Photo by met museum Edinburgh / Public Domain
Top 10 Things to Know
about Beer
.
1. Beer Is Seriously Old
Beer-like fermented grain beverages are among the earliest alcoholic drinks known to civilization, with evidence stretching back thousands of years. Technically, many of these ancient brews were closer to ale, since lager yeast and cold-fermentation methods came much later. In other words, humans figured out how to make beer long before they figured out Wi-Fi, indoor plumbing, or where all the missing socks go.
2. The Black Velvet Was Created for Mourning
The Black Velvet dates to 1861 and is traditionally associated with mourning the death of Britain's Prince Albert. The drink combines stout and Champagne, creating an appropriately dark and elegant beer cocktail. Apparently even Victorian grief occasionally required bubbles.
3. Beer Has Two Big Families: Ale & Lager
Beer is broadly divided into two major fermentation families: ales and lagers. Ales traditionally use yeasts that ferment at warmer temperatures and were historically described as top-fermenting, while lagers use yeasts that ferment at cooler temperatures and were described as
bottom-fermenting. Ales have ancient roots. Modern lager brewing is comparatively young, becoming widespread only within the last few centuries.So if beer had a family reunion, ale would be telling lager what things were like back in the old days.
4. Beer Has a Glass for Everything
Few beverage categories come with such an assortment of drinking vessels: pint glasses, pilsner glasses, mugs, steins, goblets, tulips, snifters, weizen glasses, yard glasses, and plenty more. Different shapes can enhance aroma, head retention, appearance, and drinking experience. Or maybe beer drinkers just really like collecting glassware.
5. Beer Likes to Mix With Other Things
Beer has long found its way into mixed drinks and shooters. Famous examples include the Boilermaker and Flaming Dr Pepper, along with the stout-and-Irish-cream/whiskey drop shot commonly known by a name many bars now avoid because it's associated with a violent period of Irish history. Beer cocktails range from elegant Champagne combinations to drinks that involve dropping shot glasses into larger glasses. Beer apparently has range.
6. Beer Comes in Just About Everything
Beer also wins points for packaging variety. It comes in glass bottles, aluminum bottles, cans, growlers, mini-kegs, full-size kegs, barrels, and casks, in enough shapes and sizes to make stocking a walk-in cooler feel like playing Tetris.
The container may change. The important part is still inside.
7. The Beer Stein Lid Had a Job
Covered drinking vessels became particularly useful in parts of Europe centuries ago, when lids helped protect drinks from flies, insects, and other unwanted visitors. Those hinged pewter lids weren't originally there just to make the stein look impressive.
8. Anchor Steam Did Things Differently
San Francisco's historic Anchor Brewing Company became famous for steam beer, a uniquely American style that ferments lager yeast at warmer temperatures than traditional lager brewing. Its famous Anchor Steam became closely identified with San Francisco and helped preserve a brewing tradition dating to the city's early brewing days. Basically, somebody looked at the rules for lager brewing and said: “Yeah, but what if we did this San Francisco style?”
9. America's Oldest Brewery Is Yuengling
D. G. Yuengling & Son, founded in 1829 in Pottsville, Pennsylvania, is recognized as America's oldest operating brewery. That's nearly two centuries of brewing beer. By now, they've probably got the recipe down.
10. And Then There's Hangman's Blood
If you think modern bartenders invented over-the-top drinks, meet Hangman's Blood. A version appeared in Richard Hughes's 1929 novel A High Wind in Jamaica, and writer Anthony Burgess later wrote about the concoction in 1960. The notorious mixture combines porter or ale with rum, gin, whisky, port, and brandy. Yes. Pretty much everybody was invited.
Burgess described the drink as surprisingly smooth and uplifting while claiming it rarely produced a hangover. I'll leave that claim between Anthony Burgess and his liver. As for the recipe itself, Hangman's Blood proves one important lesson from cocktail history: Just because you can put the entire liquor cabinet into a beer doesn't necessarily mean you should.
History of Beer
No one knows exactly when, where, or by whom beer was invented. One popular theory is that beer and bread developed alongside each other because early versions shared the same basic ingredients: grain, water, and yeast.
Perhaps somebody left a bowl of wet grain sitting around too long, tasted the fermented result and thought, Well, this is considerably more fun than bread.
Whatever happened, humans clearly took to it.
Archaeologists and scientists have uncovered ancient brewing evidence in many forms: fermented residue in pottery, tablets describing beer and brewing, artwork showing people drinking through straws, poems and hymns about beer, and even drinking songs. Apparently, once humans invented beer, karaoke wasn't far behind.
Ancient Beer Was...Different
For thousands of years, beer looked nothing like the crystal-clear pint you order today. Early beer could be cloudy, thick, warm, and full of sediment, which is one reason ancient drinkers sometimes used long straws to drink from communal vessels.
Basically, imagine drinking your beer through a straw while trying not to suck up breakfast.
Over time, brewers experimented with herbs, spices, and other flavorings. Hops eventually became increasingly important in European brewing, adding bitterness and aroma while also helping beer keep longer. That preservation benefit was a pretty big deal in an age when the refrigerator was still several centuries away.
Beer Leaves the Kitchen
For much of history, brewing was a household chore, and women were often the primary brewers. As towns grew and demand increased, brewing gradually became more organized and commercial.
By the late Middle Ages and Renaissance, commercial breweries and brewing guilds were increasingly common in Europe. Governments also began regulating what could go into beer—including Bavaria's famous 1516 beer purity law, later known as the Reinheitsgebot.
Meanwhile, brewers discovered that storing and fermenting beer in cold cellars and caves produced something different. Cooler fermentation eventually helped give rise to lager, which would go on to conquer an enormous share of the beer-drinking world. So yes, some of beer's greatest advances happened because somebody essentially said: “Stick it in the cave and see what happens.”
Then Came the Industrial Revolution
The 1700s and 1800s transformed brewing.
New machinery, thermometers, hydrometers, steam power, advances in microbiology, refrigeration, railroads, and eventually modern bottling allowed breweries to make beer more consistently, in greater quantities, and ship it farther than ever before. Beer had officially gone from the kitchen to big business.
Prohibition: Well, This Is Awkward
Prohibition movements swept through many parts of the world in the late 1800s and early 1900s, with various countries restricting or banning alcohol at different times. Then, in 1920, it was America’s turn to put the cork in the bottle—and the cap on the beer.
From 1920 to 1933, the United States prohibited the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages nationwide, putting hundreds of breweries out of business and forcing the survivors to get creative. Some produced near beer, soft drinks, malt products, ice cream, dairy products, and other goods. Major brewers also sold malt syrup or malt extract marketed for perfectly innocent household purposes such as baking. Of course, customers couldn't possibly be expected to know that malt extract could also be used to make beer at home. Wink, wink. Here's your “bread syrup.”
Homebrewing Helps Change Everything
After Prohibition ended, America's beer industry became increasingly dominated by a relatively small number of large breweries. Then came another turning point.
In 1978, President Jimmy Carter signed legislation removing federal restrictions on home production of beer for personal use, with the change taking effect in 1979. States still had their own laws, but the federal change helped fuel America's growing homebrewing and craft-beer movements.
Homebrewers experimented with styles and flavors that had become difficult to find in mainstream American beer. Some eventually opened their own breweries.
By the 1980s and 1990s, microbreweries and brewpubs were popping up around the country. And then they multiplied. And multiplied.
Today, the United States has thousands of breweries, and local craft beer has become part of the culture in cities and towns nationwide. IPAs, stouts, porters, sours, wheat beers, pilsners, barrel-aged beers, fruit beers, seasonal beers—you could spend a lifetime tasting them and still have homework left over. Not bad for a beverage that may have started when somebody forgot about a bowl of wet grain.
Beer: proving for thousands of years that sometimes forgetting to clean up the kitchen works out surprisingly well.
Types of Beer
Beer has hundreds of styles, but most fall into two big families: ales and lagers. The biggest difference isn't color, strength, or whether it has a lumberjack on the label—it's mainly the yeast and fermentation method.
Ale
Ale is the elder of the beer family—by several thousand years.
For much of brewing history, people produced ale in homes, monasteries, inns, and public houses before brewing gradually became a commercial industry. Traditionally, ales use top-fermenting yeast and ferment at warmer temperatures than lagers, generally fermenting faster and often producing more noticeable fruity or complex flavors.
The ale family is enormous and includes styles such as pale ale, IPA, porter, stout, brown ale, Belgian ales, wheat ales, and many others. Lambic and other wild-fermented beers are often grouped with ales, although their fermentation is a little more complicated than that. Familiar examples include Guinness, Newcastle Brown Ale, Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, and many craft IPAs. Ale has been around so long that when lager arrived, ale probably called it “the new stuff.”
Lager
Lager is the much younger sibling.
The word lager comes from the German word meaning “to store,” referring to the traditional practice of storing beer at cool temperatures. Lagers use yeast adapted to cooler fermentation and were historically described as bottom-fermenting beers.
A major milestone came in 1842, when the brewery in Plzeň—today in the Czech Republic—introduced Pilsner Urquell, the original pale pilsner. It was golden, clear, crisp, and enormously influential. Its descendants eventually became some of the world's most popular beers. But here's an important point: Lager does not mean yellow.
Lagers can range from pale gold to amber, brown, and nearly black. What makes a beer a lager is primarily how it's fermented—not what color it is. Lager styles include pilsner, helles, dunkel, bock, märzen, schwarzbier, amber lager, and others. Familiar lager brands include Budweiser, Coors, Corona, Stella Artois, Modelo, Shiner Bock, and Pilsner Urquell.
So if you're standing behind the bar trying to remember the difference:
Ale = generally warmer fermentation.
Lager = generally cooler fermentation.
And if someone tells you all lagers are pale yellow, hand them a dunkel and enjoy the educational portion of their evening.
Fun Beer Facts
Beer has been around for thousands of years, so it's naturally accumulated plenty of strange stories, questionable decisions, and facts perfect for winning absolutely nothing at trivia night.
Beer Is Basically Liquid Bread
Beer and bread share many of the same basic building blocks—grain, water, and yeast—which is why beer is often jokingly called liquid bread.
So technically, ordering another beer could be considered having another slice.
Russia Once Had a Very Loose Definition of Beer
For years, Russia legally classified beverages containing less than 10% alcohol differently from stronger alcoholic beverages. Legislation signed in 2011 changed that classification, with major provisions taking effect in 2013, officially treating beer as alcohol. Apparently, until then, a 5% beer was practically a smoothie.
The $1,000 Beer
A 12-liter bottle of Belgian Vieille Bon Secours became famous years ago after a London restaurant offered it for roughly $1,000. Keep in mind, this wasn't your average 12-ounce bottle—it held the equivalent of about 34 regular 12-ounce beers.
Still, at that price, I'd expect the bottle to remember my birthday.
Snake Venom Packs a Serious Bite
Scottish brewery Brewmeister created Snake Venom, a beer advertised at an astonishing 67.5% ABV. For comparison, a typical Budweiser is about 5% ABV.
At 67.5%, calling Snake Venom “a beer” feels a little like calling a flamethrower a cigarette lighter.
Who Drinks the Most Beer?
Lists of the world's biggest beer drinkers depend on whether you're measuring total consumption or beer consumed per person. In modern per-capita rankings, the Czech Republic regularly sits at or near the top. Which makes sense. If you're going to give the world Pilsner, you should probably help drink it.
Put Some Rum in Your Corona
In the 1990s, one simple beer cocktail was the Corona Limón: add a shot of Bacardi Limón rum to a Corona.
Another eye-catching variation is the Coronarita—a Margarita served with an opened bottle of Corona inverted into the glass so the beer gradually feeds into the cocktail.
Because apparently somebody looked at a Margarita and thought: “You know what this needs? An upside-down beer.” And America said, Absolutely.
Amsterdam Paid Workers in Beer
In Amsterdam, a program launched in 2013 employed people struggling with chronic alcoholism to clean city streets. Participants received food, a small amount of money, tobacco, and controlled amounts of beer during the workday.
It was a controversial harm-reduction program designed to provide structure and meaningful work. It may also be one of the few jobs in history where “beer benefits included” was literally part of the compensation package.
The Great London Beer Flood
On October 17, 1814, a huge vat at London's Horse Shoe Brewery ruptured, triggering other vats and sending a massive wave of porter into the surrounding neighborhood. Buildings were damaged and eight people died.
It became known as the London Beer Flood—which sounds like the greatest day in beer history until you learn what actually happened.
Definitely file this one under: Things That Sound Funny Until You Read the Next Sentence.