Beer is Proof that God Loves Us

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Sometimes You Just Need a Beer

I remember my first taste of beer. My mother had allowed my father and uncle to supervise the children for an afternoon. I realize that is incredibly sexist and that today, we call it parenting, but as I was 7 years old at the time and had no agency in the matter, I cannot be assigned the blame. There was an incident - some mice had drowned in a bucket and my compadre and I were none too happy about it. Those men bought our silence with sips from a yellow can of Coors Banquet Beer. It was cold and bitter and did not make me crave more. But these days, when I enjoy a Banquet on occasion I remember my father and my uncle with an easy nostalgia for irresponsible parenting and a childhood spent in the twilight of the analog world.

There is perhaps no better metaphor for civilization than beer. When the neolithic revolution stopped humans from wandering around and allowed them to build cities, they apparently took a day off and had a beer. Drinking culture became so important in the world’s first civilization that the Sumerians are also credited with creating the first bar joke - a dog walks into a bar…

Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, Samuel Adams James Madison and George Washington were all brewers when they were not fighting the Revolution and Benjamin Franklin made time to drink it, although he never actually uttered the title of this article. The American Revolution itself was fueled by beer - a quart a day for every soldier in the Continental Army.

But things didn’t really get cooking in America until the end of 19th Century, with the Civil War and slavery behind us, the massive immigration wave that followed saw hundreds of thousands of Germans arrive in the US and bring their beer making skills with them. 

What the Industrial Revolution did in factories around the world, it also did in breweries. Commercial brewing exploded along with the population of cities. It is the third most consumed beverage in the World, behind water and tea.

Since its discovery on that Mesopotamian plane, beer has signified the everyman.  Enjoyed by the masses and the middle classes, a pint at your local or a bottle of Bud meant the end of the workday and a respite from the men and machines that interrupted the peace. 

Perhaps that’s why its purity is so often adulterated by politicians. The Nazi leader began his horror from a beer hall, even though the fargin sneaky bastage didn’t drink. We’ve had a beer summit, a presidential candidate get her a beer, Supreme Court Justices like beer and the British Prime Minister just lost his job thanks to a video of him drinking a beer. Though some may argue that drinking a Spanish beer in the post-Brexit UK did not help things.

Unsurprisingly, beer has been featured prominently in literature. In Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises (you should read this but will you?) Jake and Robert ordered tapas and beer in Spain and the “The sommelier brought the beer, tall, beaded on the outside of the steins, and cold. There were a dozen different dishes of hors d'oeuvres.” Joyce featured Guinness in Ulysses and beer was favored among the rough men in Steinbeck's Cannery Row.

Beer is beautiful because it is deceptively simple, like a little black dress or David Beckham’s right foot. Hot water, malted barley, hops, and yeast. What you do with it is the thing. Same with most things, I suppose. Simple and beautiful and whatever you choose to make of them.

Beer Gardens

I love me a beer garden. Like beer itself, its simplicity is the attraction. But the careful arrangement of tables to facilitate conversation, the bits of food and some music, transform a lowly patio into something finer. Craft brewery culture ignited a beer garden renaissance. 

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Guinness for Breakfast

In grad school, I partnered on a project with an Irish guy who had a tremendous house in Brentwood, with a man cave apartment above his garage. He offered me a beer for breakfast. “Seems heavy.”, I said. “Guiness is basically breakfast beer.”, he said.  Before that, I thought it was Coors Light. He was correct.

No Great Stagnation in Guinness

Alcohol Everything

I try to avoid generation bashing but this article gives a good overview on the hard seltzers that have taken 5% of the beer business away. 

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Do you love this bar when you’re sober?

If giving beer to 7-year olds turns into a problem, the good news is mocktailing is a growing trend. I wonder how much of this is attributable to the ubiquity of weed and prevalence of MDMA in nightlife but no matter. It speaks to our greater need to gather and commune, weather drinking or not.

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