#dead sheep

Random Fact of the Day no. 14 (RFOTD #14)

In 1992, dance/art band The KLF was awarded Best British Group and were booked to open the show. In an attempt to hijack the event, the duo collaborated with grindcore metal band Extreme Noise Terror to perform a death metal version of the dance song "3 a.m. Eternal", a performance that prompted conductor Sir Georg Solti to walk out in disgust. 

The performance ended with Bill Drummond firing blanks from a vintage machine gun over the audience and KLF publicist/announcer Scott Piering stating "Ladies and gentlemen, The KLF have now left the music business". Producers of the show then refused to let a motorcycle courier collect the award on behalf of the band. 

It’s obvious that the main ingredient in all beer is water, but Lagunita’s takes this notion to the extreme with “Hop”.  Before we get to that, the British tie-in.

For Christmas, Will got me the book, Alchemy - The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Businesses and Life.  By Rory Sutherland, Vice Chairman at Ogilvy UK.  If you want your fill of British idioms, this book is for you.  If you like a fun read with a bunch of interesting insights, ditto.

In an article in the British magazine The Spectator, Sutherland returns to a point he made in the book, about why water has no taste.  He expounds on a lesson he learned from psychophysicist Mark Changizi.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/reducing-activities-to-their-core-misses-the-point

“For a few million years, the most important contribution taste buds made to survival were to detect things in water that weren’t water: the very things, in short, which might indicate that the water wasn’t safe to drink. If we had evolved perception so that water tasted like Rioja or Dr Pepper, the sensory overload might have overpowered that hint of dead sheep from a rotting carcass 100 yards upstream: our taste buds are calibrated with water as the base line, the better to notice things which shouldn’t be in it.”

Photo credit, Jenny Lane  -  Gap of Dunloe, County Kerry, Ireland

Back to Lagunita’s Hop, hoppy refresher.  They don’t even call it beer, instead suggesting sparkling water, NA seltzer or IPA-inspired Refresher.  Hop is made with hops, yeast and water.  Why the yeast, you ask?  They explain that it is to biotransformate the hops and pull out the terpenes (aka, aroma compounds) of bubblegum, lime, lemon, tangerine, and a bit of pine.  They suggest you will taste citrus such as orange and grapefruit, tropical flavors like mango and sulfur compounds which “adds the yummy magic”.  These guys have alchemy (aka, BS) figured out.