In the 2/15-22/10 issue of the
New Yorker, there's a pretty good Malcolm Gladwell article about the anthropology of drinking. No link, because it's not online anywhere, but worth looking for, if you're into that kind of thing.
Vaguely relatedly, I drank my first bottle of my first batch of homebrew on Saturday. Didn't go blind. Even less relatedly, I recently learned that
Midwest Supplies, a big winemaking/homebrewing store in Minneapolis, also sells
hydroponic equipment. There may be a fascinating overlap here.