Beer

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Si vous voulez cet article en français, il peut être trouvé à bière.
Beer for goats.
Were you looking for the saloon bar?

Beer is one of man's greatest inventions, after before the wheel.

Contents

[edit] History of beer

The change of angle in this pyramid marks the moment that beer came to Egypt.

Beer is one of the world's oldest beverages, possibly dating back to the 6th millennium BC, and is recorded in the written history of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. The earliest Sumerian writings contain references to beer, according to Wikipedia (so you know it's true). Beer was extremely useful in providing the people of Earth with fluid that was less likely to kill them than the drinking water of the day, and was an important source of nutrients (the action of the yeast adds nutrients to the beer--note that filtering, as in most modern beers, removes those nutrients). It also served the dual purpose of getting people drunk enough to appreciate the good things in life, rather than the hardships of living in a world without modern technology.[1]

Beer is claimed to be the third most popular drink after water and tea. So if you discount health fads that only let you drink water, and the English, it is the most popular drink in the world. It is possible that beer was essential in the formation of civilization itself.[2]

[edit] Beer and God

Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy
—not Benjamin Franklin [citation NOT needed]

[edit] Know your beer!

Stout

Beer can be split into two distinct types. Ale was developed first. It is made with top-fermenting yeast (because the yeast floats near the surface during fermentation) and ferments at around room temperature or a little cooler. The process of storing ale in cold conditions caused natural selection to develop bottom-fermenting yeasts that produced the second distinct type, lager. We have, obviously, the Germans to thank for this.[3] Of the two, ales have a more complex flavor while lagers have a smoother and cleaner taste. There's also lambic, which despite what the Boston Beer Company says can only really be made in certain parts of Belgium on account of the bizarre menagerie of microbes living there. But because there's so little of it – and because it tastes like cough syrup – it doesn't count. A few hybrid styles also exist, including steam beer, which uses lager-type yeasts but ferments at ale temperatures. Steam beer is also known as California Common Beer, since Anchor Brewing Company cynically trademarked the name "steam beer". It then turned its "steam beer" on its head by making it a quality craft style, whereas the historical steam beer was the common, inexpensive and none-too-cultured local brew of the San Francisco area.[4]

The rule of thumb is that the types are served near the temperature where they are brewed. So ale tends to be served warm—well, cellar temperature or just below—and lager is served cold. Australians serve beer below 2 degrees centigrade; at this temperature your taste buds do not function and no discernible flavors, including diacetyl, can be detected. This is possibly done intentionally, as when it's warmed up you regret being able to taste it. The breweries have gotten away with this for years by making advertisements mocking the British for drinking their beer warm, showing that parochialism can be used to trump science.

[edit] American beer

Beer was brought to what's now the United States by the first settlers of Roanoke and Jamestown, and the Pilgrims famously landed north of their target because their provisions, "especially beer", were running dangerously low. Homebrewing was very common in early America, though the difficulty of obtaining ingredients was a constant problem. Malt was difficult and expensive to import and barley was hard to grow locally in early colonial days, and hops were variable and increasingly hard to obtain enough of, since settlers relied on harvesting wild hops in the forest. As a result, colonial brewers resorted to many substitutes, including molasses, spruce, and pumpkin (the latter not as a flavoring, as today, but a main source of fermentable sugars—pumpkin beer was not favored but was made for lack of better ingredients). [5]

Over time it became easier to obtain sufficient ingredients to brew enough beer to supply demand--though the quality of the finished product was ever variable in the days before Pasteur figured out what made fermentation tick. As a result, beer-based cocktails were common and much enjoyed in the Colonies—largely, it is thought, to cover the taste of failed batches. Such cocktails, often called flip, tended to include egg, spices, and be finished off by sticking a red-hot poker in the tankard to froth up the beverage. [6]

In the mid-1800s, German immigrants brought the new style of beer, lager, to the United States. Lager suited American tastes because it is best served cold, so it is more refreshing in warmer climates, and because its lighter, thinner taste was easier to drink a lot of at a sitting (prior to Prohibition, Americans tended to drink heavily compared to today). Responding to demand for a lighter brew with less body, the larger brewers such as Anheuser-Busch began experimenting with adjuncts, replacing some of the malt in their brews with simpler sugars to thin the resulting beverage. [7]

Consequently, light pilsner became very popular in the States, almost to the exclusion of any other style of beer.[8] This led to contemporary American beer being "like making love in a canoe - fucking close to water" according to infallible beer experts. This has turned around somewhat, however, since around the start of the 1990s when brewpubs and microbreweries started to pop up and many Americans rediscovered the virtues of other kinds of beer.

[edit] Greed

Beer is so good that certain cliques of people keep it to themselves and tell other cliques of people that it is bad for them. For example, in many parts of the world, people under a certain age are denied the wonderful beverage and told that it is bad for them. The Nazis of Germany denied the pleasure to Jews and the white men of America denied beer to slaves.

[edit] See also

Icon fun.svg For those of you in the mood, RationalWiki has a fun article about Beer.

[edit] Footnotes

  1. One could argue that this is still the case today. Sometimes I feel I can't just live without tricorders, faster than light travel, teleportation, and instant cures for cancer, so I have another beer.
  2. Types of beers
  3. Realbeer.com
  4. http://drinks.seriouseats.com/2011/03/beer-history-lost-beer-styles-pennsylvania-swankey-kentucky-common-steam-beer.html#continued
  5. Gregg Smith, Beer in America: The Early Years—1587-1840: Beer's Role in the Settling of America and the Birth of a Nation
  6. Gregg Smith, Beer in America: The Early Years--1587-1840: Beer's Role in the Settling of America and the Birth of a Nation
  7. Maureen Ogle, Ambitious Brew: the Story of American Beer
  8. Maureen Ogle, Ambitious Brew: the Story of American Beer
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