I’ve been steadily making my way through my dissertation and I hope to have it in draft by the end of the summer. I’ve got over half of my chapters in approved final form (or as final as they can be before the defense) and am planning on at least having first or second drafts of the others before the fall term begins. That will keep me well on track for a fall defense date.

Anyway, a few weeks ago I was lucky enough to come across a four pack of this:

Thomas Hardy’s Ale is a near legendary English old ale that ceased production in 2008. The alcohol content is such that it will age like wine, so it is apt to be quite good when I finally open it up. Here is the bit from Hardy’s novel The Trumpet Major that is supposed to have inspired the brew:

In the liquor line Loveday laid in an ample barrel of Casterbridge ‘strong beer.’  This renowned drink—now almost as much a thing of the past as Falstaff’s favourite beverage—was not only well calculated to win the hearts of soldiers blown dry and dusty by residence in tents on a hill-top, but of any wayfarer whatever in that land.  It was of the most beautiful colour that the eye of an artist in beer could desire; full in body, yet brisk as a volcano; piquant, yet without a twang; luminous as an autumn sunset; free from streakiness of taste; but, finally, rather heady.  The masses worshipped it, the minor gentry loved it more than wine, and by the most illustrious county families it was not despised.  Anybody brought up for being drunk and disorderly in the streets of its natal borough, had only to prove that he was a stranger to the place and its liquor to be honourably dismissed by the magistrates, as one overtaken in a fault that no man could guard against who entered the town unawares.

I’ve got a batch from the last year it was produced, so it has already been aging for four years or so. Anyway, it is a beer that I’ll be saving for special occasions, though I have decided that I’ll open up a bottle to celebrate completing the rough draft of the dissertation.

Finally, here is a nice little bit on Thomas Hardy and beer.