Beer’s credentials include: nation founder, pyramid builder, modern medicine assistant. Beer can basically be linked to humankind’s ability to do great things. It can’t however improve my football skills.
I better leave that to Peyton Manning. For now, I’ll go on about how great beer is.
Beer, a drink that dominates sporting events, parties and barbecues. Beer motivated the birth of the first civilization, Mesopotamia! It also built the Pyramids. Boston exists because of it, as does US democracy, and your doctors are washing their hands before surgery thanks to beer. If you thought the world was built on bread, check your facts! It was barley farming that kicked us out of the Stone Age. So pour yourself a cold one (I’m dreaming of a Harpoon Winter Warmer) and read on about how beer shaped global culture.
At the dawn of time,
a mere 10,000 years ago…the agricultural revolution was started by barley, the main ingredient in beer.
The barley for beer theory (and not bread) is based on evidence that archaeologists found beer stouts from 10,000 years ago, a full 3,000 years ago before bread was introduced. Humanity’s thirst for more beer is said to have spurred civilizations to establish systems of trade, a common measurement system and even a language
Think I’m lying? Fine. But first check out the Sumerians of Mesopotamia’s cuneiform tablets (the world’s first language). The word for beer is scrawled all over them.
I think it says ‘WE want more beer” a couple of hundred times.
Truly, the Cuneiform language had more than 160 words related to beer’
Beer build the Pyramids of Giza:
In Ancient Egypt, beer was the main food, and a form of currency. Ancient Egypt existed because of beer. In fact it took 231,414,717 gallons of beer to build the pyramids of Giza.
Scoffers rejoice, you’ve got evidence that TODAY you could not live off of beer, but the stuff the Egyptian’s made was some pretty good shit.
So good, that each pyramid builder was given a gallon of beer a day for his or her work.
Also, the ancient Nubians’ home brews contained tetracycline, an antibiotic supposedly not found until 1948 by Dr. Alexander Fleming.
Sorry, Dr. Fleming
Fast forward to the middle ages and you will find that…
MONKS WERE THE ORIGINAL BREWMASTERS:
People went to church for the beer.
Beer kept people alive in Medieval Europe .
If everyone drank the water, everyone would have gotten sick and the population would have been zero.
However, boiling the water for the beer not only made it taste better, it created a good bacteria free beverage. Beer was also consumed in enormous quantities. One person would go through 250 liters of beer a year (we drink 75 to 80 liters of beer today).
BEER BUILT EUROPE:
Trade among European countries, like Germany, France, the UK was kickstarted by beer. If one country was experiencing an unlucky harvest season, and, gasp, barley and wheat were hard to come by…it could be outsourced.
Let’s cheers to that.
BEER and the Mayflower:
For long voyages, people added hops to beer to keep it fresh. And there you have the birth of the pale ale.
Plymouth rock was the ending point for the Mayflower not because it looked nice, but because the pilgrims ran out of beer. The first couple of months were rough, but they figured out through the local population (squirrels) that acorns could be used to produce beer.
Around this time, the original social network got started in North America: the pub.
And it was here, that BEER established AMERICA:
Did you know that John Adams, George Washington, Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson were all brewers?
It comes as no surprise that beer assisted in the following:
1) The American Revolution
2) The Boston Tea Party (a coup on British rule back in the 18th century)
3) The Declaration of Independence
4) The tune for the star spangled banner (it is taken from a sobriety test)
BEER is the Basis of Modern Medicine:
Louis Pasteur didn’t conceive the idea of pasteurization (heating a liquid to kill bacteria) from milk, but from beer.
One night, Louis Pasteur poured himself a cold one, took a sip and thought ‘Damn why does this taste bad?" (I’m paraphrasing)
Louis took a slide, dabbed some beer on it, put it under his microscope and EUREKA, discovered that beer was filled with bacteria, and pasteurization became a thing. Pass the beer and cheese please.
We wash our hands because of beer:
Germ Theory: germs make people sick was discovered through beer. So everytime you soap up before you eat, or if you're a doctor and you wash your hands before surgery, you can thank beer.
Beer gave us refridgeration:
Lager beer to be exact. This German beer needed to be brewed cold in order to be fermented slowly. Cold beer could only be a reality in the winter, until 1881 when German engineer, Carl von Linde created a refrigeration machine. By 1890, 747 machines were being used by breweries worldwide.
Refrigeration, possibly the single greatest invention meant:
1) air conditioning:
2) medical storage (organ transplants)
3) food storage (we wouldn't have ice cream without beer)
BEER and modern industry:
Ford and his model T made modern industry, right? No, beer did that.
Engineer, Michael Owens, invented the glass machine in 1904, which kickstarted the concept of the production line ten years before Ford and his automobiles. Owen’s glass machine mass-produced beer bottles, and no longer were children being hired to mass produce bottles glassblowing factories.
Beer, you rock. So look at that Super Bowl spread and say thank you beer for making this feast possible.
Truly, the world is about to drink the equivalent of 493 olympic sized swimming pools of the stuff.