Have a Beer

In writing about some of my past history and anthropology classes I began to wonder what were the greatest milestones of civilization.  Even in the earliest days of the Bronze Age when mathematics, writing and civil law developed people already had agriculture, small permanent settlements and beer.

Beer never gets the respect that it should. There is no God of Beer though beer was probably made before wine. In one book of cuneiform translations it's easy to see that the local economies of the fertile crescent ran on beer.  There are hundreds if not thousands of contracts and transacts that had specified payment in bowls of barley beer. Beer was currency that was easy to trade in a barter economy. The clay tablet to the left is a 4,000 year old poem to the joys of drinking it.

Now saying beer might seem misleading because 3,000 years before common era beer was not the clear golden pilsner most of us drink today. The recipe for Pilsner is less than 200 years old. As you go back in time beer got darker and cloudier. And before that, in Medieval Time, most beer was ale and without hops to make it bitter it was really a sweet tasting drink.

The early Sumerians drank a beer that would look like thinned out oatmeal.  The first beer was a bowl of barley porridge that was left to ferment. So the next day somebody tried that funky breakfast and something special was discovered.

It's funny how most songs and stories about beer are happy or comical. Of course not to make light of alcohol abuse or the fact that many people with drinking problems drink beer exclusively. The features that make beer so easy to consume also make alcohol so accessible to people who would be better off without it.

On the left - possibly the first "don't drink and drive" public service announcement  

On the right - just an beer from my youth from a company that no longer exists. The consolation in the brewing industry still continues but to counteract that trend there has been a revival in locally brewed craft beers.

The controversy over beer is an old one. At times beer has been declared a food and not an alcoholic beverage -which meant lower taxes and easier distribution  At one point there was almost a compromise with beer during the prohibition of alcohol in America in the 1920's.  Beer would have been made legal for the workers and all other alcoholic beverage (except Communion wine) would have remained illegal.  As history is full of twists it was actually the bad behavior of the breweries that made people mad enough to ban alcohol.  There was a time when breweries either owned or franchised the bars and taverns that served its beer (something that is now illegal in the US). That created a lot of pressure to get people to drink more and more, finally the public got tired of the predatory business practices and maybe over reacted.

My favorite beer story had to do with a Belgium school distinct  that wanted to serve its students beer instead of soda. Belgium does make some of the best beer in the world but the beer the school district had in mind was a very light beer brewed with a special yeast that left the finished product with less than 1% alcohol. Honestly I think that this kind of beer is a better and healthier drink for kids than soda sweeten with high fructose corn sugar. Ten years ago when this story was in the news, it was easy fodder for comedians that made jokes about tipsy students and irresponsible school boards. The Belgians quietly shelved the idea.

Here's a couple of songs in tribute to this universal malt beverage. One song goes out to one of my cyber pen pals in Australia. So have a beer Nicole.

To everyone else -I hope you have a nice weekend and you get to enjoy the drink of your choice with a few close friends.

Beer, beer, beer -and no shortage of songs about it.