The Andersonville Round Table

[muckefuck]

Sorry to all and sundry who couldn't reach me Saturday night. I was happily esconced in Hopleaf, a gemoedelijk bar, but almost too noisy to carry on a conversation, much less hear a phone ring in. I should've recorded somewhere the beers we had, since almost every name was unfamiliar. lhn had a Lindemans lambic, but one (the apple-flavoured Pommes) I'd never seen before. Leffe is the only one of innerdoggie's beers that I can recall right now. I started off with Weissbier, but from the unfamiliar Bavarian König Ludwig brand, and continued the royal theme by ordering a Belgian de Koninck.

Their motto--"Maak eens 'n afspraak met de Koninck"--caused some consternation, mainly since no one recognised the word "afspraak". My knowledge of Dutch is almost entirely a by-product of my knowledge of German, and Absprache is not in my active vocabulary. Working from absprechen, however, I eventually came up with "Make an agreement with the King." Upon further examination, "consultation" seems to be the closest equivalent, but that makes for more awkward English than "appointment". The "eens" seems to be there only to soften the imperative, but that's mainly a hunch based on the use of (ein)mal in German. (Any of y'all Nederlandstaligen can improve on the translation, please do.)

That's what I love about my good friends: I leave every conversation full of questions. Who enforced the Reinheitsgebot? Is mead the earliest alcoholic beverage or is it beer? Where is "concrete" usual for what we St. Louisans call "frozen custard"? Is there an "As Seen On TV" store in the Chicago area and, if so, where is it? What goes into "fumitory water"? The bar actually has a reference shelf with the 200th anniversary edition of the EB and the Oxford Companion to Food, so you better believe both were consulted during the course of the evening's drinking--and, sadly, found wanting.

At the end of the evening, we tried to come up with common idioms grounded in rural life which would be difficult to decipher for digital natives and we pretty much stumped. One did occur to me on the way home, however: My high-school trigonometry teacher was a colourful old coot from Arkansas named Mr Lavelle. He was a font of folksy sayings; I remember best his unaffected use of "Sam Hill" (and his protestations that the second word was definitely "Hill" and not "Hell"), but at least once he also said "what we have here is a clod in the churn". He was talking about a tricky bit of a trig equation, but the expression he used is going to be clear as mud to someone who's never heard of churning milk to get butter.

A Googling of this phrase pulls up this page of colourful colloquialisms. The only one among them that really fits the bill is "She's been rode hard and put up wet!" The second part's a mite obscure if you don't know a thing about horses, isn't it?

Comments

[lhn.livejournal.com]

I should've recorded somewhere the beers we had, since almost every name was unfamiliar.

lhn: the aforementioned Lindemans Pomme (menu description: "Delightful apple Lambic. Crisp & bright, sweetish but not cloying, w/light green apple tartness. 3.5%")-- both prilicla and I liked this one; Jadwiga Miod (Mead) Pitney Poltorak ("Made in Poland, aged in oak for 25 years!") me: "sweet, but not bad", prilicla "tastes like cough syrup"; Cane & Ebel ("One of a series of special limited-run beers by this brewery, all based on an unusual or extreme style. Former Hopleaf bartender Wesley Phillps & brewmaster Jason Ebel designed this one together: a Red Ale w/the spicy tang of rye malt & a creamy touch of Thai palm sugar for balance, finished w/the wackiest new hops variety Jason could get his hands on. 6.8%") me: "a bit too thoroughly beer for me at my current stage of development", prilicla: "too bitter".

prilicla: Tripel Karmeliet ("Inspired by the 3-grain beer brewed in the 1600’s by the Carmelites of Dendermonde; made by Bosteels brewery in nearby Buggenhout. Launched in 1996 to acclaim. Made from raw & malted barley, wheat and oats. Golden to bronze with a creamy head; great finesse and complexity. Restrained hoppiness, generous spicing, fruity banana and vanilla character from the house yeast. 8%")

Where is "concrete" usual for what we St. Louisans call "frozen custard"?

As a data point, the people on Usenet who introduced me to the term (which they used for frozen custard mixed with toppings) last November got it from St. Louis in one case, Kansas City in another, both attributing it to a chain called Sheridan's.

Who enforced the Reinheitsgebot?

Looks like our instinct was right on this one: it came from Bavaria. (And according to Wikipedia, Bavaria insisted on its being extended to all Germany as a condition for unification. "The move encountered strong resistance from brewers outside Bavaria. By restricting the allowable ingredients, it led to the extinction of many brewing traditions and local beer specialties, such as North German spiced beer and cherry beer, and led to the domination of the German beer market by pilsener style beers. Only a few regional beer varieties, such as Düsseldorfer Altbier, survived its implementation.")

What goes into "fumitory water"?

Evidently, fumitory is an herb.

[lhn.livejournal.com]

By restricting the allowable ingredients, it led to the extinction of many brewing traditions and local beer specialties, such as North German spiced beer and cherry beer, and led to the domination of the German beer market by pilsener style beers.

Which, I realize, ties back into the evening in a couple of different ways. North German Kirschenbier appears (according to the Intarweb, and reasonably enough) to have been part of the same tradition that produced Belgian Kriek, and the ban may have been the reason for the development of the Berliner Weiss, to substitute for the newly unavailable fruit beers.

(There are apparently some German brewpubs flouting the Reinheitsgebot now that EU law has superseded it, brewing with cherries, honey, and other previously verboten ingredients.)

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Oh, I got around to looking up the Schleswig-Holstein beer which appears in the Werner comics. It's not from Kiel, it's from Flensburg, and is called simply "Flensburger Pils" or--in the cant of the comic book--"Flens". People who have drunk it tell me it's not too great.

[cruiser.livejournal.com]

An idiom I thought of that might be worth considering is "worked [or beat] him/her/it like a borrowed mule."

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Good one!

[snowy-owlet.livejournal.com]

Isn't "afspraak" the insurance company with the duck?

[lhn.livejournal.com]

It would be appropriate, since another prominently featured Belgian draft beer at Hopleaf was Kwak. (Which Hopleaf serves in a fairly remarkable glass.)

[grahamwest.livejournal.com]

There used to be an 'As Seen on TV' store in the Lincolnwood Town Center shopping mall. Don't know if it is still there.

[fj.livejournal.com]

It's somewhere between 'Get together with the King sometime' and 'Make an appointment with the King (imperative softened).'

[mistress-elaine.livejournal.com]

Afspraak is roughly equivalent to German Verabredung. It can mean anything from "agreement"/"arrangement" to "appointment" to (in its diminutive form, afspraakje) "date". I'd say it's somewhere between "appointment" and "date" here. So fj is right: the right translation would be something like, "Get together with the King some time". Eens is indeed used to soften the imperative.

If I may be really pedantic for a moment, describing a pub as gemoedelijk is a very Flemish/German thing to do. Of course, the Flemish ring is appropriate here, given the fact that you were drinking Belgian beer, but you wouldn't hear anyone describe a pub as gemoedelijk in Holland. You can say that the *atmosphere* in the pub is gemoedelijk (although a Dutchman would probably opt for gezellig there), but you'd never say een gemoedelijk café or een gemoedelijke kroeg. Gezellig would be more like it here.

old sayings

[innerdoggie.livejournal.com]

This isn't as good as the list you found, but this is the one that was floating around my genealogy lists.

http://www.myplainview.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=16353318&BRD=517&PAG=461&dept_id=482565&rfi=6

I thought the sayings weren't colorful enough since I actually say some of them.

Beer

[innerdoggie.livejournal.com]

I started with the Saisson du Pont and then had the Leffe Blonde. The first was quite good, but quite strange. I'm not sure what the strangeness consisted in, but perhaps it was the "farmhouse" style. I'll have to find out what that means.

The second was a little sweet, but quite nice.

I definitely want to come back, maybe this fall when the frost is on the pumpkin. (to tie in to that old saying thread).