Martin Luther, gruit, brewer’s droop, Cecil Parkinson — could it be “Industrial Disease”?

Street scene in Lutherstadt Wittenberg, German Democratic Republic, 1989. Martin Luther’s church door is straight ahead. (Originally published at Food & Dining Magazine on June 21, 2021.) Regular “Hip Hops” readers will recall that Jeff Alworth is one of my favorite beer writers. Recently Alworth reprinted an article from November 1, 2017: ALWORTH’S 9.5 THESES. It’s a playful riff on the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther’s “95 Theses,” as supposedly nailed to the church door in Wittenberg, Germany — presumably launching the Protestant Reformation. Alworth and I agree on more than one proclamation. Cask bitter is the most underrated beer in the world. A pint of bitter, served fresh on cask, is surely one of the greatest achievements in beer. Its reputation, both in its native UK and elsewhere, ranges from misunderstood to meh. My greatest failure as a writer is evidenced by the paucity of casks at my local pub. Evidently it’s my greatest failure, too. Does anyone in Louisville still so much as attempt to mimic cask ale? As I was reading Alworth’s list, a song began playing in my head. Seems I’d written about Luther, too, roughly at the same time Alworth did four years ago, and for the same reason (the anniversary of the...Read more