Oh, the bock is renowned as a drink of good fortune,
It brings luck at games of skill and of chance.
With dice and a firkin, the intrepid gambler,
Comes home with a barrel, but no shirt or pants.
-Bring Us More Beer, The Poxy Boggards
Well, I don’t know if the Boggards have it right about bocks helping you at the craps table, but this month’s entry is certainly an interesting one. Well, interesting to me anyway. It should be no surprise to most that I am not a fan of hoppy beers, so the bock, with all it’s malty goodness, was a wonderful trip through brewing. Bock is a bottom-fermented beer, for those who care.
The origins of the word ‘bock are actually quite amusing, as is the story of the spread of the beer. Astute linguists, of which I am not, will notice that ‘bock’ is the German word for goat. Many attribute to titling of this beer to the fact that it is most often brewed in Capricorn; a bit of a stretch, but a good story. There’s a tale I found that includes a drinking contest and a sore loser who attributed his loss to a renegade farm animal knocking him out of his chair. The winner, who was also the brewmaster, indicated to the intoxicated man that the bock that attacked him was “brewed by me”. This story, as many great tales are, seems have been created ex post facto. Most scholars accept that the work bock is derived from the German city Einbeck, and is simply a dialectical distortion of that city. This is supported by another story I found, about how the beer spread, but before I get to that, you need some history.
Bock is a lager beer, and as we all know, lager beers are stored for a period of time in cold, dark places before they are consumed. When one looks for cold, dark places in Germany, one starts first at the northern monasteries. Monks, as the perennial shepherds of beer, originated the bock style. (Note, they likely didn’t call it ‘bock’. To them, it would have been known as, uh. beer.) Due to the practices of fasting during certain holy seasons, like Lent, the monks over time developed their beer to have more nutritional value, and more flavor. There is some indication that this may be the origination of the phrase “liquid bread”, and I can assure you that it is not a bad characterization of bocks.
As I implied earlier, appellate names (those products named for where they are from) don’t usually come into use until after the product has left its home area. Such does it seem to be with bock. The best story I found has the variety moving south after a particularly large wedding. A wealthy nobleman invited a virtual who’s who of German society to his northern estate to celebrate his daughter’s wedding, and while they were there, the southern aristocrats tried this northern beer for the first time. Enamored, they brought this beer home with them, and were soon placing orders for “Ein Bock” at the local pub.
See you soon…hopefully.
#1 by Vinnie on April 29, 2010 - 5:52 am
try this:
Vinnie’s Paralyser
add to steel shaker ice cubes, 30 ml Bacardi 8, 15 ml each bacardi superior and bacardi coco or Malibu, teaspoon of brown sugar 60 ml pineapple juice 30 ml ea lemon lime and orange juices. roll with the ice cubes and pour into long glass. top up with cold soda water, stir, add a dash of Schweppes raspberry cordial for a sunset look, serve garnished with rimmed slice of yellow nectarines and lime wedge, straw.