Drink and Mathematics (only tangentially off-topic?)

[cdaniels]

Hi Ralph and all

Seasons Greetings

Thought I'd celebrate with a new malt (or a new edition of an existing malt)
- The Isle of Jura Superstition.  This is a new version as the one tasted in
2003 was at 45% and this one is at 43% and the livery is different too.

My notes

Nose: Toffee and turf, some earthy notes and a hint of moss, lichen, young &
earthy peat - some sweet and sour fruit (prunes, dates) and smoked nuts
along with an intermittent and mercurial hint of wintergreen and mint.  Gets
more barnyardy with horse saddles, dubbin and a tobacco leaf bite along with
a bit of young spirit. Nose gets fruitier with more sour leather and that
earthy note like aerobically decomposed forest floor - not a dirty smell,
but very organic.
Palate: Toffee then sour fruits and finally swamped by more earthy notes,
more leather and some sourness like old wet leaves. Leafy green herbs -
(thyme and mint) and some peat, but not tarry, more like old cured leather.
Finish; leather and leafy, drier than the nose and palate, some lingering
sour leafiness and a reprise of nut skins.

Doesn't seem as peaty as the 45% version. There were parts of the package
that reminded me of Lagavulin and Talisker, but the whole package was more
earthy than either and lacking the creosote of both.

I think the Fox-Hunting set would like this one (LOL)!

Best Wishes

Craig Daniels

-----Original Message-----
From: MALTS-L at RZ.UNI-KARLSRUHE.DE [mailto:MALTS-L at RZ.UNI-KARLSRUHE.DE] On
Behalf Of Ralph Katzenell
Sent: Monday, 25 December 2006 5:34 AM
To: MALTS-L at LISTS.UNI-KARLSRUHE.DE
Subject: Drink and Mathematics (only tangentially off-topic?)

Seasons greetings to all.
As a simple chemist of the test-tube persuasion, I am often flumoxed by
anything beyond simple arithmetic. But as many of the list members seem to
be University based - nay - even computer based, I thought the following
excerpt from holiday reading might be of trivial interest:

The text is from "Seminumeral Algorithms" by Donald
E. Knuth (second edition), page 183:

"Although decimal notation was almost exclusively used for arithmetic
during that era [1650], other systems of weights and measures were
rarely if ever based on multiples of 10, and many business transactions
required a good deal of skill in adding quantities such as pounds,
shillings and pence. For centuries merchants had therefore learned to
compute sums and differences of quantities expressed in peculiar units
of currency, weights, and measures; and this was actually arithmetic in
a non-decimal number system. The common units of liquid measure in
England, dating from the 13th century or earlier, are particularly
noteworthy:

2 gills = 1 chopin
2 chopins = 1 pint
2 pints =  1 quart
2 quarts = pottle
2 pottles = 1 gallon
2 gallons = 1 peck
2 pecks = 1 demibushel
2 demibushels = 1 bushel or firkin
2 firkins = 1 kilderkin
2 kilderkins = 1 barrel
2 barrels = 1 hogshead
2 hogsheads = 1 pipe
2 pipes = 1 tun

Quantities of liquid expressed in gallons, pottles, quarts, pints,
etc. were essentially written in binary notation. Perhaps the true
inventors of binary arithmetic were English wine merchants!"

Uncle Ralph.

P.S. My best holiday reading is not really that geekinsh, its the stunning.
gripping un-put-downable book  'Atilla the Hun'  - A Barbarian King and the
Fall of Rome by John King. No! Really! Its absolutely great.

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