Oktoberfest! The time of year to enjoy some beer!

Oktoberfest: 10,000 years of Beers, not Bombs

"Creating a better world one beer at a time."

In September of 2009 President Obama hosted the famous "Beer Summit" with Harvard historian Henry Louis Gates (left) and Cambridge, Mass., police Sgt. James Crowley (center) at the White House. As Gates was returning from an out-of-town speaking engagement, he was arrested by Crowley on his own front porch for disorderly conduct. A very public national debate on race relations ensued, and President Obama brought peace to the warring parties over a glass of beer.

Beers not Bombs works wonders!!

Oktoberfest, a 200-year-old event first held by the Germans of Bavaria to celebrate a king’s wedding, now has gained international popularity. Hundreds of Oktoberfests to honor the “harvest” of new beer are held throughout the U.S. each autumn--the most massive gatherings occurring in Cincinnati, Denver, and La Crosse, Wisconsin. The global granddaddy of such sudsy fests occurs in Munich, Germany, which draws nearly five million thirsty consumers. Worldwide, the Oktoberfests thrown in Brazil, Canada, China, Japan, Mexico, Australia, and other countries together attract millions of aficionados.

These casual, fun-filled occasions often feature parades, music, open-air beer gardens, and hearty foods from brats to strudel on tap. They’re a grand way to honor the cornucopia of October foodstuffs and seasonal tipples from tangy apple cider to traditional ales, lagers, and malts.

The tradition of drinking beer--as well as making it--goes back much further than two centuries, however. Archaeologists don’t agree on whether the making of beer or bread came first, but most confirm that by 8000 B.C. or so, humans were enjoying both. Long-ago people living in the Fertile Crescent that stretched from Egypt across all of Mesopotamia and Persia were the first pioneers to make beer (and bread) from wild grains, such as barley. (In Asia, beer making has had an equally long history.)

As time passed, nomads became farmers and began to deliberately plant and harvest such cereal grains. As they discovered, cereal had two delightful qualities. Once it’s soaked in boiled water and begins to sprout, it produces maltose sugar. It becomes sweet--a rare treat back then. Secondly, if you let a runny mix of cereal and water (your basic gruel) sit around, in a couple of days it turns fizzy and slightly intoxicating. It becomes beer, in fact.

Wow. This was a very big deal--a liquid that was much safer to drink than most of the (unboiled) water supply and one that was also quite nourishing because it contained yeast and barley. Not only that, beer could be brewed and then stored in animal skins, shells, even hollowed-out trees. Later of course beer would routinely be stored in pottery vessels--but that advance would not take place until around 6000 B.C.

Try to picture this: in ancient times, almost everyone drank beer every day. Pharoahs and kings sipped it. Children drank it. Early doctors prescribed it for a variety of ailments. Women drank it--and manufactured most of it, too, in the cities and towns that lined the Nile, the Tigris, and the Euphrates Rivers.

Beer had a strong spiritual significance too; it was often offered to the gods and was said to be their favorite beverage. Ninkasi, the patron goddess of brewing in old Mesopotamia, was a formidable deity. The oldest surviving recipe for beer making comes from a poem celebrating her.

Like today’s beer loving culture, brew back then also had a very social side. It was often shared among friends. Some of the earliest depictions of beer consumption show two people of Sumer drinking with large straws from the same large container. (The “straws” were probably gourds or dried reeds of some sort. They were needed because long-ago beer was thick--and could also contain chaff or bitter residues. )

Egyptian tombs have wall paintings of beer making, along with small clay figures of male and female brewsters at work. In this century, archaeologists have been tickled to stumble on clay “receipts” from ancient times, including one tablet that records the purchase of “the best beer” from a brewer who lived around 2050 B.C. in ancient Iraq (below).

The long-ago Greeks and Romans were lukewarm about beer. As Christianity took hold, however, monks from the monasteries that sprang up often specialized in making ales and beers. Adding hops to beer, which kept it from spoiling, was perfected by German brewers in the 13th century. Throughout the middle ages and into relatively modern times, beer was a staple. It sat on every table in every home in Europe. People of all ages and most social classes considered it their main beverage. Why? Besides being the cheapest drink going, it was by far the safest in terms of contamination. (Hygiene and public sanitation took a nose-dive after Greco-Roman times, so beer in those centuries helped save lives, you might say.)

These days, we don’t have to worry too much about the purity of our drinking water. And we have plenty of liquid alternatives at our disposal. Nevertheless, the lively social side of beer-drinking and the celebratory aspect of this ancient brew remain very strong traditions.

Lines on Ale
by Edgar Allen Poe

Fill with mingled cream and amber,
I will drain that glass again.
Such hilarious visions clamber
Through the chamber of my brain.
Quaintest thoughts, queerest fancies
Come to life and fade away.
What care I how time advances;
I am drinking ale today.

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