The new WFMU air schedule starts up on June 4th, and among other non-changes, I'm staying put - Fridays from noon-3pm. However, in the interest of honoring the few actual changes, as well as summertime and, well, Beer, I'll be adding a feature to the show: a beer-tasting, every Friday at 2:45pm. So take a late lunch, or revel in your precious Summer Hours, o publishing industry, and have a drink with us, over the radio! Each week, it'll be a different beer, drunk and discussed by a revolving panel of enthusiasts (and not snobs), featuring, though not limited to, Bill Zurat, Mike Lupica, Jason Slack and X-Ray Burns. I'll publish each week's beer ahead of time (still working out the details), but there's one type of beer I'll guarantee you we shall not be sampling: Cock Ale.
Take an old red, or other cock, the older the better, and boyle him indifferent well; then
flea [flay] his skin clean off, and beat him flesh and bones in a stone
mortar all to mash. You must craw and gut him when you
flea him , then slice into him half a pound of dates, two nutmegs
quartered, two or three blaids of mace, four cloves; and put to all
this two quarts of sack that is very good; stop all this up very close
that no air may get to it for the space of sixteen hours; then tun
eight gallons of strong ale into your barrel so timely as it may have
done working at the sixteen hours’ end; and then put thereinto your
infusion and stop it close for five days, then bottle it in stone
bottles; be sure your corks are very good, and tye them with
pack-thread; and about a fortnight or three weeks after you may begin
to drink of it; you must also put into your infusion two pound of
raisins of the sun stoned.
Yes, Chicken Beer.
That recipe's taken from Edward Spencer’s The Flowing Bowl (1903), which cites “The English Housewyfe, containing the inward and outward Vertues which ought to be in a complete Woman", published by Nicholas Okes at the sign of the golden Unicorne, in 1631.”
Hey, sorry I disappeared for a few weeks, I was out there looking for America. I found it, and decided to come back to WFMU. On my return, I approached this DJ to say "hey, you got anything on you that I can photograph and put on the blog as part of this guessing game thing?", and this DJ says, "well... I got her!" (Truthfully, I was hoping s/he'd say that)
