 31-win streak, and George Foreman are remembered with nostalgia.

In “Fight of the Century” in 1971, he lost to Frazier, in “Rumble in the Jungle” in 1974 he knocked out Foreman, and he retaliated against Frazier in “Thrilla in Manila” in 1975.

After “Rumble in the Jungle,” he defended the belt on ten occasions and then ran into Leon Spinks who inflicted his third professional defeat in February 1978 and took the heavyweight title which he returned in a rematch the same year.

But it was the last victory of his career. Larry Holmes stripped his belt off two years later, and Ali had an unsuccessful comeback in December 1981 against Trevor Berbick in the Bahamas.

Shortly afterwards, he was diagnosed Parkinson's disease, which damaged his nerve system and caused him to have speech and movement problems.

For the end he wanted Mate Parlov

“I will soon say goodbye to boxing and I would rather end my career against the great boxer Mate Parlov (Croatian boxer, Olympic gold medalist who was European and World Champion as an amateur and as a professional, born 1948 in Split, died 2008 Pula) than against dirty hitters like Frazier or Foreman” Muhammad Ali said in 1978.

He admired Parlov and watched him win the world light heavyweight title in January 1978.

“Yugoslavia has a real champion, Parlov is currently the best in Europe. I'm ready to fight him. I heard that 100,000 people would watch our match in Yugoslavia live. Parlov is a fast boxer, but he wouldn’t stand a chance against me. It would be a nice match, but it is the only nice thing that would happen to Parlov.” Ali said at the time.

We will never know if he was right...

MUHAMMAD ALI 1942-2016

Dear Coilers, new Dram! is here after a week free from beer on Coil. I can see few bloggers talking about alcoholism and quitting and...

It’s not about alcohol but about the self control!

Drink good stuff, not much of the stuff!

That’s why I try to choose and present you good stuff so you can responsibly enjoy in taste and quality, not quantity.

For this one I have chosen something with long history...

TRAQUAIR HOUSE – Scotland’s Oldest Inhabited House. Visited by 27 Scottish Kings and Queens Traquair dates back to 1107 and has been lived in by the Stuart family since 1491.

Originally a royal hunting lodge, Traquair played host to Mary Queen of Scots and later as staunch Catholics they supported the Jacobite cause without counting the cost.

Today the house welcomes visitors from all over the world who can enjoy the extraordinary history of this lived-in family home and its house, grounds, maze, craft workshops, Garden Cafe and the world famous Traquair House Brewery

TRAQUAIR HOUSE BREWERY – lies in the wing of the house directly underneath the Chapel. It dates back to the early 1700’s and was originally a domestic brewery serving the house and the estate. It was disused in the early 1800’s but never dismantled. It gradually filled with the family junk until it was completely forgotten.

Peter Maxwell Stuart rediscovered the brewery in the early 1960’s and began brewing again as an experiment in 1965 using all the original equipment and fermenting the ales in the original oak tuns, some of which were over 200 years old.

Brewing at Traquair originally took place in the kitchens of the house but in the early 1700’s the present brewery was established in one of the new wings built in 1694. During the eighteenth century most large country houses would have had a brewery as ale was considered a cheap and nutritional drink. At Traquair, it also appears to have been part of the servants’ wages!

The brew house was furnished with a 200 gallon copper bought in 1738, and wooden fermenting vessels made from Russian memel oak. The ale produced was either a strong dark ale or small beer which was made without using hops. By the early 1800’s there were many more commercial breweries and brewing at Traquair became an expensive luxury the family could not afford.

The brewery was closed and the brew house was left to become the repository for the family’s unwanted furniture and other junk. In 1965, Peter Maxwell Stuart, the twentieth Laird, was undertaking a huge spring cleaning operation in order to open the house more fully to the public. When he discovered the brewery underneath centuries of family junk he was surprised to find the entire collection of brewing vessels and equipment had survived intact.

After a thorough cleaning operation the brewery was ready to be used again for the first time in one hundred and fifty years. Peter enlisted the help of a friend, Sandy Hunter of Belhaven Brewery and together they researched the Traquair archives and developed the recipe for a traditional Scottish Ale. The first brew took place in 1965 and the finished product was bottled at Belhaven and sold at Traquair but even at low price the beer was hard to sell.

During the next few years the Laird continued brewing several times a year and he also numbered each bottle with a brew and bottle number.

These early bottles are now collector’s items and new bottles are sold around the world for not that low price.

One of those brews is...

JACOBITE ALE – Brewed to celebrate the anniversary of the 1745 Jacobite rebellion the ale proved to be so popular it has become a permanent addition to the range. Based on an eighteenth century recipe the ale is spiced with coriander which gives a remarkably fresh aftertaste.

By the style it is a Scottish Ale

...so let’s taste it...