Sunday, May 6, 2012

Facts About Beer Brewing

By Pearlie Nott


I was never a good student in history classes mainly because I found the material dull and boring. In the years since school history lessons I've acquired much more understanding for the lessons we need to study from history.

If my instructors had related the material we covered in class to something like beer I would have been more inclined to listen. I guess this may have been deemed wrong in high school classes, but probably would have been great in college classes especially at the state college I went to Kentucky.

Beer has been a part of human history for as long as human background has been documented. In fact, there's sufficient info regarding this frothy drinks throughout historical past to fill the curriculum demands of multiple school classes.

It is quite interesting to learn how historical happenings have influenced the development and definition of beer AND how beer has, in turn, affected major historical activities. Beer is surely one of the oldest beverages to be regularly produced by humans. It has been around ever since the time of ancient Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt; and has possibly existed in some form from even the earlier days!

Even if a person doesn't love beer, or abstains from alcohol completely, they would still need an appreciation of beer's past significance. Beer's presence all through historical past would be of interest to anyone with an enduring passion in geography, horticulture, agriculture, foreign and domestic alcohol legislation, anthropology, cultural migration, old climate forms and meteorology. The record continues on.

Just the beginnings of what precisely we define as beer today is an interesting story of the interplay of numerous factors and variables cited above. This gets apparent when viewing the improvement of the current definition of beer.

Based on the purity legislation (Reinheitsgebot, also referred to as just Gebot) adopted by William IV, Duke of Bavaria, in 1516, true beer has only three components; water, barley, and hops. You might question, "what about yeast?" Good query.

The fact that yeast consume carbs (glucose) and extract alcohol and co2 (carbonation) was later on featured upon Louis Pasteur's work in 1857. So for nearly 341 years (from 1516 to 1857) beer was described as only having water, barely, and hops.




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