I suppose this would have been more appropriate yesterday, but I’ve never been accused of being timely…and St. Patrick’s Day came and went before I really even remembered what day it what. Ah, well, maybe next year….
No one really knows how someone came to brew the first batch of beer (no, despite what you may think, it wasn’t a hipster in Portland). I suspect it was awful, but enough to set some poor Cro-Magnon to thinking: “Hey, we could throw one helluva party with this stuff, knowhutimean?” As history progressed, man collectively discovered that fermentation had some real potential, so much so that there’s circumstantial evidence that suggest early humans stored grain for beer, perhaps even before they stored it for bread.
Yeah, you can always eat, but you know that a party’s well on its way to sucking when the beer runs out….
Turns out that beer has played a central in the growth and development of civilization. In medieval Europe, drinking beer was far less risky than playing Russian Roulette with the local water supply. Cholera was rampant, but the fermentation process took care of all the little nasties in the water. Besides, going through your day with a permanent buzz sounds kind of interesting, no?
I’d celebrate beer’s role in our collective history, but as I’m writing this it’s 7:45am. I know it’s 5:00 somewhere, but I really should finish my coffee first.
Prost
