Every. Single. Time. the historical figure is mentioned. Guess what? In a million years people will still remember the Roman Pliny the Elder, but not your favorite beer.
In a million years they will probably think he invented beer.
The beer will be forgotten in 10 years (maybe 5)
A test for HN is always whether we can resist the pull of the obvious nearest offtopicness.
Offtopic tangents can be great when they're interesting a.k.a. unpredictable. But the predictable ones are just highways to entropy.
There is no best beer. Pliny is great, but it's impossible to compare it to other styles even from the same brewery, Russian River.
I was getting excited for an article about hops and yeast too