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Top 11 Things I Love About Beer
- by st_inebrius
- 9 contributors
- -
- March 02, 2009
- + Add To This Guide
(8)
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A fermented observation of beer and brewing by a professional brewer.
Preamble
I’m a professional brewer. For years, I was simply a beer drinker. Then, I became a beer aficionado. I started homebrewing. That gave me a whole new perspective on things.
Eventually, I was a full-fledged beer geek. I attended festivals, stopped at every brewpub I could find, and read all I could about beer, brewing, drinking, bars, and the culture of imbibery.
I made a career change 3 years ago after deciding that making a decent living isn’t as important as loving what you do for a living. After working at a couple brewpubs in Colorado, I undertook an apprenticeship as a brewer at Santa Barbara Brewing Company, in Santa Barbara, California. In June of this year, I returned to my beloved Sonoma County, north of San Francisco, and am now working as the assistant brewer and cellarman at Ruth McGowan’s Brewpub in Cloverdale.
I learn something new everyday. I’m by no means an expert at brewing. I still call my former bosses for advice and answers. Despite these shortcomings, I’m certain about one thing: When you’ve drunk as many beers as I have over the past ** years, you gain a certain insight into this marvelous beverage that years of book learning and hands-on experience in a commercial brewery cannot provide.
Taste buds and the olfactory senses don’t lie.
To use an analogy, you don’t have to be able to play guitar to be able to appreciate music. You are an end user, as it were, and your job is not to dissect, analyze or critique. Your job is simply to savor and appreciate what has been created for you by a skilled craftsman who understands his craft and is willing to use his talents to produce something that others will enjoy and remember.
What I’m trying to say is, I know you love beer, but do you know why you love beer?
While I feel I am qualified to post a list like this, due to my chosen vocation, I am not the only one qualified to make these statements or ruminate on these observations. If you love beer the way I do, you’ll be able to appreciate some of these tidbits of wisdom. I hope you can appreciate them the way I intended. I also hope I am able to articulate these points in a way that you may not have been able to, but in a manner that is familiar and easily understood.
You say it like it’s a bad thing.
Prost!!
Oktoberfest = Happiest Place on Earth
I have to agree with #s 7, 9, 10, 11.
Beer brings people together. Where else but a giant beer drinking festival can you strike up conversations with people from around the world and learn how to say “cheers” in 15 different languages.
added by ElGuapo 12/25/2008
The Eleven
I appreciate beer the way some people appreciate Thomas Kinkaide paintings, Ming vases or Hummell figurines. Brewing is both an art and a science. Good beer and the technical demands that are inherent in its creation ought to transcend the beverage’s reputation as a drink for the masses.
Mass produced beer and the big three beer companies — Anheuser-Busch InBev, Molson Coors and SABMiller — have successfully duped the beer-drinking public into believing that beer is light, watery and tastes pretty much the same. All beer is not the same and it takes a skillful artisan to be able to combine just the right amount of the various ingredients to make a pale different from a brown or a stout different from a porter.
That said, I present the Top 11 things I love about beer (because all my lists go to 11).
1. All beer is not the same. Depending on which reference source you use, there are anywhere from 47-51 different styles of beer, all with different character, flavors, colors and tastes.
2. The Reinheitsgebot (Bavarian Purity Law) of 1516 declared that the only ingredients that could be used in the production of beer were water, barley, and hops (yeast wasn’t known to be an ingredient until Pasteur conducted his studies of microorganisms in the early 1800s). To this day, most beer can be brewed using only four ingredients: Water, barley, hops and yeast.
3. Beer is much more democratic than wine in that anyone can afford a cellar full of the world’s finest beer.
4. Several studies have found that drinking beer can be beneficial to one’s health. Darker malt barley and hops both have proven medical uses and drinking in moderation can slow diseases such as heart disease and Alzheimer’s. Additionally, craft beers are a good source many of the B vitamins. [sources available upon request]
5. According to anthropologists, the brewing of beer and the cultivation of the grains necessary for brewing is the reason nomadic peoples settled down and created agricultural-based communities. In essence, fermentation caused civilization.
6. To me, there’s nothing that compares to the sensation of walking into a brewery on brew day and smelling the woody odor of roasted barley and the pungent aroma of fresh hops.
7. Local television news, soccer, modern music and most people’s personalities are improved though the ingestion of beer.
8. Beer will get through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no beer. (Apologies to the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers).
9. In general, wine snobs are pretentious and obnoxious. In general, beer snobs are sociable, congenial and open-minded.
10. Beer is conducive to conversation and interaction, sometimes intense, sometimes spirited, always enlightening. The same cannot be said of conversations with people who drink wine, whisky or mixed drinks. Conversations with imbibers of those beverages often lean toward boorish, melodramatic and self-loathing.
11. The social aspect of sharing a pitcher with someone cannot be overstated. If someone enjoys the same beer as you, chances are that person shares many more of your interests and views. Get to know him or her.
Lagunitas Brewing Co
1280 N Mc Dowell Blvd, Petaluma, CA 94954
Makes me damn proud. And pretty buzzed. All at the same time. Worth a trip to California just to visit the brewery!
Makes me damn proud. And pretty buzzed. All at the same time. Worth a trip to California just to visit the brewery!
added by Karey Ann 02/27/2009
added by Hi Liner 02/27/2009
Unibroue's Maudite
Oh this is by FAR my favorite beer (right up there next to Guinness.) Yet the alcohol content is much much higher and the nutmeg taste lingers a while on the tongue. Yummmmy!
added by Coffee Slut 02/27/2009
It Tastes So Good When You Drink It At The Poop Deck After Rollerblading
added by Elissa 03/02/2009
Love the Variety
I hate when people say they don’t like beer. There are SO many different kinds, how can you just not like all of them?? Discovering new beers is one of the best things ever.
added by Susie 03/02/2009
CHEERS AND BEERS
Beer means- Bonding, Beaches, toasting. THAT is what I love about beer.
added by The Mean Bean 03/02/2009
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