Latest / Stuff You Should Know / SYSK Selects: How Beer Works
Transcript
- 0:01Speaker 1: Hey, folks, this is Chuck and welcome to this week's
- 0:04Speaker 1: s Y s K Selects edition, How Beer Works. Uh
- 0:09Speaker 1: not a long intro for this one. It's how Beer Works.
- 0:12Speaker 1: So that was my pick. Why not rerun this one? Right? Enjoy?
- 0:19Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff you should know from house stuff Works
- 0:22Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast Bottoms Up, etcetera.
- 0:34Speaker 1: Take off your shirt? Is that what beer equates to
- 0:38Speaker 1: in your book? Take off your shirt? Uh? Well, I
- 0:41Speaker 1: take off my shirt when I drink too much beer. You,
- 0:45Speaker 1: Lucy neal Belt, take off the shirt. Close the blinds.
- 0:49Speaker 1: Neighbors don't want to see that, I want to point out, No,
- 0:52Speaker 1: they don't, uh that? Um. Guest producer Maddy today just
- 0:57Speaker 1: a little seren dip. He is brewing his fur batch
- 1:00Speaker 1: of beer right now. And he was like, man, it's
- 1:04Speaker 1: not like just preparing food, he said, is this? You know?
- 1:07Speaker 1: It's like serious chemistry going on, because I think he's
- 1:09Speaker 1: he's shooting for the stars here. He's not starting out
- 1:13Speaker 1: with an easy brew. I think. No. You know, as
- 1:16Speaker 1: you know Maddie, he's not one to just dive into
- 1:19Speaker 1: something lightly. He goes full bore. Yeah, so you should
- 1:22Speaker 1: see how how he got into the zeitgeist something I
- 1:27Speaker 1: think he's thinks bring a porter? Is that right, Matt Stout?
- 1:31Speaker 1: But stouts and porters, as we I learned, have been
- 1:35Speaker 1: very much mixed throughout the years. I believe porters and
- 1:40Speaker 1: they were named after river porters because that's what they
- 1:43Speaker 1: like to drink in London, the River Porters, Allen River Reporters,
- 1:46Speaker 1: dark darker beers. Yeah, yeah, although the kind of take
- 1:51Speaker 1: what they can get. Yeah, that is one fact about
- 1:54Speaker 1: a thousand that you're about to hear. So also, I
- 1:57Speaker 1: want to mention aumis in my friends. Stewart is in
- 2:00Speaker 1: a band called Superhuman Happiness and one of his bandmates
- 2:04Speaker 1: is making his first beer right now. It's his first
- 2:07Speaker 1: and they're calling it Superhuman Happiness. Nice where they out
- 2:11Speaker 1: in New York, out of Brooklyn support, of course they are. Yeah,
- 2:14Speaker 1: so Stewart has promised to save a six pack. Great,
- 2:17Speaker 1: I'm pretty psyched about it. Is there music good? Oh yeah,
- 2:20Speaker 1: they're really good. He's he's very good. He's in UM.
- 2:23Speaker 1: He's one of the founding members of Anti Ballis. Have
- 2:25Speaker 1: you heard of them? No? Do you know that UM
- 2:28Speaker 1: show faila No, the Failer that was on Broadway. It's
- 2:33Speaker 1: a musical about Fayla Coutie, the Nigerian afro beat, the
- 2:37Speaker 1: one that you went to. Yes, yeah, a new about it. Okay,
- 2:40Speaker 1: that guy he arranged that he's good man. Okay, he
- 2:44Speaker 1: when we saw him with um uh not buying princip
- 2:47Speaker 1: Billy the other guy. Yeah, you hate Bonnie principally, I
- 2:50Speaker 1: don't hate him. What's the other guy? The other guy?
- 2:56Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Sam Beam, Yeah, he played with him. Cool
- 2:58Speaker 1: when they came through last those guys too. So do
- 3:02Speaker 1: you want to talk about beer ever? Yeah? Seriously, we
- 3:04Speaker 1: got a lot to cover. We shouldn't have wasted that
- 3:06Speaker 1: minute of your lives. Sorry everyone. So, um, what Stewart
- 3:09Speaker 1: and Matt are engaged in isn't millennia long tradition of
- 3:14Speaker 1: brewing beer? Yeah, c o a first, really quickly, you
- 3:17Speaker 1: must be twenty one to drink alcohol. Oh yeah, and
- 3:20Speaker 1: don't don't really take off your shirt and drink responsibly.
- 3:23Speaker 1: So we're certainly not encouraging anyone to go out and
- 3:26Speaker 1: uh that's underage to get the delicious, delicious beer and
- 3:30Speaker 1: drink it all right, So as old ass. Since people
- 3:34Speaker 1: could walk around, it seems like they wanted to start
- 3:37Speaker 1: brewing beer. Well it's as old as civilization, is what
- 3:41Speaker 1: they think. So not you know, some they could walk around.
- 3:44Speaker 1: But since they discovered that moldy bread did funny things. Yeah,
- 3:48Speaker 1: and they think that it's possible that it was um
- 3:51Speaker 1: an accident at some piece of bread got wet and
- 3:54Speaker 1: um inadvertently fermented. Like all the everything was there just right,
- 3:59Speaker 1: and I guess back then they didn't waste anything, so
- 4:01Speaker 1: they probably were like, let me drink this nasty thing
- 4:04Speaker 1: or everything was new and they're like, what does this
- 4:06Speaker 1: taste like? Well, this dude, to me, they had tried
- 4:10Speaker 1: um magic mushrooms before and we're like, I will eat
- 4:13Speaker 1: anything now. You never know what you're going. They were
- 4:16Speaker 1: still figuring things out. They're in the figuring things out phase. Um.
- 4:20Speaker 1: So yeah, it's possible it was a piece of bread.
- 4:22Speaker 1: It could have just been a piece of grain or something.
- 4:24Speaker 1: Because there's a school of thought that we have bread
- 4:28Speaker 1: as because we have beer. Yeah. I love that theory.
- 4:31Speaker 1: Because they figured out that you could bake bread and
- 4:34Speaker 1: easily mash make a mash out of bread and water
- 4:39Speaker 1: um to produce beer, and that this was all very
- 4:42Speaker 1: portable and anybody could kind of keep some bread in
- 4:44Speaker 1: their homes, so it's possible we have we have bread
- 4:47Speaker 1: because of beer. I love that theory. Um. But the
- 4:50Speaker 1: point is is that, yeah, bread, beer is as old
- 4:53Speaker 1: as civilization because one of the first grains. One of
- 4:56Speaker 1: the first things we did was domesticate grain, and you
- 4:59Speaker 1: need grain to make year and we figured it out
- 5:01Speaker 1: pretty quickly. But the oldest record of brewing is I
- 5:06Speaker 1: think six thousand years old and sumer Yeah, ancient Sumerians
- 5:10Speaker 1: have a seal um that was had a hymn on it,
- 5:15Speaker 1: the hymn to Ninkasi, the goddess of brewing and him.
- 5:19Speaker 1: Not only was it him, but it was him about
- 5:22Speaker 1: making beer. It was a recipe for beer. And it
- 5:24Speaker 1: wasn't like use one chord of but it was it
- 5:28Speaker 1: was very broad. Um the recipe. Have you read it?
- 5:34Speaker 1: There's I think dog fish Head Brewery remade it using
- 5:39Speaker 1: that recipe. Yeah, I've got one of theirs. They remade
- 5:42Speaker 1: this ancient Chinese thing too. Um. I don't think it's
- 5:45Speaker 1: the same thing. No, it's very much. It's more in
- 5:48Speaker 1: the tradition of wine or brandy than beer. Um. But yeah,
- 5:52Speaker 1: this this one, this hymn to Nankazi is definitely beer
- 5:55Speaker 1: for sure. Um, and that just kind of kicked everything off,
- 6:00Speaker 1: just right out of the gate. Yeah, the earliest reports
- 6:03Speaker 1: where the beer would make you feel exhilarated, wonderful and blissful,
- 6:08Speaker 1: and so people are like, how do I get my
- 6:10Speaker 1: hands on this stuff? Yeah, and they figured out very
- 6:14Speaker 1: quickly how you got your hands on this stuff? Choke.
- 6:16Speaker 1: Because beer came about at a period of transition to
- 6:21Speaker 1: um a grarian societies from nomadic hunter gatherer societies to
- 6:26Speaker 1: graian societies. And there is another school of thought that
- 6:29Speaker 1: not only do we have um bread beer to thank
- 6:33Speaker 1: for bread, but civilization itself. That civilization, that beer attracted
- 6:39Speaker 1: nomadic groups to civilization because that's who had the beer, right,
- 6:44Speaker 1: That's how you got the beer. You domesticated grain and
- 6:46Speaker 1: you made it. Yeah, and this hut over here, they're
- 6:48Speaker 1: really good at making beer. So let's live near them.
- 6:51Speaker 1: And then in circle that hut, and then that circle
- 6:56Speaker 1: grows and all of a sudden, everyone's just sitting around
- 6:58Speaker 1: getting drunk exactly. And then somebody's guests are plus grain,
- 7:01Speaker 1: so they're in charge, and um, people end up doing
- 7:04Speaker 1: work and religious groups start up. But that's this is
- 7:08Speaker 1: kind of Um, immortalized in the epic of Gilgamesh inky Do,
- 7:13Speaker 1: the wild man who represents the hunter gatherer tribes the nomads.
- 7:17Speaker 1: Um is given beer because it is the custom of
- 7:22Speaker 1: the city, yeah, the civilized people. And he drinks like
- 7:25Speaker 1: eight glasses of it, and while he's drunk, he washes
- 7:28Speaker 1: himself and became a human being just like that. So
- 7:32Speaker 1: he moves from the wild into civilization via beer fastward
- 7:37Speaker 1: a little bit to Babylonia or Babylon. Yeah, and I
- 7:41Speaker 1: gotta get out of Babylon, man. Yeah, they had They
- 7:45Speaker 1: had twenty different types of beer, and I believe they
- 7:48Speaker 1: even invented the can that turns blue when it's cold.
- 7:51Speaker 1: I'm not mistaken. It was priceless. Is that Babylon? I
- 7:54Speaker 1: think it was. Okay. Um, there's also a question I
- 7:58Speaker 1: could not find a definitive answer for. But supposedly the
- 8:02Speaker 1: Babylonians took brewing so seriously that if you made a
- 8:06Speaker 1: bad batch or tried to sell a bad batch, your
- 8:10Speaker 1: punishment was to be drowned in it. Yeah. I wonder
- 8:12Speaker 1: if that's true. I found it all over the place,
- 8:15Speaker 1: but it was everybody. Nobody had a good definitive source.
- 8:19Speaker 1: Sell I present it as a rumor. Early beer Josh
- 8:23Speaker 1: was unfiltered, cloudy had chunks of junk in it and residue,
- 8:28Speaker 1: so they would actually drink it through a straw sort
- 8:30Speaker 1: of as a filter. Um, so they wouldn't get the
- 8:32Speaker 1: stuff in their mouth. It was really bitter. Um. Hammerabi
- 8:37Speaker 1: very important lawmaker back in the day. Yeah, why do
- 8:39Speaker 1: we just talk about him in the eye for an eye?
- 8:41Speaker 1: Code don't remember it was? Was it Noah's Ark? Maybe
- 8:45Speaker 1: I don't remember, but yeah, he was the guy who
- 8:48Speaker 1: came up with the eye for an eye, was like
- 8:49Speaker 1: one of the earliest set of laws. And a beer
- 8:52Speaker 1: for a priest, well, it turns out actually five beers
- 8:56Speaker 1: for a priest. Well five leaders. Yeah, that's right a day. Yeah,
- 9:01Speaker 1: that was his beer, rah, And that was one of
- 9:02Speaker 1: the first laws that established Um, a normal worker got
- 9:06Speaker 1: two leaders, civil servants three, and then administrators and the
- 9:09Speaker 1: high priest five leaders a day. Now, that is what
- 9:12Speaker 1: I call a social contract. That's that's worth sticking around for. Um.
- 9:17Speaker 1: So yeah, Hammurabi's wasted. Um, then we're gonna fast forward
- 9:22Speaker 1: a little more. The Egyptians keep it going. Um. They
- 9:26Speaker 1: had their own hieroglyph. They did for brewer. And then
- 9:29Speaker 1: everything comes very very close to being disrupted, disrupted forever
- 9:34Speaker 1: um with the arrival of the Greece of the Romans,
- 9:38Speaker 1: because they drove alvos and listen to NPR, and all
- 9:45Speaker 1: they cared about was wine. To to the Romans especially uh,
- 9:50Speaker 1: beer was barbarian drink, Like you only drank beer in
- 9:55Speaker 1: the most the remotest outposts of the Roman Empire. U
- 10:00Speaker 1: to make it wine to a certain degree, don't you think? Sure? Yeah,
- 10:04Speaker 1: I mean wine is very big around Greece, but so
- 10:06Speaker 1: is Greek beer. No, but I'm talking about period all
- 10:09Speaker 1: over the world. Like you know, you generally think of
- 10:12Speaker 1: wine as being high society. And the construction worker kicks
- 10:15Speaker 1: back with the corpse light. Can't we all just drink both? Yes,
- 10:19Speaker 1: maybe even mixed together. No, Okay, that's um. But yes,
- 10:24Speaker 1: I agree with that that point of view. I think
- 10:26Speaker 1: it does kind of carry on to day and I
- 10:27Speaker 1: guess that's where it finds its roots. Yea, the snobby
- 10:30Speaker 1: Greeks interesting in romans Um. Luckily there was a remote
- 10:35Speaker 1: outpost of the Roman Empire that was like, I don't
- 10:39Speaker 1: care what you say, man, we're making beer. We're going
- 10:42Speaker 1: to dedicate our society making beer, of course. And today
- 10:46Speaker 1: we call those people the Germans. Yes, God bless them
- 10:49Speaker 1: and their efforts. Back then they were called Twotons. Yeah
- 10:54Speaker 1: and uh. Tacitus wrote about the ancient Germans and said,
- 11:00Speaker 1: to drink the Teutons have a horrible brew for a minute,
- 11:04Speaker 1: from barley or wheat, a brew which has only a
- 11:06Speaker 1: very far removed similarity to wine. The only thing that
- 11:10Speaker 1: had in common was that you drink it and it
- 11:13Speaker 1: messes you up. Yeah, you know, yeah. Aside from that,
- 11:16Speaker 1: it was couldn't be any more different, right, And the
- 11:18Speaker 1: Germans have been making uh beer since at least eight
- 11:22Speaker 1: hundred b C. That's the earliest record we have of
- 11:25Speaker 1: beer drinking in Germany. UM. And I don't know if
- 11:29Speaker 1: it it probably spread from the Tutons to the rest
- 11:33Speaker 1: of northern Europe um. But you see beer pop up
- 11:37Speaker 1: in very ancient um Northern European texts like the Finnish
- 11:41Speaker 1: saga the calla Walla, Yeah, CALLI walla. There there are
- 11:46Speaker 1: four hundred verses dedicated to beer, two verses dedicated to
- 11:51Speaker 1: the creation of the earth. That's that's that's a society
- 11:54Speaker 1: that takes it to beer. Seriously. Yeah, and the Nordic Uh,
- 11:58Speaker 1: I kind of thought it was called the Nordic epic eda.
- 12:01Speaker 1: Wine was for the gods, beer was for mortals, and
- 12:03Speaker 1: mead for the inhabitants of the realm of the dead.
- 12:07Speaker 1: You ever had mead? Uh? No, I never have. It's
- 12:10Speaker 1: like honey based right for minute honey. Yeah, it's like
- 12:12Speaker 1: honey water for minute honeywater. It's doesn't sound like good.
- 12:15Speaker 1: I had some hippie in uh in Virginia, give me
- 12:19Speaker 1: some mead one time that he had made. You took
- 12:22Speaker 1: mead from a hippie, stayed with him one night. It
- 12:25Speaker 1: was one of those deals. Yeah, going through town. Okay,
- 12:29Speaker 1: Now you just a friend hooked us up for a
- 12:32Speaker 1: place to stay. Did you have a bindle? Now he did, though,
- 12:36Speaker 1: and he even had a house. He had homemade mead.
- 12:38Speaker 1: It was gross, was it? It wasn't very good. I
- 12:40Speaker 1: didn't care for it. I'm sure it's an acquired taste. Um.
- 12:44Speaker 1: So yeah, mead kind of falls off here, right yeah, um,
- 12:48Speaker 1: except for hippies in Virginia exactly. Uh. Wine kind of
- 12:52Speaker 1: stuck into the Mediterranean, but beer just continued to spread
- 12:54Speaker 1: and take hold. Yeah, like barley, I mean of course
- 12:57Speaker 1: wine spread itself as well, and we have it in
- 12:59Speaker 1: France and californ on you and everything. But but around
- 13:01Speaker 1: this time it was fairly localized to the Mediterranean area. UM.
- 13:08Speaker 1: And as as we enter the medieval age, UM, the
- 13:12Speaker 1: Dark Ages first and then medieval times, UM, the monks,
- 13:17Speaker 1: Christian monks got really really good at brewing UM. And
- 13:22Speaker 1: the reason they took it up is because this was
- 13:23Speaker 1: a place of like science and agriculture and abbey was
- 13:28Speaker 1: and UM could also support their abbey exactly, which is
- 13:32Speaker 1: now what Trappist monks are. If you if you drink
- 13:35Speaker 1: Traffis Dale and it says brewed by Trappis monks. This
- 13:38Speaker 1: is a tradition that's well over a thousand years old.
- 13:42Speaker 1: It's pretty cool monks supporting themselves by doing something for
- 13:45Speaker 1: the community. And some of them threw beer. Another tradition,
- 13:50Speaker 1: which is rampant sexism, took place when women, uh were
- 13:56Speaker 1: the ones that brewed beer in the medieval times. And
- 13:59Speaker 1: not only that, but they said we want only hot
- 14:02Speaker 1: women brewing our beer. Well, it was so important that
- 14:05Speaker 1: only beautiful women could brew beer. But can you believe
- 14:08Speaker 1: that way back then they were like no, no, no,
- 14:10Speaker 1: I don't want know ugly chicks making my beer. I
- 14:13Speaker 1: can you believe that's yeah, the earliest form of sexism
- 14:17Speaker 1: I can think of. I'll bet it goes back further
- 14:20Speaker 1: than that. Well, but there's a feminist twist it later on. Well,
- 14:25Speaker 1: because I got really good at making it. Yeah, people
- 14:28Speaker 1: who were women who were um, you know, well known,
- 14:31Speaker 1: like as if you were a medieval wife, Um, one
- 14:34Speaker 1: of the things you did was brew right, um. And
- 14:38Speaker 1: if you were good at it, eventually your family may
- 14:40Speaker 1: come to bear the name Brewer or brewce Stir. That's
- 14:43Speaker 1: where your name comes from, exactly. It means that you
- 14:46Speaker 1: haven't a female ancestor who landed your family a surname
- 14:51Speaker 1: through her brewing skills. That is feminism, asked me. It
- 14:55Speaker 1: might have been the st poly girl herself. Maybe, So
- 14:58Speaker 1: do you think she's a feminist icon? I don't think so.
- 15:01Speaker 1: So where are we took? We are in the fifteenth
- 15:04Speaker 1: century and something pretty cool happened in uh Germany. Um.
- 15:09Speaker 1: And to me this is the fact of the show.
- 15:11Speaker 1: Just because I did not know this. The Rheine heitzkbault
- 15:15Speaker 1: A fifteen sixteen was a beer purity law basically said
- 15:20Speaker 1: you can only make beer out of four things. Water,
- 15:22Speaker 1: malted barley, malted wheat, and hops. So that is wrong,
- 15:26Speaker 1: that's not right. It's three things. I don't know where
- 15:29Speaker 1: this source got the fourth the four ingredients, but there's water, barley,
- 15:33Speaker 1: and hops are the only three things you can put
- 15:35Speaker 1: in beer. Okay, wheat wasn't included, Okay, regardless, that's still
- 15:39Speaker 1: the fact of the show. The Rheine Heights boat is
- 15:42Speaker 1: the oldest non religious legal standard of food production and
- 15:46Speaker 1: the oldest consumer protection law on the planet was beer
- 15:50Speaker 1: because beer. It's fifteen sixteen. That is crazy, and it's
- 15:53Speaker 1: still around. It is, it's still enforced today, Like, don't
- 15:56Speaker 1: try to make a beer in Bavaria using anything but
- 16:00Speaker 1: at those three ingredients. You make beer in Bavaria with
- 16:02Speaker 1: corn and rice, you got a one way ticket on
- 16:05Speaker 1: the bullet train out of town, right, or you'll get
- 16:08Speaker 1: caned publicly. That's right. Um. And there are a couple
- 16:12Speaker 1: of reasons why this law was passed. One, people used
- 16:14Speaker 1: to put crazy, crazy stuff in beer, like um, hallucinogenic
- 16:18Speaker 1: roots or poisonous roots that could make you do crazy
- 16:23Speaker 1: stuff like hemlock and things like that. Um, So it
- 16:28Speaker 1: was for it was a purity law. It was also
- 16:30Speaker 1: to control prices. If you read the purity law, it's
- 16:32Speaker 1: like you can't sell a beer for more than this.
- 16:34Speaker 1: And then thirdly, also is to make sure that um
- 16:37Speaker 1: important grains like wheat got diverted to important things like food.
- 16:43Speaker 1: They didn't want people going crazy like using wheat, which
- 16:46Speaker 1: is why you why that wheat was wrong. It's barley water.
- 16:50Speaker 1: But wheat beer obviously came along in rye beer later on. Right,
- 16:53Speaker 1: So let's go to America, Man, Usa, Virginia again. Yeah,
- 16:58Speaker 1: beer's been around in the US since before the US
- 17:02Speaker 1: was around. Maybe it was that hippie. Maybe he was
- 17:04Speaker 1: a descendant of the original brewers a beer in the US.
- 17:07Speaker 1: Maybe so in fifties seven. By this time, colonists already
- 17:12Speaker 1: making beer flagrantly ignoring the Ryan Heights Kabbat by using corn.
- 17:18Speaker 1: They realized very quickly that this makes a terrible beer
- 17:22Speaker 1: and uh. In sixteen o nine, the first ads appear
- 17:25Speaker 1: in London newspapers asking for brewers to move to the
- 17:28Speaker 1: Virginia colony. They needs some beer over there in the
- 17:31Speaker 1: New World, and uh. In sixwelve, the first brewery set
- 17:34Speaker 1: up in New Amsterdam by Adrian Block and Hans Christian
- 17:39Speaker 1: Anderson now Hans Christensen and uh. I thought this was
- 17:44Speaker 1: interesting too, same place where the first well, it says
- 17:48Speaker 1: the first non native American, but I guess it's the
- 17:51Speaker 1: first American because America wasn't there yet. This is new answer.
- 17:55Speaker 1: That was Dutch colony. So it's the first the first
- 17:57Speaker 1: non native American born in North America that wasn't who
- 18:05Speaker 1: wasn't like of an indigenous group, which was gen vision
- 18:11Speaker 1: vision e viny And he became a brewery. Yeah, he
- 18:14Speaker 1: was born in the first brewery. Crazy, Yeah, I mean
- 18:18Speaker 1: he kind of had to become a brewer under those circumstances,
- 18:20Speaker 1: didn't he Well in America just had to become a
- 18:23Speaker 1: nation of beer lovers because of this, I think, yeah,
- 18:25Speaker 1: And boy did we love it so like researching this
- 18:29Speaker 1: and other researchers I've done, America used to be a
- 18:33Speaker 1: ten times more in an awesome place. I can't remember
- 18:37Speaker 1: what what episode it was. It may have been prohibition
- 18:40Speaker 1: where we were talking about like if you look at
- 18:43Speaker 1: lists of things served at like colonial funerals or weddings
- 18:48Speaker 1: or whatever, it'd be like five five kigs of rome,
- 18:52Speaker 1: and it's fifty kigs of beer and all that, but
- 18:55Speaker 1: there's only like sixty people there. And then the fact
- 18:58Speaker 1: that the word cocktail referred to a drink that you
- 19:02Speaker 1: drink in the morning, and that the old whiskey old
- 19:05Speaker 1: fashion was the original cocktail. Um. Yeah, we used to
- 19:10Speaker 1: drink a lot more in this country. So like in
- 19:13Speaker 1: eighteen what is it, seventy three, Yes, we we hit
- 19:17Speaker 1: our peak number of breweries four thousand, one d and
- 19:21Speaker 1: thirty one breweries supplying uh population of just fifty million people. Yeah,
- 19:26Speaker 1: our peak back then, of course. Yeah, because now there's
- 19:29Speaker 1: a renaissance, there is craft brewing, and now there are
- 19:33Speaker 1: more breweries than since the eighteen hundreds. That's awesome. Um.
- 19:37Speaker 1: I did a little research on craft brewing and in
- 19:39Speaker 1: the in the nineteen seventies, there were only forty consolidated
- 19:44Speaker 1: breweries in the US, and experts thought that that number
- 19:47Speaker 1: would fall to as little as five And it was
- 19:50Speaker 1: all this homogenous light lagger that Americans grew to love.
- 19:57Speaker 1: In World War Two, Yeah, because prohibition hit and there's
- 20:00Speaker 1: like a beer evolutionary bottleneck. You couldn't survive unless you
- 20:04Speaker 1: were one of the big big ones, right, and you
- 20:06Speaker 1: had to do you had to make other things, including
- 20:08Speaker 1: non alcoholic beer. But so you come out and there's
- 20:11Speaker 1: just a few breweries operating, right, and um. Then World
- 20:16Speaker 1: War Two hits and that caused the other reason that
- 20:19Speaker 1: beer became homogeneous in the United States. Men went off
- 20:22Speaker 1: the war, women became the market for brewers for beer,
- 20:27Speaker 1: and they um preferred a lighter style beer. So in
- 20:31Speaker 1: America almost for decades after World War Two, the only
- 20:36Speaker 1: beer you can find pretty much was that um American
- 20:40Speaker 1: style pills near Logger. Yeah, it was like this through
- 20:43Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies. Uh, and then nineteen eighty I'm sorry,
- 20:48Speaker 1: nineteen seventy six, the first craft brewery, the new I'll
- 20:52Speaker 1: Be i'll be On Brewery in Sonoma, California, open and
- 20:56Speaker 1: they were like, we want to start making some good
- 20:59Speaker 1: old beer again, like some ales and some ambers and
- 21:01Speaker 1: some stouts. Uh. They were only open about six years,
- 21:05Speaker 1: but they inspired hundreds of others to take it up,
- 21:08Speaker 1: and that's generally looked back as the New Renaissance started
- 21:12Speaker 1: in seventy six. So in nineteen eighty there were eight
- 21:16Speaker 1: craft breweries, in nineteen ninety four there were five hundred
- 21:20Speaker 1: and thirty seven, and in two thousand and ten there
- 21:23Speaker 1: were sixteen hundred's beautiful, and I think over nineteen hundred
- 21:28Speaker 1: in two thousand eleven, so they went from literally almost
- 21:31Speaker 1: being extinct like twenty something years ago or thirty years ago,
- 21:36Speaker 1: to like booming, big time booming. But that's still half
- 21:39Speaker 1: of that eighteen seventies number nineteen hundred, So yeah, you're right, half,
- 21:44Speaker 1: but that's the highest level since that time. But consider that.
- 21:47Speaker 1: Think about how much beers in this country right now.
- 21:49Speaker 1: You've got nineteen hundred breweries get yet plus supplying three
- 21:54Speaker 1: hundred million people. Back then we had forty one hundred
- 21:57Speaker 1: breweries supplying fifty million. Yeah. Crazy, well, and let's not
- 22:01Speaker 1: kid ourselves. I think the craft brewers are supplying about
- 22:04Speaker 1: four by volume and about six percent by by dollars.
- 22:11Speaker 1: And the three, you know, Miller, Anheuser, Bush, and Course
- 22:15Speaker 1: are the three big daddies. I prefer to fool myself
- 22:18Speaker 1: in this circumstance. But you are right. I mean, there's
- 22:21Speaker 1: a renaissance going on. Um, so let's talk about what
- 22:25Speaker 1: these people are doing during this renaissance. You want to
- 22:27Speaker 1: talk about how beer is made? Yeah, and I've never
- 22:30Speaker 1: done it, surprisingly, I never have either, but I'm going
- 22:33Speaker 1: to oh yeah, yeah, we'll bring me somewhere. This has
- 22:36Speaker 1: inspired me. I just need to collect friends who brew
- 22:39Speaker 1: their own beer so I don't have to do it
- 22:41Speaker 1: any exactly. Uh. Barley, water, hops, and east are the
- 22:45Speaker 1: basic four ingredients and the UM I like how you
- 22:47Speaker 1: put this The whole idea just to extract sugars from
- 22:50Speaker 1: the grains. Usually barley yeast eats it up and it
- 22:54Speaker 1: poops out alcohol and CEO two and that's beer. It's
- 22:58Speaker 1: that simple. And you've just described two steps. There's two
- 23:01Speaker 1: big categories of this process. There's brewing and then there's fermenting.
- 23:07Speaker 1: And the brewing part is pretty simple. It's taking um
- 23:10Speaker 1: malted barley or malted grain, which is like dried and
- 23:14Speaker 1: cracked and um heated so that the sugars start to
- 23:17Speaker 1: come out a little more. Um. I guess caramelized is
- 23:21Speaker 1: another way to put it. And then you take that
- 23:23Speaker 1: and you steep it in a basically a T and
- 23:27Speaker 1: the t that you've just made is called worked and
- 23:30Speaker 1: that's called mashing. Right, Yeah, so mashing, yes, taking them
- 23:34Speaker 1: taking the malted grain and steeping it, that's mashing's right.
- 23:38Speaker 1: But it produces a sticky, um sweet substance pre beer
- 23:43Speaker 1: as it were called word imagined wort in Germany. Probably
- 23:48Speaker 1: uh and you uh, you take that word and your
- 23:51Speaker 1: brewing process is done. When you put it in a
- 23:53Speaker 1: tank with yeast. You've just started the fermentation process. Yes,
- 23:58Speaker 1: and that's where things get groovy. Uh that you boil
- 24:01Speaker 1: the vert for about an hour. You add the hops
- 24:04Speaker 1: and depending on what kind of beer you're gonna make,
- 24:07Speaker 1: is uh really going to depend on what kind of
- 24:10Speaker 1: hops or how how much hops? Yeah, we haven't started
- 24:13Speaker 1: fermenting yet. I jumped the gun. You have to add
- 24:15Speaker 1: the hops with to the worked Oh, oh, yeah, we
- 24:18Speaker 1: did jump the gun. But Budweiser, let's say, has about
- 24:21Speaker 1: eight to twin I b U s, which are international
- 24:24Speaker 1: bitterness units. That's how you measure hops. Are you like
- 24:27Speaker 1: happy beer? I am a big I p A and
- 24:30Speaker 1: pale ale? Yeah, I'd like beer that's so happy it
- 24:32Speaker 1: makes me sneeze. Well that's pretty happy. Um. A thirty
- 24:37Speaker 1: uh stout has about thirty to fifty I b U s,
- 24:40Speaker 1: and a double I p A or an I p
- 24:41Speaker 1: A could have up to a hundred dog fish head
- 24:44Speaker 1: D and twenty minute has a hundred and twenty IBus. Well,
- 24:50Speaker 1: I like the sixty and the ninety. The one twenty
- 24:52Speaker 1: is actually kind of hard to find a lot of
- 24:54Speaker 1: times because they don't make a ton of it. Um.
- 24:57Speaker 1: But interestingly, pale ale. You know where Indian palel comes from,
- 25:00Speaker 1: the I p a India, Well it does. Uh. British
- 25:04Speaker 1: soldiers were stationed over there, and when they started setting
- 25:09Speaker 1: up trade with India back in the day, were colonizing it.
- 25:12Speaker 1: It's just one, that's one way to put it. And
- 25:14Speaker 1: they were like, boy, were really thirsty and we kind
- 25:17Speaker 1: of miss our old beer back in England. So they
- 25:18Speaker 1: would send over their pale ales and they wouldn't um
- 25:22Speaker 1: really make the voyage very well, the sea voyage. It
- 25:25Speaker 1: would show up flat and kind of gnarly. So they
- 25:28Speaker 1: added a lot more hops because hot sex is a preservative.
- 25:32Speaker 1: Thus India pale ale. Nice. Yeah, nice, that's the story
- 25:35Speaker 1: I got. I'm gonna be really embarrassed, No, I think
- 25:39Speaker 1: if it's not by that one, that's what's the kind
- 25:41Speaker 1: of story here in a bar? Yeah you know yeah,
- 25:44Speaker 1: um yeah, that's the story you see in a bar
- 25:48Speaker 1: gets you free beer. We should try that. Um. So
- 25:52Speaker 1: you've got you've got the worked that's boiled. Um, it's
- 25:56Speaker 1: all sugary and um, you add east to it and
- 26:00Speaker 1: put in a tank and now it's fermenting and like
- 26:03Speaker 1: like we said, the yeast just eats all the sugars
- 26:06Speaker 1: and produces carbon dioxide and alcohol as waste products. And
- 26:10Speaker 1: depending on the kind of beer you make, um, well
- 26:14Speaker 1: it really depends on the kind of yeast you use.
- 26:17Speaker 1: Um you're either going to be waiting around for a
- 26:20Speaker 1: few weeks to a couple of months. So um, if
- 26:24Speaker 1: you were making um something called a an ale, you're
- 26:30Speaker 1: going to be doing all this. You're gonna ferment um
- 26:33Speaker 1: using tough fermenting yeast at room temperature, and then after
- 26:37Speaker 1: a few weeks your beer is gonna be ready to drink.
- 26:40Speaker 1: If you are making a logger which in Germany, which
- 26:44Speaker 1: in German is a verb meaning to store, Um, you're
- 26:48Speaker 1: going to it's gonna take a few months, um, and
- 26:52Speaker 1: you're going to store this stuff. You're gonna let it
- 26:54Speaker 1: ferment um at near freezing temperatures and it's gonna ferment
- 26:58Speaker 1: at the bottom the yeast is Yeah, they would put
- 27:00Speaker 1: it in caves. It's called lager ing. Yeah. It was
- 27:03Speaker 1: the stort and cave cold caves because for those hundreds
- 27:06Speaker 1: and hundreds and hundreds of years that they were making beer.
- 27:08Speaker 1: They kept they kept being like, this beer is messed up,
- 27:11Speaker 1: and it happens to be summertime. What's wrong with this beer? Oh,
- 27:15Speaker 1: it's it's all the summertime. And then finally somebody figured out,
- 27:18Speaker 1: wait a minute, we're making the best beer in the
- 27:21Speaker 1: winter time. And they didn't quite know why, but they
- 27:24Speaker 1: figured out a process to replicate it. But of course
- 27:28Speaker 1: now we understand that UM, the wild yeast and bacteria
- 27:33Speaker 1: in the area that was prevalent in the summers of Germany,
- 27:37Speaker 1: UM was messing up the fermentation process, souring the beer.
- 27:44Speaker 1: It's the stuff using yeasts that survived in winter months
- 27:47Speaker 1: in the cold. UM produces really clean, crisp, very awesome beer.
- 27:53Speaker 1: Taste of the Rockies. Yeah, exactly. That's now called the Lagger.
- 27:56Speaker 1: That's right. We actually forgot something too. And I know
- 27:59Speaker 1: there's homebrewers right now going you can't forget carbonation. Uh,
- 28:04Speaker 1: skipping back a bit after you. After you do have
- 28:07Speaker 1: the bottle beer, it's not carbonated yet, very flat, so
- 28:10Speaker 1: you need to carbonate it. And I imagine the big
- 28:12Speaker 1: breweries UM forced carbonate like sodas do and uh, if
- 28:18Speaker 1: you're a traditionalist though, and I wonder about craft breweries
- 28:20Speaker 1: that I need to know more about this if they
- 28:22Speaker 1: do that or not. Well, I think it usually I'll say,
- 28:24Speaker 1: like bottle conditioned. So bottle condition means it just waits
- 28:28Speaker 1: and you wait it out for the yeast to do
- 28:29Speaker 1: its thing naturally. And that's where you're gonna get your
- 28:32Speaker 1: your phone and your good bubbly goodness because it produces
- 28:34Speaker 1: carbon dioxide. Is a waste product, takes a while. Waste product.
- 28:38Speaker 1: You say, waste product, I say bubbly goodness. Okay, Um,
- 28:43Speaker 1: So you want to talk about gravity? Uh? Yeah, gravity
- 28:48Speaker 1: is um. Gravity is how much alcohol is in your beer.
- 28:52Speaker 1: And the brewers measure the gravity before and after the
- 28:55Speaker 1: fermentation process, and they calculate the difference uh in the
- 29:00Speaker 1: out of alcohol by volume and represented by a percentage.
- 29:04Speaker 1: So like the higher the percentage, the higher the gravity
- 29:06Speaker 1: of the beer. Yeah. And you know nowadays with the
- 29:09Speaker 1: craft beers, you're gonna get all kinds of percentages, like
- 29:13Speaker 1: you know, six to nine to right, that's a pretty
- 29:16Speaker 1: heavy duty beer. Oh definitely. What is like get your
- 29:19Speaker 1: average Budweiser? What is that? Five? Five? Is it? There's
- 29:22Speaker 1: a law in Georgia for a while that was you
- 29:23Speaker 1: couldn't sell beer over five point five. Do you remember
- 29:26Speaker 1: when they repealed that law that beautiful time in the nineties.
- 29:29Speaker 1: Do you remember that? Actually? That was Wow. They had
- 29:32Speaker 1: a lot to do with crapper reis in Georgia too, Definitely.
- 29:35Speaker 1: UM say the stuff about the lambic so, I thought
- 29:38Speaker 1: that was really interesting, okay, um. So lambics are um
- 29:41Speaker 1: a type of spontaneously fermented brew. I've had it. I
- 29:45Speaker 1: didn't know this though, the same problem that the um
- 29:48Speaker 1: old Germans had um with you know, local stuff getting
- 29:53Speaker 1: in there the UM. I guess the French when they're
- 29:56Speaker 1: producing this, these Lambics or the Belgians um French, and
- 30:01Speaker 1: they're they're basically just leaving their stuff out to be
- 30:03Speaker 1: exposed to wild yeast that grows in the area. It's
- 30:06Speaker 1: crazy spontaneous fermentation. And I've had, Like I said, I'd
- 30:10Speaker 1: tried lambic in the past, and I didn't know what
- 30:12Speaker 1: made it so special that that was it. I don't
- 30:15Speaker 1: care for it a whole lot. It's kind of has
- 30:16Speaker 1: a sour aftertaste, its fruity sort of cider almost. Yeah,
- 30:21Speaker 1: not enough hops. Oh, no, I like, what's your favorite beer? Actually?
- 30:25Speaker 1: I mean to asking that. So I'm a pretty big
- 30:28Speaker 1: fan of um anything New Amsterdam puts out. Yeah, they're great,
- 30:33Speaker 1: um fat tires point of the all time best. Yeah,
- 30:36Speaker 1: our friends that we have friends fans at Brooklyn Brewery.
- 30:39Speaker 1: Yeah and New AMSTU. Remember they sent us like a
- 30:41Speaker 1: bunch of beer. They were the first ones they did.
- 30:43Speaker 1: Thanks again, guys. Um, Yeah, we have fans at Brooklyn Brewery.
- 30:47Speaker 1: They sent beach towels and other swag they did. Uh.
- 30:51Speaker 1: We had a fan who sent us some Shiner Bach once,
- 30:53Speaker 1: but I don't think he was related to them in
- 30:55Speaker 1: any way. He was just from Texas. Yeah, that's a
- 30:58Speaker 1: Texas beer, right, Um, my all time favorite. It's just
- 31:03Speaker 1: it's never been toppled. Like I've had plenty of beer.
- 31:06Speaker 1: I'm like, this is really good, like innocent gun. Have
- 31:08Speaker 1: you ever had that? Oh my god, it's like ambrosia.
- 31:11Speaker 1: It's the most amazing thing ever. But you you can't
- 31:14Speaker 1: just drink like one after the other if you're in
- 31:16Speaker 1: such a mood. It's just it's just a lot. It's
- 31:19Speaker 1: very rich. But my so my favorite beer, that's just
- 31:23Speaker 1: no one's ever topped all day is Sierra Nevada pale Ale.
- 31:27Speaker 1: I'm right there with you. It's just the best beer.
- 31:29Speaker 1: I think that's anyone anyone's ever made. It's delicious and nutritious,
- 31:33Speaker 1: it's refreshing. Yeah, I want to go to their brewery. Um.
- 31:36Speaker 1: I like the dog Fish had stuff. Um, but I'm
- 31:39Speaker 1: I'm in to try. And you know, we have these
- 31:40Speaker 1: stores here in Atlanta now and Indicator where I live with,
- 31:43Speaker 1: you know, all the myriad craft beers, and I'll try
- 31:47Speaker 1: any kind of any kind of pale ale or I
- 31:49Speaker 1: p a. Have you been to Ale? Yeah? I have,
- 31:52Speaker 1: that's yeah. And they have the growlers there, which is
- 31:55Speaker 1: always kind of fun. Yeah. You just get something on tappen,
- 31:58Speaker 1: drink it out of a jug like an old pirate.
- 32:00Speaker 1: And I also have to say our local boys at
- 32:02Speaker 1: Sweetwater are killing it too. Like there's like as far
- 32:06Speaker 1: as pale ales go, Sierra Nevadas and the four twenty
- 32:11Speaker 1: very very close four twenties good. I will always go
- 32:13Speaker 1: for that if it's um, if they don't have the
- 32:15Speaker 1: seer on them. And I remember my first beer very distinctly,
- 32:19Speaker 1: do you Yeah, Because I, as everyone listens to the
- 32:23Speaker 1: show NOWS, I was a very good, good Baptist boy
- 32:26Speaker 1: growing up, So I didn't um, I didn't drink or
- 32:28Speaker 1: anything like that until I was older. And I remember
- 32:31Speaker 1: the first time I tasted beer. I had only had
- 32:34Speaker 1: soda as far as a carbonated beverage, and that's the
- 32:37Speaker 1: only thing I could like expect, And I just remember thinking,
- 32:41Speaker 1: this is so weird tasting. It's like it's fizzy like
- 32:44Speaker 1: a soda, but it wouldn't taste anything like a soda.
- 32:48Speaker 1: And I'm like, oh, how do people drink this stuff?
- 32:50Speaker 1: And then like thirty seconds later, you're trying it again, like, oh,
- 32:55Speaker 1: why can't I stop? I want to stop? Yeah? Um,
- 33:00Speaker 1: first beer, huh, I don't remember mine? Remember there was
- 33:02Speaker 1: a long gone. I think you're probably younger than I was.
- 33:06Speaker 1: I don't remember. I mean my dad drank like old
- 33:09Speaker 1: Milwaukee tall boys, and I'm sure like I tried like
- 33:11Speaker 1: a sip of his when I was a kid. Or see,
- 33:13Speaker 1: we didn't have beer in the house, so that it
- 33:15Speaker 1: was just winn't around. Um alright, so where are we chuckers?
- 33:20Speaker 1: We could talk about some of the older beers in existence. Yeah,
- 33:23Speaker 1: so there's like actual old beer. It's like over a
- 33:27Speaker 1: hundred years old. Like that that particular bottle of beer
- 33:30Speaker 1: was manufactured like a hundred seventy eight years ago. And
- 33:34Speaker 1: there's two shipwrecks that had beer on them that ironically
- 33:39Speaker 1: are competing for the oldest beer in the world. Um,
- 33:43Speaker 1: and they both went down in. I know, it's maddening. Um.
- 33:47Speaker 1: There's one in the Baltic Sea. There was a shipment
- 33:49Speaker 1: of beer and champagne from Copenhagen to St. Petersburg that
- 33:52Speaker 1: went down in. And then there's a shipwreck in the
- 33:55Speaker 1: English Channel UM in eighteen and a guy in named
- 34:00Speaker 1: Um Keith Thomas. He was a microbiologist, I believe. Um.
- 34:04Speaker 1: He got his hands on some of the bottles of
- 34:08Speaker 1: this beer that is still around and Um tried it
- 34:10Speaker 1: and was like he vomited, and he's like, maybe I
- 34:13Speaker 1: can figure out some other way to do this. So
- 34:15Speaker 1: he got the yeast from this beer, and UM got
- 34:19Speaker 1: a colony going of the living yeast, same same yeast.
- 34:22Speaker 1: It's not like a descendant of it, like this is
- 34:24Speaker 1: the yeast. And Um he got it going again and
- 34:27Speaker 1: found like an old porter recipe and now he makes
- 34:30Speaker 1: flag Porter, which in and of itself is one of
- 34:33Speaker 1: the better beers around. Oh I also want to say,
- 34:36Speaker 1: I like just about anything Sam Smith does too. I
- 34:39Speaker 1: don't know that Sam Smith like oatmeal, stout and winter welcome. Yeah,
- 34:44Speaker 1: Sammy Smith. Sorry, sure they're Uh they had the Shakespeare
- 34:48Speaker 1: stout yea when that Sammy Smith, that's rogue. Yeah, that's rogue.
- 34:52Speaker 1: But I've had that. Guy Ale is awesome. Man, I'm
- 34:55Speaker 1: getting thirsty. Uh. Dogfish Head has revived a recipe that
- 35:00Speaker 1: they claim is the and that's what we're talking about earlier.
- 35:03Speaker 1: Is he the guy from dog fish had claims it's
- 35:05Speaker 1: the oldest known ferminted recipe in the history of man.
- 35:09Speaker 1: And uh it was from a Neolithic burial site in China,
- 35:14Speaker 1: and it is called they brew it now. It's called
- 35:17Speaker 1: Chateau uh jiaho uh j i h h j i
- 35:23Speaker 1: a h u from seven thousand b C. And they
- 35:26Speaker 1: decoded it, uh molecularly from Clay Potts founded a Neolithic
- 35:31Speaker 1: burial site and have brewed this stuff. And um, they're
- 35:34Speaker 1: also the ones they get a little crazy. You know,
- 35:36Speaker 1: they did the Midas touch brew that was supposedly King
- 35:39Speaker 1: Midas's um recipe or from his tomb. And we have
- 35:43Speaker 1: people right in But I love what they're doing over
- 35:45Speaker 1: there at dog Fish Head. They also did the one
- 35:47Speaker 1: based on the hymn to Nick Cancy the what the hymn?
- 35:50Speaker 1: Didn't cantye that to marry in one right? Um? So
- 35:57Speaker 1: there's also some brewers that have been around for a while,
- 36:01Speaker 1: like Stella Artois. If you look on the label, you'll
- 36:04Speaker 1: see that, um, it has some mention of thirteen sixty six. Man,
- 36:08Speaker 1: that's when it was. That's when they started brewing that supposedly.
- 36:13Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I like a nice summertime beer for me, agreed. Um.
- 36:17Speaker 1: August Steiner was um began in probably the oldest beer
- 36:24Speaker 1: in the world as far as like brewing. The recipe
- 36:29Speaker 1: um is uh winehan Staffen. Did I get it? Yeah?
- 36:36Speaker 1: Vahan v han Stefan. Oh nice. So those are brewed
- 36:40Speaker 1: by Ben Benedictine monks. That beer has been brewed since
- 36:45Speaker 1: the seven hundreds. But the weinhan Staffen Uh the guys
- 36:51Speaker 1: brewing that also operate the oldest um continuously functioning brewery
- 36:57Speaker 1: in the world, which opened its doors in ten party
- 37:01Speaker 1: and it's been going ever since. That's awesome. It's about
- 37:03Speaker 1: to celebrate its thousandth anniversary. That's so cool. Um, what
- 37:08Speaker 1: else a man named Arthur Guinness and seventeen fifty six
- 37:12Speaker 1: did a very smart thing by signing a nine thousand
- 37:15Speaker 1: year lease on a building in Dublin and they have
- 37:18Speaker 1: been making the old delicious Guinness beer there since then.
- 37:22Speaker 1: And I enjoyed at our south By Southwest event at
- 37:26Speaker 1: Fedoe Irish Pub. I enjoyed myself some Guinness at that
- 37:29Speaker 1: a bit love me some Guinness. It's Gonnas sponsoring you, now, No,
- 37:35Speaker 1: none of these people are. But why are you wearing
- 37:37Speaker 1: that leather eight bulb jack with Guinness patches all over it?
- 37:41Speaker 1: The Schlitz story I thought was kind of interesting. Yeah.
- 37:44Speaker 1: I searched the story up because I had remembered hearing
- 37:46Speaker 1: it you back, and I was like, we gotta mention now.
- 37:48Speaker 1: So what was the deal? They were making good beer
- 37:51Speaker 1: for a long time, We're one of the top three,
- 37:53Speaker 1: and then they changed their recipe in the late seventies
- 37:57Speaker 1: and just screwed it all up. They wanted to be
- 37:59Speaker 1: number one and they were, they were number two. Wanted
- 38:01Speaker 1: to be number one, so they decided that they were
- 38:03Speaker 1: going to um just change it, and they changed it
- 38:06Speaker 1: in a really lazy, cost efficient way. Instead of malt,
- 38:11Speaker 1: they used corn, syrup, high fruit toast corn syrup. Such
- 38:16Speaker 1: a bad idea. And then they didn't filter it as
- 38:17Speaker 1: much either, So you had this really weird tasting chunky
- 38:22Speaker 1: style beer. And this is in the seventies. What by
- 38:28Speaker 1: Schlitz's market share was one It went from the number
- 38:32Speaker 1: two selling beer in America to within just a couple
- 38:35Speaker 1: of years, one percent of the market. I think more
- 38:37Speaker 1: than one person lost their job on that that move.
- 38:39Speaker 1: Oh yeah, they may have like killed those people. Um.
- 38:42Speaker 1: So they discontinued the brand altogether at one point, didn't they. Yeah,
- 38:47Speaker 1: it went under and then Strows, which I also remember
- 38:50Speaker 1: from my childhood, Um was, uh, what said, well, you
- 38:54Speaker 1: know what we're gonna buy you guys. So they bought
- 38:55Speaker 1: Schlitz and then, um, they just bought the label. They're like,
- 38:58Speaker 1: we don't want that. Keep your keep all this leftover
- 39:02Speaker 1: chunky beer. Um, but they bought the label and apparently
- 39:05Speaker 1: rolled out the classic sixties formula, which I have not tried.
- 39:09Speaker 1: I have not either. We do want to shout out
- 39:11Speaker 1: to Yengling as well. Um. In nine David Yengling opened
- 39:16Speaker 1: a brewery in Pennsylvania in Potts Bell and it is
- 39:19Speaker 1: still open today. The oldest operating brewery in the United States,
- 39:22Speaker 1: still in the Yngling family, And uh, they're black and
- 39:26Speaker 1: tan is very delicious to me, and it's a very
- 39:29Speaker 1: popular beer. People seek it out. I think one of
- 39:31Speaker 1: the reasons why is because it's tradition and it's delicious,
- 39:37Speaker 1: and it has cute puppies in their labels and marketing materials. Yeah.
- 39:40Speaker 1: And I want to ask Budweiser, if you are the
- 39:43Speaker 1: makers of Budweiser and you're listening, bring back the bullet
- 39:45Speaker 1: bottles and you'll thank me later. Do you know who
- 39:48Speaker 1: makes um Budweiser? Anheuser Bush? Right? Uh? You know who
- 39:53Speaker 1: owns Anheuser Busch um in BEV. They're a European company, really,
- 40:00Speaker 1: as something as American as Budweiser is owned by the Europeans. Now, well,
- 40:03Speaker 1: and Heisa isn't exactly American, you know what I'm saying.
- 40:07Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I hadn't thought about that, neither as Bush.
- 40:11Speaker 1: But yeah, the bullet bottles, do you remember those? They
- 40:13Speaker 1: were short, little stubby No, those are the barrels that
- 40:19Speaker 1: these were bullets. They were short and kind of went
- 40:22Speaker 1: up and then just graduated up and they were guarantee
- 40:26Speaker 1: you people would buy those the classic Budweiser Fallus bottle,
- 40:31Speaker 1: Well Miller High Life came back with their old school bottle.
- 40:34Speaker 1: I haven't said, oh, yes, yes, I know exactly what
- 40:37Speaker 1: you're talking. Remember the old bullets. Yeah, they were cute
- 40:40Speaker 1: and uh, I think if Budweiser brought those back, people
- 40:43Speaker 1: would really jump on that because if you know, everyone
- 40:45Speaker 1: likes that old school stuff, you can look like you're
- 40:47Speaker 1: in the seventies again or eighties seventies. Yeah, you can
- 40:52Speaker 1: send your thanks by check to Chuck Annheuser Busch money
- 40:58Speaker 1: starts rolling, or just a case of the bullets. So, um,
- 41:01Speaker 1: this is kind of unusual. We don't usually throw out
- 41:03Speaker 1: cool random facts at the end, but there's some cool ones.
- 41:06Speaker 1: You go ahead, Okay, I'm going to start with the
- 41:08Speaker 1: London Brewery of eighteen fourteen. Yeah, so there was a
- 41:11Speaker 1: hundred thousand gallon tank fermenting tank of ale uh in
- 41:17Speaker 1: London at a brewery and it exploded and when it
- 41:20Speaker 1: did it killed eight people and destroyed a pub nearby.
- 41:25Speaker 1: It actually killed nine people. The ninth guy died the
- 41:28Speaker 1: next day. Because when these hundred thousand gallons of ale
- 41:32Speaker 1: flooded the streets, people started drinking it. One guy drank
- 41:35Speaker 1: so much that he died of alcohol poisoning. Wow, isn't
- 41:38Speaker 1: that crazy, Josh. According to statistics, the Czech Republic leads
- 41:45Speaker 1: the world and beer consumption per capita. I have been there,
- 41:48Speaker 1: and I can tell you they love their beer. It's
- 41:49Speaker 1: cheaper than their water. I have been there too, and
- 41:51Speaker 1: it is delicious. Over a hundred and fifty six liters
- 41:54Speaker 1: per year per person. That's for everyone that they don't
- 41:58Speaker 1: just say like twenty one year old, uh, you know citizens.
- 42:02Speaker 1: So that is four and thirty nine beers a year.
- 42:07Speaker 1: Twelve ounces, right, they're probably sixteen ounces over there, or
- 42:10Speaker 1: are they twelve? I don't know. I don't know how
- 42:13Speaker 1: they broke that downs. So that is eighteen cases of
- 42:16Speaker 1: beer per person, about a case and a half five
- 42:22Speaker 1: s a leader a half leader. I think it's like
- 42:24Speaker 1: a tall boy can a big can. Well. I think
- 42:27Speaker 1: most of Europe it's like that, because I remember being
- 42:28Speaker 1: in London for the first time in thinking, man, you
- 42:32Speaker 1: guys have his tall boys and they're like, what's a
- 42:34Speaker 1: tall boy? Oh wait that was Australian that was neither
- 42:37Speaker 1: actually pretty close Matt's and they're laughing at my hackneed
- 42:40Speaker 1: attempts uh best symbol. Yeah, the red triangle famous. It
- 42:46Speaker 1: was registered as a trademark in eighteen seventy six. It's
- 42:48Speaker 1: the world's oldest trademark. Pretty cool. And the beer Stein.
- 42:53Speaker 1: You have been to Germany, Yeah, the beer gardens there,
- 42:57Speaker 1: it's exactly what you think you're gonna get. You're to
- 43:00Speaker 1: get a four and a half foot tall German woman
- 43:03Speaker 1: with four arms as big as your waist, carrying like
- 43:07Speaker 1: five of those big, huge mugs of beer in each hand.
- 43:12Speaker 1: And it was exactly what you want if you're going
- 43:15Speaker 1: over to your beer grou And I was like, Wow,
- 43:17Speaker 1: I'm so glad it's like this. And my buddy Brett
- 43:20Speaker 1: and I actually had a very fun night in Germany
- 43:23Speaker 1: drinking with this ah old fat German dude that didn't
- 43:28Speaker 1: speak any English and I spoke a little bit of German,
- 43:31Speaker 1: but we all love the Beatles, and we drank with
- 43:34Speaker 1: this dude for like three hours, singing Beatles songs in
- 43:38Speaker 1: both English and German. And Carl and I have a
- 43:41Speaker 1: picture with this guy still. It was one of my
- 43:44Speaker 1: great great memories of traveling abroad. Well tell him where
- 43:47Speaker 1: the beer stein came from? Oh, the beer stein comes
- 43:49Speaker 1: from the bubonic plague. They're like, we need to put
- 43:53Speaker 1: lids on these things so we don't get any disease
- 43:56Speaker 1: in there. Until they came up with the beer stein. Yeah,
- 43:59Speaker 1: and what was it to the pottery? Was they were
- 44:02Speaker 1: there were advancements in ceramics, right. I think the money
- 44:06Speaker 1: fact is the bubonic plague created beer steins, so that's it.
- 44:11Speaker 1: But I didn't get steins in Germany. You know, it
- 44:13Speaker 1: was just a big mug. It's like is you know,
- 44:17Speaker 1: it looks like a half gallon of beer. I'm not
- 44:19Speaker 1: sure how much it is, but it was good doomkalee stuff.
- 44:22Speaker 1: Nice man, Matt, do we get anything wrong? He said,
- 44:25Speaker 1: We're pretty good. That's good enough. I'm sure that there's
- 44:28Speaker 1: some homebrewers that will take us to task. But we
- 44:30Speaker 1: did our best. Man. We want to hear about it. Um,
- 44:33Speaker 1: do you have anything else right now? I'm done? Okay,
- 44:36Speaker 1: So that's it for beer. You can type beer into
- 44:38Speaker 1: the search bar at how stuff works dot com. Remember,
- 44:41Speaker 1: as Chuck said at the beginning, don't go out and
- 44:44Speaker 1: drink beer if you're not twenty one. UM in the
- 44:47Speaker 1: United States and drink responsibly. Yes, don't be a goin.
- 44:49Speaker 1: Don't ever drink and dry it. It's just dumb, agreed
- 44:52Speaker 1: chuck a little older and you realize that the commercials
- 44:55Speaker 1: are all right, that's just a stupid thing to do.
- 44:59Speaker 1: Um and uh so that's it for beer right now? Um,
- 45:02Speaker 1: I said, search for how stuff works dot com. I
- 45:04Speaker 1: think so it's time for listening. That's right, Josh. And
- 45:10Speaker 1: you know the other reason why you get a little
- 45:12Speaker 1: older and you say drink responsibly is because you do
- 45:15Speaker 1: a lot of stupid stuff. If you don't, oh man,
- 45:17Speaker 1: and you will be the butt of many many jokes.
- 45:20Speaker 1: Even if no one gets hurt, you will. You will
- 45:21Speaker 1: act a fool and end up with like toothpaste up
- 45:26Speaker 1: your nose because you've passed out at a party. If
- 45:30Speaker 1: that's what happens in your world when you drink too much,
- 45:33Speaker 1: you know, you've seen a pass out at a party,
- 45:36Speaker 1: and people like draw stuff on your face and take
- 45:37Speaker 1: pictures of you and put it all over the internet.
- 45:40Speaker 1: Plus you feel crutty the next morning. Yeah, exactly, see
- 45:43Speaker 1: our hangovers podcast for that. All right, um, I'm gonna
- 45:46Speaker 1: call this a pretty cool interesting email from an attorney
- 45:49Speaker 1: about doing guys. I just got done listening to your
- 45:53Speaker 1: podcast on duels. I thought you might like to know
- 45:55Speaker 1: that I and I am sure many of your fans
- 45:58Speaker 1: enjoyed the podcast with a twinge of sad This because
- 46:01Speaker 1: alas I cannot duel. Why you ask, I am an attorney,
- 46:05Speaker 1: and one of the states in which I am licensed
- 46:07Speaker 1: is Kentucky. And when an attorney in Kentucky is sworn in,
- 46:12Speaker 1: he or she swears an oath. And when I was
- 46:14Speaker 1: sworn in the Commonwealth of Kentucky, it contained this additional tidbit.
- 46:18Speaker 1: In order to practice in the Commonwealth, I had to
- 46:20Speaker 1: swear that I would not participate in any duels. She
- 46:24Speaker 1: still has to say. This isn't that crazy, It's pretty cool.
- 46:28Speaker 1: What's more, as I listened to the podcast, I realized
- 46:30Speaker 1: that I had been preparing to duel my whole life.
- 46:32Speaker 1: During college, I worked as a serving wench at Medieval Times,
- 46:35Speaker 1: watching jousts each night and twice on Saturday's. My senior
- 46:39Speaker 1: year of college, in order to fulfill my pe requirement,
- 46:42Speaker 1: I took fencing, which was actually really interesting and more
- 46:45Speaker 1: athletic than I expected. So sadly, no matter how much
- 46:48Speaker 1: experience we may have, neither I nor my fellow members
- 46:51Speaker 1: of the Kentucky bar come stuff. You should know. Fans
- 46:54Speaker 1: can use the information we clean you from your podcast. Uh.
- 46:58Speaker 1: There was talk in the last few years of uh years,
- 47:00Speaker 1: of removing that particular clause from the oath, but as
- 47:04Speaker 1: far as I know, newly minted Kentucky attorneys are still
- 47:07Speaker 1: required to abstain from dueling nuts. It just seems logical.
- 47:13Speaker 1: I think we should add that to just about anything,
- 47:15Speaker 1: like when you go get your driver's license you have
- 47:17Speaker 1: to check a box that says I won't do or
- 47:19Speaker 1: in your marriage vowels. Yeah, there's there's just a lot
- 47:22Speaker 1: of places where we could insert that. And that is
- 47:24Speaker 1: from Rebecca right in Sincentucky, Ohio. Really that's what she signed.
- 47:30Speaker 1: It is No, she signed it Cincinnati, but I like
- 47:32Speaker 1: to say Sanantucky. Uh. Well, let's see. Oh, if you're
- 47:37Speaker 1: a homebrewer, we want to hear from you. Um. And
- 47:41Speaker 1: by hear from you, we mean it's into some of
- 47:43Speaker 1: your weares. Chuck said that, not me, um, but he's right. So, uh,
- 47:49Speaker 1: we want to hear from you via Twitter at s
- 47:52Speaker 1: y ESK podcast. We wanted to hear from you on
- 47:55Speaker 1: Facebook at facebook dot com, slash of you Should Know,
- 47:58Speaker 1: and We want to get emails from you, and you
- 48:01Speaker 1: can send those Two Stuff podcast at Discovery dot com.
- 48:10Speaker 1: For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
- 48:12Speaker 1: how Stuff Works dot com.