Amager Bryghus (that’s the brewery) has just announced “Somerton Man’s Last Drink” which, as an 8.2% ABV wheat lager, may well be enough to make anyone with an enlarged spleen drop dead on the spot, whether or not their clothes have labels. They say (tongue firmly in cheek):-
56 years after he was found dead on Somerton Beach in Adelaide, Australia, no one knows who the Somerton Man was or what he died of. A case wrapped in so many layers of mystery that no one has yet been able to penetrate to its core.
However, a thorough post-mortem examination was performed. In fact, SO thorough that it could be inferred that, just hours before his death, the Somerton Man had eaten a meat pie and drank at least two schooners of beer. Via several questionable detours, we here at Amager Bryghus got hold of his autopsy report, from which our master brewers managed to reconstruct the last beer that the Somerton Man drank on this earth. Our hope is that when drinking this rich and powerful wheat beer, you will also be possible to achieve a high level of creative intoxication – and who knows, maybe solve this 56 year-old murder mystery.
Ingredients: Water. Malt: Pilsner, Wheat. Hops: Amarillo, Centennial, Chinook. Yeast: Warehouse.
Of course, all of this is what they would like to be true, rather than what was actually true. The Somerton Man would have had to knock back far more than two schooners of beer before 6pm closing time for them still to be noticeable, given that his estimated time of death was more than six hours later. And it was lumps of potato that was noticed in his stomach (so a pastie rather than a meat pie).
But honestly, none of that bothers me one jot. The Amager people get a double thumbs-up from Cipher Mysteries for even considering the idea, let alone faking up a back story. You’re totally rock and roll, you funky drunk Danes, you!
Incidentally, my favourite barley-wine-ish strong UK beer is Robinson’s “Old Tom”: which I only mention because Robinsons also released a 4.3% golden bitter called “Enigma”, which is about as close to marrying beer and ciphers as I’d seen before.
But now I’ve seen Amager Bryghus’s effort, I’ve gone looking for other cipher-related beers, and found the Telegraph Brewing Company’s 4.0% “Cipher Key Session Ale”, about which they say “Our Cipher Key Session Ale cracks that code with hefty additions of Cascade hops (etc)”… but they would, wouldn’t they?
Yet so far I’ve only found one cipher beer with an actual cipher, and that is from the Half Acre Beer Company of Chicago, IL. It’s called “Cipher” (well, duh), and here is its label:-
Can you solve this? More importantly, can you solve it without printing it out and cutting it up into pieces? Enjoy!
PS: are there any other cipher-related beers I should know about? %^,
Such a tease… the beer cipher from the label above cannot be solved; the label on the actual beers are different, and only those have a cipher solution.
spoiler
cipher Belgian blond
No Australian would be caught dead drinking European beer ..
Blondie Lager ?
Pete: the only reason I’ve ever drunk VB was because I was in Australia and we were losing the Ashes, again.
BD: No, these are in fact Maya glyphs recording the early history of the Sol brewery.
pete –
Sounds as if that last party I attended was one for the undead. Drinks were Hahn, Kirin (beer and cider), ‘2 Lashes’ – damn good beer tho’ local, and various other fine imported beers.
Cricket crowds and expatriates have their own reasons, I suppose.
Ellie already has it.
This puzzle is much more visually complex than the heraldry found in the VMs. The optical aspects of the VMs require only a single move to solve the puzzle: the removal of apparent radial rotation. Of course the VMs solution requires a deeper knowledge of historical events and specific facts, rather than being entirely superficial visually, which is what many prefer.
Beer first; heraldry last.
Diane:
You end up drinking things at sporting events you’d never touch elsewhere because they’re contextually appropriate. So yes, VB at an Australian test match, Bovril (from granules, made by a girl operating a Maxwell House machine) watching Grimsby Town, Budweiser (diluted, which I thought was chemically impossibly) at Yankee Stadium, and a pretty good espresso made by a guy with some kind of insulated backpack at the San Siro watching AC Milan. I wouldn’t normally have drunk any of these substances otherwise, any more than I’d have drunk Kirin outside a Japanese restaurant.
So all about context. Which, in an attempt to wrench this line of discussion back to something appropriate to the main themes of this blog, is equally relevant to how we interpret the contents of the Somerton Man’s suitcase and indeed the imagery in the Voynich Manuscript.
Pete, You might if it was freezing cold one night and you wanted a warm drink..
Sir Hubert
I stand with head bowed, hands loosely clenched by my side and otherwise all at attention.
Ein prosit! Nazdrovnya!
bdid1dr
Beer aside. A while back, someone posted about Prosper possibly having another family in Geelong area. Well, he did have relatives there who had emigrated from Scotland. And when filling out origins on the manifest to Australia, they referred to themselves as “Scottish Irish”. So, DA – No McMahons yet, but there is some Irish heritage to be found in the line.
Beer aside? Have any of you heard of the New York City Saint Patrick’s Day Parades/Riots? Me old dad would wear an orange bow tie while tending bar at the neighborhood saloon. He also poured green beer for the ‘paddies’.
🙂
bdid1dr
D’ye know that I cannot understand why anyone would want beer on St. Pat’s day, unless there’s no stout to be had. But it’s a grand old American custom, and no more justification needed.
Right Brain Brewery from Michigan had a cipher contest hidden on their cans. The contest was only open to Michigan residents apparently.
http://www.mlive.com/beer/2014/08/crack_the_right_brain_brewery.html
Burp!