Welcome to Manbeers.com. This site is about friends getting together with friends... without the pretext of having to be something you are not. So relax, have a pint, and talk about the passing days, your kids, your dreams, adventures, travels, joys... The only requirement? A good story to share with friends.

Where chocolate drink may have come from…

Here’s a story from the New York Times… basically,  they “suggested that the Mesoamericans fermented cacao first to make beer, eventually discovering, likely by accident, that the fermented seeds made an even better beverage.”
I wonder what that first “chocolate-beer” might have tasted like?

Read it on the NY Times site  ... or read it all right below…

November 13, 2007
Observatory
Love of Chocolate May Have Begun With Cacao Beer
By HENRY FOUNTAIN

The ancient peoples of Mexico and Central America loved to drink chocolate. But their beverage was nothing like the modern one — it was a frothy, bitter brew of fermented, roasted and ground cacao seeds, often spiced with chile peppers, more like mole poblano than Swiss Miss.

New archaeological findings by John S. Henderson of Cornell and Rosemary A. Joyce of the University of California, Berkeley, and colleagues push the date of the first use of cacao back to about 1100 B.C., 500 years earlier than previously known. What’s more, the researchers suggest that this early beverage was something different again — a fermented beer made from cacao pulp, not seeds.

Dr. Henderson and Dr. Joyce have been digging for years at Puerto Escondido, a village in the Ulúa Valley in what is now Honduras. They have found elegant pots, cups and other pieces of pottery and have developed a theory that the pottery was probably used on ceremonial occasions to serve cacao beverages. “Cacao was the social grease of Mesoamerica,” Dr. Henderson said.

But this theory was based only on circumstantial evidence, he added. “We were thinking we didn’t have much potential for chemical confirmation.”

Previously it was possible to detect evidence of cacao — the compounds theobromine and caffeine — only from visible residues in intact pots. But using just pottery fragments, the researchers were able to detect the compounds from residues absorbed by the clay. The findings were reported in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Dr. Henderson said other evidence suggested that the pottery was used for an alcoholic beverage. Most of the vessels from that time only had a narrow spout, which would be good for pouring but not for frothing up a seed-based beverage. For that, a wider mouth would be needed, and wide-mouthed vessels are not found at Puerto Escondido for several hundred years.

Dr. Henderson suggested that the Mesoamericans fermented cacao first to make beer, eventually discovering, likely by accident, that the fermented seeds made an even better beverage. If so, he said, the rise of cacao and the eventual birth of the modern chocolate industry — all of which began with the passion for the frothy drink — “would then be an unintended consequence of something different,” he said.

A new phone… a lousy site.

Okay… this isn’t about beer… sort of… but I just had to put this somewhere.  Maybe this is a topic of discussion at the next ManBeers on October 9th?
Anyways… there’s yet another phone coming out that is supposed to be a “smart phone” that wants to take on the iPhone.  And this one was designed by B&O.  Sound like a good start.
I guess this “rant” is more about their website than the phone itself… seeing as I couldn’t really see anything there showing me how it works…

http://www.serenatamobile.com/

In short… this is one of the MOST useless websites I have ever come across. 
You start with a black screen and a super slow red circle appearing.
Try and find out what the heck this phone really looks like.
You can’t.
Try and see what the heck is going on behind the big hand holding the phone in the CONTACT section… you can’t.
Dang but this site sucks.
Ah well.  Time for a beer.

Order a beer… in different languages

Afrikaans ——-  ‘n Bier, asseblief ——-  A beer ah-suh-bleef
Basque ——-  Garagardo bat, mesedez ——-  Gara-gardo bat mese-des
Belarusian ——-  [beer] ——-  Ad-no pee-vah ka-lee lah-ska
Breton ——-  Ur banne bier am bo, mar plij ——-  Oor bah-ne beer am boh mar pleezh
Bulgarian ——-  [beer] ——-  Ed-na beer-ra mol-ya
Catalan ——-  Una cervesa, si us plau ——-  Oona servayzeh see oos plow

Find more on a printable PDF version that has 26 common languages and fits on one page.

An irish joke… Paddy’s pregnant sister

Paddy’s pregnant sister was in a terrible car accident and went into a deep
coma. After being in the coma for nearly six months, she wakes up and sees
that she is no longer pregnant. Frantically, she asks the doctor about her
baby.

The doctor replies, “Ma’am, you had twins….. A boy and a girl. The babies
are fine now. However, they were poorly at birth and had to be christened
immediately - your brother came in and named them.

The woman thinks to herself, “Oh suffering Jesus no, not me brother…he’s a
bleepin clueless idiot!”  Expecting the worst, she asks the doctor, “Well,
what’s my daughter’s name?”

“Denise,” says the doctor.

The new mother is somewhat relieved. “Wow, that’s a beautiful name. I guess
I was wrong about my brother….  I like Denise. ”

Then she asks, “What’s the boy’s name?”

“Denephew”

Betty’s Beer Bar - the game

There's a game out there for those wondering what it's like to be behind the bar....
Betty's Beer Bar game

Things you can do with treadmills

Do you ever wonder what some people do with treadmills?
And how much did one need to drink before coming up with this idea?

cheers!

A beer for your “best friend”... uh.. yah.

A small brewery in the Netherlands has launched a new beer designed to bring cool relief to thirsty dogs.
Kwispelbier, marketed as "a beer for your best friend", is made from a special brew of beef extract and malt.
The beverage is a creation of pet shop owner Gerrie Berendsen, who wanted her dogs to share light refreshments with her after a day's hunting.
The beer is non-alcoholic and fit for human consumption, but costs four times as much as a Heineken.
"Kwispel" is the Dutch word for wagging a tail.
Ms Berendsen, who lives in the eastern town of Zelhem, commissioned the small local Schelde brewery to make and bottle the beer.
"Once a year we go to Austria to hunt with our dogs, and at the end of the day we sit on the verandah and drink a beer. So we thought, my dog also has earned it," Ms Berendsen told the Associated Press.

Meanwhile, in 2004, someone else had made a beer for dogs as well!
Hmmm… I guess we’ll see the lawsuits fly?

A nice bottle to find…a nice place to be

Scotch Irish Tsarina Katarina Imperial Stout
From Ontario... has a high rating on the RateBeers.com website...
Would be something nice to taste... or, maybe, try and go through the whole list?

OR...
Try out the list of Ales that are at this festival in Redditch - Bridley Moor & Batchley Social Club, Bridley Moor Road, Redditch, Worcestershire