Monday, June 03, 2013

F. Scott Fitzgerald's Prohibition Ale


Want to make it yourself? Here's how.

From the post on Pepper and Salt...

When Fitzgerald returned to the U.S., he also returned to beer, his first love—a relationship that continued to carry him as his marriage to Zelda broke down. At his peak intake, he went through 37 bottles a day, using beer as a substitute for water (and if we were all  be that hydrated, our doctors would be so proud). To Scott, beer didn’t count as a real drink—just like when I was a “vegetarian,” fish didn’t count as real meat. In 1937, when Fitz claims to be “on the complete wagon,” he has to clarify: this time he means “not even beer.”

In the late 1930s, Fitzgerald tried to curb his intake of the beverage that had shaped his life; “I havn’t [sic] even had a glass of beer for a month + shall try it again” he wrote. But even as he saw its impact on his health, he couldn’t help but indulge in a cold one every now and then. “The fact that I have abused liquor is something to be paid for with suffering and death perhaps,” he wrote, “but not renunciation.”

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