The Case for Specialized Beer Glassware, and the 10 Stems You Need in your Beer Arsenal

by Charlene Oldham

Some of the most humble brewpubs in Belgium have hundreds of glasses hanging above their bars, waiting to serve as specialized vessels for tripels, stouts or saisons. The often logo-emblazoned glassware’s motivated in part by marketing, but experts say vessels affect a brew’s head, appearance, aroma and—as a result—its taste.
In fact, most of what we commonly refer to as taste is not taste at all, but aroma, says Dr. Jon T. Roll, who explained the tongue can only really sense sweet, salt, bitter, sour and umami. “The rest is all aromas,” says Roll, who teaches brewing courses at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “That is also, in part, why the head is important, in that much of the aroma is released when the head on the beer is formed.”
Properly pouring and swirling a beer can enhance that aroma even more, says Dr. Mark Denny, author of “Froth!: The Science of Beer.”
“A snifter-type glass will emphasize the aroma of the beer just the same as it does a spirit or a wine,” said Denny, who added aesthetics are also important. Narrow glasses highlight the bubbly luminosity of light-colored beers, making a flute-shaped glass the ideal vessel for serving saisons and lambics. “A narrow glass is nice because it looks elegant and makes the beer look good,” he said.
More important than a glass’s shape is its cleanliness, so Denny advised eschewing ceramic and pewter mugs or fancy patterns that hang on to soap residue and lipstick. (see No. 3) “Those immediately destroy the head of the beer,” he says. “Old-fashioned tankards are going out of style, and there is good reason for that.”

Flute
The long, thin body showcases color and carbonation in bubbly, brightly colored beers. Use with highly carbonated beers like gueuzes, lambics and saisons.
Goblet
A wide mouth supports big heads and enables easy gulping, with some featuring scoring on the inside for head retention. Use with Belgian dark strongs and sour ales.
Mug
The handle makes big swigs easy and prevents heat transfer from drinkers’ hands. Use with bocks, Oktoberfests, pale ales and session beers.
Pilsner
This funnel-shaped glass is tapered at the bottom to maintain carbonation; the wider rim holds in head and aroma. Use with pilsners, steam beers, light lagers and schwarzbiers.
Nonic Pint
About 20 percent larger than a standard pint, this glass features a bulge near the top to hold frothy heads, improve grip and make stacking simple. Use with head-heavy brown ales, red ales, stouts, porters and cask ales.
Standard Pint
The 16-ounce glass’s slightly tapered top concentrates the head and funnels aroma without trapping it. Use with nearly every beer style, particularly pale ales and hop-heavy brews that don’t need help holding their aromas.
Snifter
The stem and wide bowl facilitate swirling to intensify aromas, while the tapered mouth traps them. Use with highly aromatic, high-ABV beers like American barleywines, strong Scotch ales and Russian imperial stouts.
Stange
The word means “stick” or “rod” in German and describes the shape of this narrow, straight-sided glass designed to complement the light, hoppy aroma of kölsch. Use with kölsches and altbiers.
Tulip
The flared lip of this flower-shaped glass supports huge heads that carry aromas for beers with strong noses and flavors to match. Use with Scotch ales, Flemish reds, saisons and English barleywines.
Weizen
This tall, thin-walled glass curves from a narrow center to an ample top that props up a fluffy head and retains citrusy smells. Use with wheat beers, other light-colored ales and ryes.
Published January/February 2013

6 Bucket-List Beer Festivals

6 bucket-list beer festivals

Party at beer festivals that give patrons more than just a hangover. At these six smart brew festivals, tasting is only part of the fun. –Christina Couch

Belgium Comes to Cooperstown | Cooperstown, N.Y.
More than 70 breweries and 3,500 guests gather to salute all brews Belgian (and Belgian-style) at this weekend beer camping fest held on Brewery Ommegang’s grounds. After hours of live music, cooking competitions and tasting specialty batches like Brasserie Dupont’s hop-free Posca Rustica gruit, connoisseurs head back to their tents to swap homebrew tips long into the night.
Craft Lager and Small Batch Festival | Manitou Springs, Colo.
This lager-friendly fest aims to do more than just prove that small breweries make good lagers, too: In addition to showcasing more than 170 small batch lagers, seasonals and spirits from breweries you’ve never heard of, this nonprofit fest also maintains a strong environmental slant with all proceeds benefitting local parks, community garden and open spaces projects.
Brewmasters Craft Beer Festival | Galveston, Texas
With more than 400 craft breweries representing, this isn’t just the biggest beer festival in the Lone Star State; it’s also the most educational. Brewmasters’ guests get the first taste of more than 15 beers—last year’s collection ranged from Karbach’s Cherry Bourbon Barrel-Aged Imperial Porter to a smoked alt from Cedar Creek—as well as seminars on topics like the cans-versus-bottles debate and “Popularity of Ciders and the Distinctiveness of Crispin and Fox Barrel.”
Oak Park Micro Brew Review | Oak Park, Ill.
Even more impressive than the 50-plus microbreweries that show is the event’s “Replicale” competition, which challenges more than 15 beer makers to create the same beer style using different techniques. Patrons can taste the differences each method makes and enjoy organic munchies, craft tastings and beer pairings.
SAVOR: An American Craft Beer & Food Experience | New York/D.C.
The roughly 75 craft breweries that attend SAVOR meet their match when their liquid wares get paired with fare from equally high-caliber chefs and artisan food purveyors. Educational salons on rare brews, how to marry beer and meals and brewery history abound, and attendees score the annual collaboration beer created just for the event.

North American Organic Brewers Festival | Portland
Drink without guilt at this homage to sustainable imbibing. Running on biodiesel and solar power, this earth-friendly fete features more than 50 organic beers of all styles and flavors, environmentally conscious vendors and a recycling program that kept nearly 2,000 pounds of waste out of landfills last year alone.

Published January/February 2012

Pairs - Beer and A Super Bowl Spread

Pairs:  Beer and a Super Bowl Spread

Draft Magazine - January/February 2013

Prepare your end zone dance: These game-winning pairs will score big with your fans.

Swedish Meatballs & Sap House Blueberry Mead: Spice-laden meatballs swimming in cream sauce could use some lightness. Earthy pepper, cardamom and nutmeg still hold their own when this mead’s sweetness—fruity but not cloying—skims above them with a high-reaching berry note. The mead’s uncarbonated, which gives that blueberry flavor staying power on the tongue alongside the heavy sauce.

Potato Skins & Flat Earth Cygnus X-1 Porter: This beer’s ashy and roasted notes cut through bacon grease, while its chocolate is an unexpectedly delicious bedfellow for both cheese and bacon, bringing a palatable sweetness to a salt-driven snack.

Jalapeño Poppers & Napa Smith Wheat: Sweet, hot peppers stuffed with melty cheese and wrapped in crispy fried goodness should be an occasional indulgence, but this easy-drinking pale wheat beer is an ideal everyday brew. The beer’s wheat tang mimics that of the cheese as the beer moves crisply and briskly through the mouth, sweeping gooey cheese and grease off of the tongue. The pepper’s vegetal flavor and spice shine through the swallow without any conflict from hops, though the cool brew tempers the heat.

Buffalo Wings & Lazy Magnolia Southern Pecan: Chicken’s flavor can get lost in the fray of salty, fried breading and mildly spicy Buffalo sauce. This pecan-brewed nut brown has just enough sweetness to draw out the meat flavor, while the wings’ fire balances a basement of toasted malts and toasted pecan on the tongue.

Barbecue Mini-Dogs & Manzanita Where There’s Smoke: A 2012 GABF bronze medalist, Where There’s Smoke is a flavorful, even-handed blend of bitter chocolate, sharp rye spice and smoke. Slow-cook some Li’l Smokies in mesquite barbecue sauce, and smoke anchors the pairing—peppery heat, meaty sweetness, rye spice and barbecue tang are just bonuses.

Published January/February 2013

Viva La Fungi - Philly Beer Scene Magazine

Viva La Fungi  - Philly Beer Scene Magazine

By Jimmy McMillan

When most people discuss beer, they speak of its flavor, color, hop aroma, alcohol content, and style in which it was brewed but rarely do they ever discuss one
of the most critical ingredients of beer. This ingredient is arguably the most important of all the ingredients that make up our beloved beverage, and can be directly linked to our survival throughout the ages. This special ingredient shall be forever named yeast!



Yeast is the workhorse of all beer, but is often overlooked or ignored when one talks about and rates beers. There is an old saying, “Brewers make wort, yeast makes beer,” and without yeast, beer as we know it wouldn’t exist. Instead, we would be drinking on an overly-sweet and unpleasantly bitter beverage that would not give us the euphoric buzzed feeling we’re accustomed to. In this article, we attempt to simplify the complexity of yeast: how they work, the differences yeast can create in beers and how various regions produce different yeast samples, thus making the styles of beer that we all know and love.

The standard dictionary definition of yeast is “any of various small, single-celled fungi of the phylum Ascomycota that reproduce by fission or budding, the daughter
cells often remaining attached, and they are capable of fermenting carbohydrates into alcohol and carbon dioxide.” To put it more simply, yeast is a single-celled fungus that eats simple sugars to produce alcohol and carbon dioxide. The scientific name for brewer’s yeast is Saccharomyces, which comes from the Greek word “Saccharo,” meaning sugar and myces (mushroom or fungus). Yeast plays the beginning role of decomposition in nature and is literally found everywhere, living on the skins of fruits and vegetables, hibernating inside the bellies of bees, and even living on our skin.

Why does yeast aid in the production of tasty beverages such as beer? Before we can discuss yeast’s role in beer, we must first understand what beer is prior to adding yeast, or what brewers call “wort.” Let’s briefly go over how beer is made all around the world. The main ingredient is usually malted barley, which are barley seeds that have been allowed to sprout. Once sprouted, the barley is then heated to stop the germination process, which preserves the complex carbohydrates, or
starches, that would have been used if the seeds were to grow into mature plants. These carbohydrates are the beginning of what will become food for the yeast; because they’re too complex for standard brewer’s yeast at this stage, they are converted into simpler sugars through a process called mashing. This is when the barley is soaked in water at a specific temperature for a set amount of time. During the mashing process, natural enzymes in the grain start to break down the
carbohydrates into smaller chain carbohydrates, or what we would refer to as simple sugars. We measure the density of these sugars in the water by specific gravity, or in degrees Plato, for use in calculating the ABV (Alcohol by Volume) in the final product. The wort is now boiled and the recipe is followed as planned with various hop and/or spice additions. After boiling, the wort is cooled to a precise temperature–usually around 70° Fahrenheit–and placed into fermentation vessels where it’s inoculated with yeast cells. Within 12-24 hours there should be considerable evidence that the yeast are doing their job, or fermenting: an excessive amount of CO2
gas being released from the fermenter and a krausen (thick yellow/beige foam) on top.

Alcohol and CO2 are the main by-products of yeast fermentation. Most of us know what the alcohol does, and is one of the main reasons we enjoy drinking beer, but
CO2 is usually an afterthought. The majority of the breweries today allow fermentation to release the CO2 into the environment, and when it’s time to carbonate the beer, they purchase commercial CO2 and force it into the beer. Without CO2, beer would be a “still” beverage much like wine, and not have the bubbles and the frothy head that we enjoy. Before we were able to capture and pressurize CO2 into large steel tanks, there were only “cask conditioned” and “bottle conditioned” beers available, which are naturally carbonated by the yeast. This style of beer is becoming more and more popular today and is created a number of ways. The main way breweries today are naturally carbonating beers is by allowing fermentation to finish and then adding a precise amount of some type of sugar before it goes into its bottle or cask. This slowly starts fermentation up again, and the yeast start producing a small amount of CO2 and alcohol, just enough to carbonate a beer.

There are currently about 1,500 different yeast strains, but most brewers usually select from a small number of good, known strains that have been passed down for hundreds of years. The three easiest ways to categorize yeast are by ale yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae), lager yeast (Saccharomyces pastorianus) and wild yeast (Brettanomyces). Top fermenting ale yeast work best in our average comfort temperatures, 65°-75° Fahrenheit, create more fruity aroma and flavors (phenols and  esters) and can take an average of ten days to complete fermentation. A lot of the new craft beers around today use ale yeast–IPA’s, hefeweizens, American pale ales, porters, stouts, and even kölsch. Bottom fermenting lager yeast prefers cooler fermenting temperatures, between 48°-58° Fahrenheit, and produces a more “clean” flavored beer, but can take up to forty-five days to complete fermentation. This is the yeast strain that has been favored over the years and is used to make most of
the larger commercial beers, such as lagers and pilsners. Wild yeast isn’t new to the brewing industry. It has always been a part of lambic production, as well as some of the funkier saison or farmhouse style beers. It wasn’t until the early 1900s, however, when Brettanomyces was identified as cause of spoilage in English ales, and thusly named “British fungus.” Brettanomyces, called Brett for short, is a form of yeast that is acidogenic and, when allowed to grow over time, creates acetic acid; this is the same acid that makes vinegar so tart. Recently, American breweries like Russian River, Lost Abbey, Jolly Pumpkin, Allagash, Cascade and many others have been welcoming this yeast into their brews, producing a complex character that can only be obtained by the use of Brett, other bacterial strains and usual long aging. Little is still known about the various strains of wild yeast and their actual reactions during fermentation, but the recent interest in sour beers is striking up significant scientific research.

Once the type of beer to be brewed is determined and the yeast strain has been selected, a specific amount of yeast needs to be “pitched,” which is referred to as the “cell count.” Wyeast, a large manufacturer of brewer’s yeast, claim that, “A good rule to follow is a million cells per milliliter per degree Plato.” This means that you need 20 million cells per ml for a 20 degree Plato (1.080 specific gravity) beer, or about 9.5 billion cells per pint for a 7% beer. That’s more than the total population of the earth for a single pint of beer. Once the yeast has been pitched, the lag phase begins. This phase occurs during the first twelve hours and mainly consists of the cells absorbing the oxygen, minerals and various amino acids which will help them process the sugars and bud (replicate) daughter cells during the main fermentation. After the lag phase, the yeast starts budding exponentially and begins processing the various sugars in the wort. There are a number of different carbohydrates in the wort, consisting of glucose, fructose, sucrose, but mainly maltose. The yeast cannot fully consume some of the more complex sugars such as maltotriose, which gives the beer a sweet and malty flavor.

As we near the end of fermentation, the yeast shuts down, clumps together and falls to the bottom of the fermentation vessel. This process, called flocculation, is unique to brewer’s yeast. Chris White, from White Labs explains, “The ability to flocculate is a product of natural selection. Brewers have continually collected yeast either from the bottom or top of a fermenter and in doing so, selected for increasingly flocculent strains.” The reason for this flocculation is to help clarify the beer. If the yeast is less flocculent, like in a hefeweizen, they stay in suspension and yield a cloudy and hazy beer. Wild yeast, such as Brettanomyces, do not flocculate well; this is why some of the newer style “wild ales” are recommended to age like a bottle of wine.

The rate at which the yeast eats the malt sugars is called “apparent attenuation,” which is measured by the percentage of sugars the yeast consumes. White Labs, one of the nation’s main yeast providers, says their California ale yeast strain is said to have a 73-80% attenuation, which means the yeast should consume 73-80% of the sugars in the wort. The higher the attenuation percentage, the less residual sweetness and body the finished beer will have. After fermentation is complete, the specific gravity, or Plato, is taken again, calculated with the original gravity, and the attenuation is measured along with the ABV. For professional breweries, if the attenuation of the yeast is not precise, then the final product will never be consistent and will fail at the quality control department. Yeast is very particular to the region in which they come from. If you have ever visited San Francisco and had the sourdough bread, you will know that it is unlike anywhere else in the US. This is due to the types of wild yeast and bacteria that are native within that region and the by-products they produce during fermentation. The exact same concept goes for beer.

Up until recent laboratory technology, breweries would use the same mature yeast strain time and time again, and it was considered their “house” yeast strain. This is what gives some of the older brew houses in Europe such a unique smell and flavor. Now with modern transportation, we can safely ship yeast samples from all around the world without worry of excess heat, time, or contamination of some other yeast or bacterial strain. Today, Belgian style beers that are made in America are mostly using yeast strains that have been brought over from Belgian many years ago.

These regional differences inhibit many different styles of flavors and aromas in the beer. These flavors and aromas are referred to as phenols and esters. Consider the difference between American pale ale and a German hefeweizen: these are found more in the esters produced by the yeast than in the wheat added in the hefeweizen. Hefeweizen, literally meaning “yeast wheat,” has a slight banana or clove essence that’s caused by the ester, Isoamyl acetate. Hefeweizens are fermented at the warmer end of ale temperatures and use low flocculating yeast from Germany to produce these robustly-flavored esters. Most American pale ales are fermented at a slightly lower temperature and use cleaner-flavored and more flocculent yeast from California. Another common flavor found in some English and Belgian Style ales that are strictly due to yeast are green apple/pear ester, or Isoamyl butyrate. The human tongue is very sensitive to these flavors, which means they can be very unpleasant at higher concentrations. Wild yeast, or Brettanomyces, is sometimes blamed for ‘solvent’-like flavors in beer, but these can come from commercial yeast strains as well.

Besides the production of Ethel alcohols, yeast is the microscopic fungus responsible for providing the bubbles, the alcohol and many of the aromas and flavors in beer. In this light, yeast can easily be argued as being the most critical component of making beer. Many breweries keep their yeast strains under lock and key with high levels of security, while others simply use the wild yeast that just happens to be floating in the air around their region. Without these single-celled organisms, there would be no beer, wine, cider, mead, hard spirits, bread, doughnuts, or even pizza to enjoy. It is time to give the hard working yeast cells the attention and respect that they deserve. The next time you sit down to enjoy your favorite craft beer and criticize its flavors and aromas, don’t forget it’s not just about the hops and malt. Trillions upon trillions of microorganisms created that oh so tasty beverage.

10 Great Places to Get a Craft Beer

(Article from USA TODAY Travel Section - 6/20/11)

Brewpubs are the frontline soldiers in the craft beer revolution," says writer Andy Crouch . The author of Great American Craft Beer (Running Press, $22.95) shares 10 great spots where on-site brewers are concocting new ways to satisfy thirst with Larry Bleiberg  for USA TODAY.

Portsmouth Brewery
Portsmouth, N.H. 

This neighborhood pub is celebrating its 20th anniversary, making it an elder statesman in the brewpub revolution. The welcoming atmosphere is a good introduction to this historic seaside town, Crouch says. "They make a wide range of very nice beer." He suggests Black Cat Stout, a dry, dark beer similar to Guinness. 603-431-1115;portsmouthbrewery.com

Brewer’s Art
Baltimore 

This two-level bar has a split personality. Upstairs you'll find upscale, creative cuisine. Downstairs is a cellar bar with a unique range of Belgian-style beers. Crouch likes Resurrection, an abbey-style ale with malt flavor balanced with sweet spicy notes. "It's a little bit higher in alcohol, so it's a slow sipper," Crouch says. 410-547-9310;belgianbeer.com


Church Brew Works
Pittsburgh 

You can visit church — and have a great beer — at this unique brewery, once home to a Catholic parish. "The front of the church is now where the brewing kettles are located, and they do have an angelic charm," Crouch says. He suggests a glass of Pious Monk Dunkel, a German-style lager, with a dark color, and a clean taste. "It's very drinkable and a fun name." 412-688-8200;churchbrew.com

American Flatbread
Burlington Vt. 

Part a healthy-ingredient pizza parlor chain, this location offers a variety of brews from British to German to American style. (The pub's closed for renovation until late June.) Try Summer Gruit Ale, made with herbs and spices instead of hops. "It's strongly herbal and maybe a little minty." 802-861-2999;americanflatbread.com

Pizza Port
Carlsbad, Calif. 

The brewers at this small San Diego-area chain have won recognition in the craft-beer world. "They produce some of the hoppiest and experimental brews in the country," Crouch says. He suggests trying Wipeout IPA, which he calls a quintessential West Coast India Pale Ale. "It's going to be big and bold, lots of strong citrus flavors and aromas," he says. 760-720-7007;pizzaport.com

Magnolia Gastropub & Brewery
San Francisco 

This brewer is located in the heart of the Haight-Ashbury district, where people have been altering their consciousness for decades. "It's not a very big place, but it has a ton of character and it really reflects the history of that neighborhood," Crouch says. He suggests the Cole Porter, which has surprising similarities to coffee. "It's going to have a roasted aroma and flavor," he says. "It's very drinkable." 415- 864-7468;magnoliapub.com

Hopworks Urban Brewery
Portland, Ore. 

Hopworks, one of the newest additions to Portland's busy brewpub scene, stands out because it uses organic hops and malts. Its Hub Lager, a Czech-style pilsner, won a silver medal in the World Beer Cup before the brewery even opened in 2008. "It has a lighter color (and is) lighter on the palate, but with a nice residual bitterness," Crouch says. "A very approachable beer." 503-232-4677;hopworksbeer.com

Town Hall Brewery
Minneapolis 

This downtown pub near the University of Minnesota has sidewalk seating, plus a selection of flavorful beers, Crouch says. He practically gets poetic about Masala Mama, an India Pale Ale. "Beer geeks absolutely adore this beer because it is packed with tons of grapefruit and pine and citrus notes," he says. "It's a really soulful beer." 612-339-8696;townhallbrewery.com

Revolution Brewing Co.
Chicago 

You'll find great food — don't skip the bacon-fat popcorn appetizer — at this Logan Square pub. The beer is worth a trip too. Crouch likes Bottom Up Wit, a Belgian-style wheat beer, which bears a superficial resemblance to Coors' Blue Moon. "If you like that beer, it's time to take a step up," Crouch says. "It's made with coriander and orange peel and the flavor is incredibly refreshing. It's perfect for the summer." 773-227-2739;revbrew.com

Great Dane Pub
Madison, Wisc. 

The massive building, just steps from the state capital, has an outdoor beer garden, a pool hall, and other nooks and crannies for settling down with a beer. Crouch suggests the Stone of Scone Scotch Ale, which has caramel and malt flavors. "It's going to be a little sweeter. It's sort of like Bass for people who like beers that aren't as hoppy or roasted," he says. 608-284-0000;greatdanepub.com

Beer - Its What's for Dinner

(article from Beer West Magazine - Fall 2012 - by Taylor Blackwell Like)

Writer Adrienne So examines the history of beer as food and dissects beer’s ingredients to prove why it may not be as troublesome to our health as some people believe Illustration by Taylor Blackwell

Like a lot of stories, this one started at a party. And like most stories that start at a party, this one involved beer. On a Sunday afternoon, my husband and I invited some friends over, stocked the coolers, and prepped the grill. People milled through the kitchen and dining room or kicked back on the deck. As I stood in the kitchen, cutting up vegetables for a salad, someone walked in and opened the fridge. Then I heard a laugh.

“I think you guys might have a problem,” she said. “There’s nothing to drink in this house except milk and beer.”

For some reason, this comment stuck with me. Why is it more disturbing to find only milk and beer in the fridge instead of, say, milk and orange juice? Or milk and Diet Pepsi? I like to believe that my husband and I lead generally healthy lives. But is drinking beer really a minor vice? Something of which to be just a little bit ashamed, like the occasional Cup Noodles, or knowing whom Kim Kardashian is dating?

Why do so many people in the United States regard beer with such moral disdain? In most countries, beer is treated as a foodstuff. In Mexico, the mysterious tribesmen known as the Tarahumara guzzle tesgüino, or corn beer, to fuel themselves for their 100-mile runs. In Ireland, a dry stout and a glass of milk are rumored to provide all the vitamins and nutrients necessary for survival. Heck, in Russia, anything containing less than 10 percent alcohol was classified as a food as recently as 2011.

I decided to find out if beer really was part of a healthy, balanced diet, or if it’s better to relegate it to merely a weekend indulgence.

Many scientists believe that a taste for alcohol is an evolutionary adaptation. Organisms as far down the food chain as the common fruit fly, and as high up as the monkey, have been known to find ethanol alluring. And monkeys and birds have also been known to gorge themselves on fermenting fruit to the point of intoxication. That’s because ethanol is a sign that the fruit is ripe, or just barely over the edge of ripeness, and ready for consumption.

It’s not such a far leap from there to state that early forms of beer might have been the foundation of human civilization. According to Garrett Oliver’s The Oxford Companion to Beer (Oxford University Press, 2011), some anthropologists believe that mankind moved away from hunter-gatherer tribes and into more settled societies, mainly in order to produce grains in large enough quantities to brew beer.

While this may be a bit of an exaggeration, it is true that grains were one of the first cultivated plants. Unlike other plants, both the seeds and stalks of cereals were useful to early humans. The first domesticated animals could feed on the dried stalks, while humans ate the nutritive seeds. At some point, someone discovered that leaving a bowl of grains and water to ferment produced food, in the form of either bread or beer. It is uncertain which came first, but for centuries, beer was hydrating and nourishing—far safer and healthier than bacteria-laden water.

In fact, beer was the fuel that powered the mightiest of the ancient civilizations. First Sumerian peoples, then the Egyptians, regarded beer and bread as the very stuff of life. Several microbreweries, including Oregon’s own Ninkasi Brewing, pay tribute to the ancient gods and goddesses of beer. Powerful potentates even had beautiful beer-drinking straws made of gold and lapis lazuli. Beer was handed out as payment for physical labor.

The ancient Greeks and Romans didn’t take to beer. It was partly out of cultural revulsion; foamy zythos, as they called it, was the chosen drink of the nations that they’d conquered. Moreover, it was made from disgusting piles of rotted plants, and they didn’t need to cultivate beer for alcohol, because the Mediterranean climate more easily supported grape vines—and therefore, wine—than fields of waving grain.

But in most other countries, it was far easier, and more useful, to cultivate grains than grapes. As agriculture spread from the Middle East and beyond, brewing came with it. Pliny the Elder and Julius Caesar both noted that the fierce barbarians of Western Europe were distinguished both by their excellent brews and their extreme consumption of said brews. In his famed Conquest of Gaul, Caesar even correlates the bravery of the northern barbarians with their beer-drinking habit.

According to Ian Hornsey’s A History of Beer and Brewing (Royal Society of Chemistry, 2004), Caesar noted that the bravery of the Germanic people was correlated to how far away they were from the “enervating luxuries” of the South, like wine. The farther away you lived from wine, and the more beer you drank, the braver you were. Not only did beer quench your thirst, as many a young undergrad has realized, it also stiffened your courage.

For millennia people continued to drink beer as a vital part of their diets. Paulaner monks drank bockbier for sustenance during Lenten fasting. Henry III instituted the Assize of Bread and Ale in A.D. 1266 to protect the quality of his people’s most basic foods, which punished the brewer for shortchanging his customers with “the Tumbril or Flogging.” In the 18th century, beer was promoted as a healthier, family-oriented alternative to the thousands of English people getting drunk off gin, and the Victorian public house (or “pub”) was born.

So how did it transition from a healthy beverage into the suspect libation of today? A clue can be found as early as A.D. 1595 in William Bullein’s treatise The Governement of Health. Bullein, an Elizabethan physician and scholar, wrote that if ale is made from “good barly mault, and of wholesome water,” it was indeed very wholesome for the body, and especially for sick people. But sweet, strong ale brought about “inflammation of winde and choler in the belly.”

It seems that as beer became more commercialized, its quality began to decline. Nevertheless, Europeans remained firmly devoted to their beer. It was when beer crossed the ocean to America that things began to take a turn for the worse for our favorite beverage. Americans had long been in the process of modifying lager, brewing it with our ample supplies of rice and corn to replace the harder-to-grow barley and wheat.

Then came the Industrial Revolution. Civil unrest in a rapidly changing world—and with it, a rise in destructive drinking—hit American shores. Drinkers were looked at with such disgust that the Volstead Act was passed in 1919. Prohibition lasted 13 years and ignited the debate that lasts to this day—a debate that I, not coincidentally, still linger over nearly a century afterwards. Beer isn’t that bad for you, is it?

Many Americans still hold Prohibition-era attitudes towards alcohol. As of July 2012, the annual United States Gallup poll indicates that nearly 35 percent of the American population doesn’t drink alcohol at all. Half of those cite religious reasons for their abstinence. Compare that number to Britain. In 2011, The Telegraph griped that the United Kingdom is “turning teetotal,” just because a mere 15 percent of the population had sworn off alcohol.

Okay, fine. Maybe Bullein hit the nail on the head when he said that cheap beer “fretteth and nippeth the guts.” It’s not hard to argue that overconsumption of alcohol can be destructive. Still, it hardly seems fair to disqualify beer from being a part of our diet for those reasons. However disgusting some of us find Wonder Bread, no one goes so far as to claim that it’s not edible.

Moreover, the recent return to craft brewing with quality ingredients should mean healthier and more nutritious beer—even without taking into account breweries like Dogfish Head, which pride themselves on replicating ancient recipes. Midas Touch is one famous example, which brewer and founder Sam Calagione claims was created from the sediment in drinking vessels found in Midas’ tomb in Turkey.

As it turns out, beer—even sweet, strong, modern-day beer—has far more health benefits than most people could suspect. Consider a beer’s ingredients: sprouted grains, hops, yeast, and water. Taken separately, each ingredient is healthy. Why should fermented milk be lauded as a healthful food when fermented grains are not?

It’s likely that beer became a part of an ancient person’s daily diet when it was discovered that germinated grains have more nutritive value than un-germinated ones. Although they didn’t have the tools necessary to determine exactly why, ancient peoples observed that communities that ate sprouted grains were healthier and stronger than those who didn’t. Modern science has given us the answer: sprouts are rich in vitamins, minerals, and proteins.

Most of the vitamins in sprouted grains are lost during the heat treatments involved in brewing. A few, however, manage to hang in there—mostly the water-soluble B vitamins, which, fortunately for beer lovers, happen to be very medicinally useful. Beer is also said to contain folate, dietary fiber, silicon, and polyphenols, which have been shown to be antimicrobial and anticarcinogenic, and help regulate blood pressure.

Taking all of these impressive nutrients and micronutrients into account, it seems increasingly unfair that beer’s place on the beverage hierarchy is a lot lower than red wine’s. There are a couple of reasons for that as well. Generally speaking, beer drinkers tend to be less wealthy than red wine drinkers, which means that their lifestyle and diet choices might be confounding factors in any study trying to evaluate their health.

That’s beside the fact that any drinker, of any kind, has a tendency to lie when asked survey questions on how much they drink. And pretty much all of beer’s benefits are negated by overconsumption. “Moderate drinking” means one or two drinks a day. That means 14 drinks a week, at most, and consumed over a period of time. Fourteen drinks in one night is never healthy.

Like white sugar, red meat, or even water, the key to adding beer to your daily diet is moderate consumption. And like white sugar and red meat, it seems clear at this point that beer is a food. Trying to talk to brewers, cooks, and beer drinkers about the differences between beer and food is like trying to talk to my husband about the differences between “lipstick” and “lip stain.” Surely there are minor differences, but they are so infinitesimal as to be negligible.

One of the first clues that beer and food have the same origins is the fact that brewing has traditionally been a woman’s job. From the goddess Ninkasi, throughout ancient civilizations, women have been the traditional brewers. Just as it was her job to cook, clean, and maintain the hearth, it was also a common household task for a woman to keep her family well stocked with beer—that most necessary of foodstuffs.

And as long as women have been brewing in the home, they’ve been adding food to their beers. In medieval times, women hung flowers and herbs outside their window to advertise the extra ingredients in their personalized brews. Colonial women exercised a touch of immigrant ingenuity and brewed from whatever materials they had on hand. Contrary to belief, a sweet pumpkin and ginger porter is not a modern invention. Pumpkin is a New World ingredient, easily grown and found, and its starches can be easily broken down into sugars in a mash.

Oysters aren’t sugary or starchy. But at the beginning of the 20th century they were the most popular pub food. They were as salty as peanuts, and went well with the pub’s traditional creamy black beers. In fact, at one point Guinness’s slogan was “Makes the oysters come out of their shells.” In 1929, a New Zealand brewery cut out the middleman and simply began adding the briny shellfish directly to the beer.

Milk stouts and cream stouts also caught on in popularity in Britain, particularly between and after the two catastrophic world wars. The British people were chronically underfed, and nourishing stouts, containing oysters or oatmeal, were rumored to contain all the vitamins and minerals necessary to sustain life. Although we now know they contain a lot of them, we are also relatively certain that it’s not possible to live entirely off Guinness—any more than it’s possible to live entirely off broccoli or bananas.

Nevertheless, cream stouts were prescribed as a healthy drink, despite the fact that they didn’t contain any milk or cream (the beer was, instead, sweetened with lactose). Both athletes and new mothers consumed pints of it—even today, Maltese mothers drink Lacto Traditional Stout when they start nursing.

“The line between beer and food has always been crossed,” says Portlander Lisa Morrison, Beer Goddess, experienced beer cook, and host of the weekly radio show “Beer O’Clock” on 101 FM Portland, as well as co-founder of Oregon Craft Beer Month and Portland Beer Week. “Or maybe it’s never been crossed because beer has always been food… I’ve seen people make beer out of loaves upon loaves of pumpernickel bread. Or grain that’s been chewed up and spit out.

It would seem the only people making real distinctions between beer and food would be regulatory agencies, whose sometimes draconian policies concerning the production and sale of alcohol seem to be a hangover (pun intended) from the days of Prohibition. Earlier this year, a furor was ignited in the city of Portland, Oregon, when the Oregon Liquor Control Commission granted a liquor license to a food cart. Portland’s city council cited the possible consequences as “increased crime, traffic accidents, fatalities, public nuisances, or other harms to the public safety.”

Threat to public safety? Not exactly. Food carts have been serving beer alongside their food—or, according to our views, food alongside their food—for years, albeit with only temporary or extended licenses. As of today, the ordinary Portlander is at far more risk from thousands of naked bike riders than it is from the occasional beer on a sunny porch.

Even professional cooks and brewers don’t seem to draw the line very firmly. For example, Alan Sprints started his career as a chef before becoming the founder of one of Portland’s most beloved local breweries, Hair of the Dog. “The two are quite similar,” he says about his two professions. “Cooking and brewing are both about knowing your ingredients, and methods of preparation. For me, brewing is a more relaxed way of making a living. The kitchen is harder and more stressful, but you eat better.”

Merriam-Webster’s defines food as a material consisting of protein, carbohydrate, and fat that an organism uses to sustain its vital processes. Beer’s nutrients and micronutrients—many of which are still in the process of being studied—make it one of the most ancient and revered foods on the planet.

But to consider beer as solely a sum of its parts is perhaps to miss the point. Yes, mankind has sought to feed himself throughout the ages, and beer was part of that process. But beer serves another, equally important, purpose.

It made the unknown terrors of the prehistoric world just a little more bearable. Beer fueled the imagination, as well as the body, and lubricated the hundreds of small, sometimes stressful interactions that allowed humans to live in tight communities and become one of the most successful species on the planet. By that definition, beer is most definitely a food—it nourishes the body, but also the heart and mind.

The only way a bottle of orange juice would do the same would be if you let it sit out for a couple of months. The next time we have a party, I’ll be sure to demonstrate how beer has benefited both my physical and spiritual prowess. Maybe I’ll do some push-ups. Or just pop another bottle.

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Is someone on your back about your fondness for a few cold ones? Don’t worry. We’ve created a quick-reference guide for you. Just tear it out and hand it over.

Dietary fiber

Put down the Quaker Oats, stat! Beer is made from those same whole grains that lower blood cholesterol and discourage colon cancer. And the more alcoholic the beer, the more fiber it contains.

Folate

Not only is beer made from whole grains—those grains have sprouted. Sprouts are a significant source of vitamins and minerals, particularly water-soluble B vitamins like riboflavin and niacin. Of these, folate (folic acid) is probably the most important. Folate deficiency has been linked to cardiovascular disorders and increased incidence of Alzheimer’s, as well as colon and cervical cancer.

Silicon

This usually indigestible element can be found
in barley’s husk. The mash process breaks it down and renders it soluble. Silicon is important for maintaining bone density, and beer contains an impressive amount of it.

Polyphenols

These molecules have antimicrobial, anticarcinogenic, and antioxidant properties. Guess what plant has a lot of them? Hops do. Time for a six-pack of double IPA.

Ethanol

Countless books have been written about French people and their life-affirming, slenderizing, wine-drinking ways. But the same ethanol that combats atherosclerosis in red wine is present in beer and in about the same quantity.

Nicotinamide riboside

Earlier this year, scientists discovered that this “miracle molecule” influences cell metabolism. A preliminary study shows that mice fed high-NR diets were slimmer, healthier, fitter, and faster than untreated mice. And this tiny super molecule likes to call your favorite beverage “home.”

Moderation is key, of course. High concentrations of alcohol make it difficult for the body to absorb any of these nutrients. But that doesn’t mean you should put down the bottle for good. New studies come out every year, and with each one, more of beer’s extraordinary health benefits come to light. We’re only just beginning to understand why beer was a venerated beverage in so many cultures for so long.