Beer. I say it again…beer! Now say it loud…BEER!

For beer lovers it is second nature to walk in and order that cold, bubbling, yellow concoction that slides down the gullet like so much water to a man in the desert. That parched throat is suddenly an oasis of flavor and chilled taste buds. Makes you want one right now, doesn’t it?

So have one, put your feet up, and learn a little about how that favorite brew is available to you in six packs…bottles or cans…or your favorite draft, of course.

Unfortunately, there are no mountain streams, complete with bubbling, frothing rapids, zipping down naturally from those Coors mountains, or anywhere else. There were no cavemen sucking back a brew after a hard day of hunting and gathering. Nope. It’s called a brew, obviously, because it has to be brewed.

Ever wonder what brilliant, insightful man, probably not a married one, figured out if you put a bunch of this plant, and that plant, and maybe a wee bit of this together it’ll really taste good with roasted mammoth? Seriously, this stuff dates back to 6000 BC. I bet the brewing water was really clean back then, and Coors had nothing on those guys.

Ancient Egyptians had a goddess named Ninkasi. I’m sure she was a babe, and I am not kidding, she was the goddess of beer. They even sang a song to her.

It wasn’t entirely altruistic though because, and again, I am not kidding, it helped them remember the recipe for their beer. Don’t you love the old traditions and rituals?

This may come as shock to the average beer drinker at the bar, but beer was spread through Europe as far back as 3000 BC by Germanic and Celtic tribes. Aren’t those the original Germans and Irish? Who woulda thunk?

Seriously this may surprise you. The earliest chemical evidence of beer was found in the Zagros Mountains…get this…in western Iran. Don’t tell me those people can’t party. They’ve just become a people gone bad, don’t you think?

Did you know beer was made in Monasteries at one point, and it became sold on a domestic scale before the Industrial revolution? See once they started getting beer out there, people became quite inventive. Of course once the industrial revolution took place, they started making it on an industrial scale and the home breweries started taking a serious hit.

I find that scandalous and shameful even if it did get beer out on a major scale. I think you should support your local businesses.

For those of you that don’t have a home brewery, and might actually be interested in how this quaff of the bar gods is made…here goes. Take a sip…I’ll wait.

Another if you would like.

Okay…that’s enough for now. It’s not gonna get warm before I finish. I promise.

Most of you know it’s got hops, and barley, and all that stuff they show you in the commercials, but there’s a bit more to it. I think it’s important every beer drinker have an insight to this process.

Not really but it sounds good, and it gives me something to write about…BEER!

The first real breweries were, as you might imagine, pretty simple devices. It turned simple starches into a substance called wort. They added yeast, and fermented it into beer. Pretty simple, huh? Not really, actually. Even then it was complicated, and now it is more complicated.

Making wort came from mixing what was normally malted barley, with hot water. Of course you had to malt the barley. That wasn’t done at some old drug store ice cream bar and didn’t involve straws and their favorite girl. That was termed mashing.

You might also find it interesting that the hot water used was called liquor. I call that stuff bath water and it goes great with a cold beer…in my hand.

You might not think it (but that’s what you have me for…to educate and elucidate…so you can drink beer), but barley is pretty sweet, in that it is a carbohydrate and contains sugars. The “grist” (remember the term grist mill from school? That’s used to crush barley and other grains) is turned into a product called “mash tun” and is added to the “liquor” and left to do its duty for about one to two hours to get there.

In that time, the starch – “grist” or crushed barley- is left to convert starches to sugars for the foundation of the beer, then the “wort” is drained off. Like any good chef, or chefs, they then wash the stuff and that’s called “sparging”

Maybe that’s where Sparta and the Spartans came from. They just slurred and no one knew.

Anyway, it starts really getting down to business then. This substance was filtered and wort separation took place. Believe it or not, this was called “lautering” and they used the actual grain bed as the filter. Clever, don’t you think? (Go back to Cheers, and Cliff’s buffalo theory…beer itself had to be responsible –if you don’t know this reference you aren’t a real beer drinker and need tutoring).

Here’s where it got stupid though. They would do second and third washing, weakening the beer. At least they realized it was stupid and named beer with several “runnings” as “parti gyle” brewing. Kinda says a lot, doesn’t it. Party gal with a slur.

After this, they boiled it down. This eliminated most of the water, and this, my friends, is where the miracle begins, in essence, making full use of the starches. They add hops during this process, and that extracts bitterness and flavor from the hops, overcoming the sweetness of the sugars (starches), and deciding the flavor of the beer.

The liquid was cooled at this point, and nowadays, it may be passed back through more hops to add back flavor lost in the boiling process, and once again adds another filter. Now for the good part – the fermenter.

Once it’s cooled, yeast is added, and it sits while all the itty bitty parts settle to the bottom (they call it “particulate matter” but that reminds me of something they want during a physical). Finally they allow for primary and secondary fermentation. The first takes place in the vat, and the second takes place in a new container, and allows for clarity and a broader, fuller taste. Secondary fermentation only is used when the beer requires long storage, deeper taste, and clarity is a real issue.

Now, don’t you feel like a lead buffalo?

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