Happy National Bier Month!

Some of you may be sitting there, thinking, Really? A whole month dedicated to bier? How could it possibly warrant such high priority? African-American History Month? Sure. Breast Cancer Awareness Month? Absolutely. But bier? Memorial Day is only one day (it’s really a three day-weekend, but work with me) and it celebrates the sacrifices of the brave men and women who fought and died to preserve our freedom (including, thanks to the 21st Amendment, the right to drink bier). Earth only gets one measly day in April.

I’ll grant you, bier might not be as important as, say, the earth. But it’s a lot more important than you may think. For starters, it is the second most common beverage in the world (as measured by the number of societies around the globe who have bier, in one form or another, in their cultural history), right behind water, and it ranks third as the most consumed beverage in the world (right behind water and tea, and let’s face it, tea is just hot water with some leaves added).

Ask yourself this: What do Cleopatra, Benjamin Franklin, the Sumerians, Louis Pasteur, King Wenceslas, Samuel Adams, the Vikings (Medieval marauders, not the football team), Prince Ludwig I of Bavaria, the Pilgrims, Martin Luther (the Protestant reformer, not King), Brother Barnabus (an Italian monk based in Bavaria), every single person who has ever lived in Belgium, the Czech town of Plzen, the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Old Testament, and Barack Obama have in common? If you answered: “They’re all people who have never been in my kitchen” (thank you, Cliff Clavin), you’d be wrong. On the other hand, if you answered: “They all had something very positive to say about, or did something very positive for, bier,” you’d be absolutely right.

• Cleopatra (or some clever people around her) invented the straw to facilitate bier consumption.
• Benjamin Franklin declared, “Bier is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.”
• The Sumerians (the originators of civilization) carved their recipe for bier on a stone tablet 6,000 years ago.
• Louis Pasteur developed the sterilizing process that bears his name to preserve the quality of bier. The process was later applied to milk.
• King Wenceslas granted the town of Plzen brewing rights.
• Sam Adams, brewer-patriot.
• The Vikings never really said much about bier (well, they never wrote anything about it, anyway, as they didn’t really write much at all), but they used it as a ceremonial beverage and as a lubricant to get them into the mood to plunder.
• Prince Ludwig I of Bavaria was such a fan of bier that he had the breweries of Munich make a special bier for his wedding and invited the entire city to the celebration. The event and the bier were so popular, the people demanded he throw a party every year. Today, that party is known as Oktoberfest. (This year is the 200th anniversary of Oktoberfest, by the way.)
• Martin Luther: You’ve got to suspend some disbelief here. This theory is mine, all mine. I read somewhere something about Martin Luther being a bier fan. I also read, a while back, about his 95 Theses. They were basically a rant about all the things the church was doing that he didn’t like. My theory, based on absolutely no historical data, is that he was at a pub with some like-minded friends, got to talking…and drinking…Next thing we know, it sounds like a good idea to write all these complaints on a piece of paper and nail them to the door of the local church. Haven’t we all been there?
• Brother Barnabus (see below).
• The Belgians have the most diverse bier culture in the world and deserve some recognition.
• The Pilsner bier style, the most popular in the world, originated in the town of Plzen (see above) at the Pilsner Urquell Brewery.
• The Epic of Gilgamesh, a 4,000-year-old story that appears to be a precursor to many of the stories in the Old Testament, makes frequent references to bier.
• Some scholars have speculated that Manna, the mysterious substance that enabled the Israelites to survive in the desert for 40 years, may have been a fermented porridge (though others have speculated that it was given to the Israelites by space aliens…suffice it to say, both are hotly debated theories).
• Barack Obama continually bets foreign dignitaries a bier over the outcome of international sporting contests.
• The fact of the matter is, bier is not only as old as civilization itself, but likely predates civilization. Some rather nerdy, scholarly types have postulated that not only does bier predate civilization, it may, in fact, be the catalyst that created civilization. Things like agriculture, the division of labor, and commodity exchange (early forms of monetary exchange for goods and services) all may have derived their existence from the need/desire to establish a steady source of bier for nomadic groups. It’s rather difficult to brew bier on the move.

The ancient Egyptians, the guys who built the Pyramids, paid their craftsmen in bier. Most of the workers on the pyramids were not slaves at all, but rather similar to those you see on the streets holding signs that read “Will work for food.” Only in the ancient Egyptian equivalent, the sign read: “Will work for bier.”

You might be thinking, What about bread? Didn’t ancient people develop civilization to harvest bread? OK, maybe, but never let the facts get in the way of a good story. And consider this fun little fact: Brother Barnabus, medieval monastic brewer in Munich, got so frustrated by being limited to bread and water during the Lenten fast that he petitioned the Pope to redefine bier as liquid bread. We’ll delve deeper into that story another time, but suffice to say, he succeeded. Those of you shouting about bread as the catalyst for civilization can take it up with the Pope. Ultimately, let’s embrace this month. Bier was there at the dawn of civilization, and it’s with us today.