Beer Facts / Trivia

I had a lot of very positive responses from the last two “beer quote” posts, so I thought I would do a piece on beer “facts”. Now, I put “facts” in quotes because some of these have not, or really can’t be verified as true, but are accepted by most as being grounded in reality (for the most part). So take a moment, and educated yourself on some little known beer facts.

A beer lover or enthusiast is called a cerevisaphile.



There is an Egyptian beer, called bousa, that is brewed from millet and has been a favorite drink of many for over 3,000 years. Modern Ethiopia has a version made from wheat. It has been hypothesized that this might have been the origin for the word “booze.” Other spellings used are boza, bouza, and booza. Take your pick.



About 4000 years ago, it was the accepted practice in Babylonia that for a month after the wedding, the bride's father would supply his son-in-law with all the mead he could drink. Mead is a honey beer, and because their calender was lunar based, this period was called the "honey month" or what we know to day as the "Honey moon"



Before invention of the thermometer, brewers used to check the temperature by dipping their thumb, to find whether appropriate for adding Yeast. Too hot, the yeast would die. This is where we get the phrase " The Rule of the Thumb"


A pint, "mind it"



In English pubs, ale is ordered by pints and quarts. So in old England, when customers got unruly, the bartender used to yell at them to mind their own pints and quarts and settle down. From where we get "mind your own P's and Q's".

Beer is not mentioned (by name) in the bible. Wine was mentioned, many times, but not beer. Instead, the Bible makes mention of "strong drink” more than a few times, which some translated as fermented beverage made from grain (i.e. beer).





The first consumer protection law ever written was enacted over beer by Duke Wilhelm IV of Bavaria in 1516. It was a purity law limiting the ingredients of beer to barley, hops and water. Known now commonly as “The Reinheitsgebot”

The First Beer Recipe



The oldest known written recipe is for beer. A recipe found in 4,000-year-old Sumerian tablet was for beer.



Beer is the second most popular beverage in the world, coming in behind tea.

Pabst Beer is now called Pabst Blue Ribbon beer because it was the first beer to win a blue ribbon at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893.