Didja know...?

Although books (and increasingly, movies) are regular topics here at Kindle Taproom, this blog is supposed to have a drinking subtext, too. To service that lately neglected mission, here for your enjoyment is some entertaining (I hope) drinking trivia.

4000 years ago, it was the accepted practice in Babylon that, for a full month after a wedding, the bride's father would supply his new son-in-law with all the mead he could drink. Because mead was a honey-based beer and because the Babylonian calendar was lunar-based, this period was initially called the honey month, which shortly evolved into the term honeymoon.

In English pubs, ale is ordered in pints and quarts. So, in old England, when customers got unruly, the bartender would yell at them, "Settle down and mind your pints and quarts!" You can probably see where this is going: this is the origin of the phrase "Mind your P's and Q's."

To continue our look back at England of years past, in olden times English pubs served ale in ceramic mugs with a whistle baked into their rims or handles. Why? When customers needed a refill, they would simply signal the barman by blowing into the handy whistle right there on their mugs. Thus, hundreds of years later, we often hear a person describe his need to quench his thirst as, "needing to wet my whistle".

Interesting trivia, wouldn't you say? Now, is anybody ready for a refill?