Imaginings
stories, creative nonfiction, poetry, and other imaginative accounts of the natural world
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Reclaiming Oktoberfest: Celebrating Sustainability Instead of Consumerism
By Elmar Ujszaszi-Müller: Every year in late September, the atmosphere in Munich becomes thicker when Oktoberfest takes place. The intense odors of roasted almonds and grilled chicken mingle with those of specially brewed lager and the sweat of thousands of people roaming the festival grounds.
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Picking Hops in Nineteenth-Century Wisconsin
By Jennifer Jordan From 1873 to 1879, in Dellona, Wisconsin, Ella Seymour kept a sporadic record of her life. Her careful handwriting curled across the blue and red lines of the little ledger she used as a diary. She recounted the weather, illness, chores, and visits like so many of her fellow diarists of the…
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The Lager Beer Revolution in the United States
By Jana Weiß In November 2015, a record that had lasted 142 years was broken: for the first time since 1873, the peak number of breweries passed 4,131. Since then, the number of US breweries has continued to reach new heights.
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The Birth and Quick Death of Canada’s First Commercial Brewery, 1671–1675
By Matthew Bellamy Few nations are more blessed by nature than Canada when it comes to brewing beer. The vast northern territory has ideal climatic conditions to produce all of the natural ingredients—barley, hops, and fresh water—to manufacture a perfect pint.
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Gaza’s Happy Hour? When Late Ottoman Palestine Met the Victorian Drinking Culture
By Dotan Halevy If we could travel back in time to the town of Gaza in March 1886, we would probably be joining a large crowd gathered on the beach to catch a glimpse of the Troqueer, a grain-carrying steamship—a behemoth of thirteen hundred tons—lying on its side about a mile offshore.
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German Beer and the Making of a New China
By Shen Hou The first commercial filmed in China was a 1947 effort to sell Tsingtao Beer, one of the world’s most famous brands. “Tsingtao†is an older spelling of the name “Qingdao,†the city that is still home to the beer company.
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The Brewing Boom of the Middle Ages
By Richard W. Ungar Until 1200, beer brewing in Europe was largely a small-scale affair. Hops soon changed that. Based on practices in Bremen and other ports along the North Sea coast of Germany, a seemingly minor change laid the foundation for a booming industry in Renaissance Europe, one with a scale and reach unmatched…
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The Reinheitsgebot: Between German Consumer Culture and the European Market
By Robert Terrell On 15 July, 1987, West German federal president Richard von Weizsäcker received a letter from one Andreas Z., which began: “Much has been written about the Reinheitsgebot lately.â€
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The Global Invention of Lager Beer
By Jeffrey Pilcher “Around the World in 80 Beers.†It’s an arresting image of the globalization of beer. This map on the PureTravel website depicts each country according to its bestselling or iconic national brand: from Budweiser in the United States and Corona in Mexico, to Tsingtao in China and Oettinger in Germany.