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Is beer good for health? Just think about some of the words used when we toast someone. Santé, Gesondheid, Sláinte. They are words that translate roughly as ‘health’. Humans have used alcohol for millennia as a delivery method for medicinal botanicals, as a painkiller, sterilant and for the advantages ethanol itself offers.

When Ludwig Zamenhof invented Esperanto in 1887 his goal was for humans to communicate in a common language so peace and international understanding could be fostered regardless of regional or national tongues. Perhaps he was not aware that a lingua franca already existed and it is called beer.

When tasting beer describing it as having coffee, treacle, and liquorice flavours, or crisp and light body with subtle herbal aroma and soft biscuit malt character is not unusual now but before the mid-1980s there was no tasting vocabulary for beer.

Barrel aged beer – three words that shiver my timbers! I still remember distinctly the first time I had Innis & Gunn Oak Aged Beer (now known as Innis & Gunn The Original). As befits a beer brewed in Scotland, it was matured in former whisky barrels.

The FoodTalk Show is announcing a special collaboration with well-loved membership organisation Produced in Kent, which champions local produce and is the voice of food and drink in Kent.

Who invented gin, one of the most beloved alcoholic drinks in the world? No-one did because it evolved from something else. That’s why the question where was gin invented cannot be answered either.