Sunday, February 28, 2010

its name is my name

A few nights ago I was Googling my name which is, you know, the best possible use of my time. I found this:



It's a beer, an ale to be precise, named after me! How is this possible?

It's an Italian beer, and here's the story: so you've got these people called the Ligures or the Liguri, who lived in a land called Liguria, which is now Tuscany and a little bit of Southern France, Bavaria, and other dark and woodsy places. They were a barbarian people and were eventually soaked up by the Gauls and then the Romans. You know how that goes.

In a cup in a tomb of a Liguri king, they found traces of ale, and this beer is an attempt to recreate that recipe. Why is it called Bryton? Because that's what the Liguri called this beverage.

I've often wondered about the origin of my name, and though I don't think it's what my parents had in mind, guess it turns out I'm named after the world's oldest beer.

Seems like if there's a beer named after me, or vice versa or whatever, I should taste it. Very least, I should have a bottle to add to my collection of beer bottles (yes I collect beer bottles, which is one of the many things I may have to give up some day if I ever want to stop being a man-child). So I wrote to them to see if how I could possibly get my hands on some and they responded -

Dear Mr Bryton…I understand and appreciate your desire to taste the Bryton beer, the oldest beer in the world to have been brewed with flavorful hop. But without a US distributor it will not be easy to ship it over to you. This could then be a chance for you to make a good deal and become the US distributor of Bryton Beer.

I'm considering it. Might be hard work though and I don't really like filling out paperwork so probably not. But who knows? Maybe I could be the next great beer baron, like that tool in the Sam Adams commercials.

On the other hand, by becoming a distributor I might become associated with this guy, and I'm not sure that's something I want.

5 comments:

  1. Interesting...the world's oldest beer recipe (no longer in production ;) came from Babylon...and the tablet it is on is actually the world's oldest dated written word as well.

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  2. Good sir, if ye become a distributor, you've got a consumer in me. Please keep in mind that I live in California now. :)

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  3. would you be a tool like that sam adams guy, or would you be the most interesting man in the world like that XX guy?

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  4. SJ, do you think it's possible that I'm the world's oldest man? I mean, can we really rule that out?

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  5. Becky, I like the way you think. Or, would I be a whole new party animal, like the world's most spudsiest McKenzie?

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