The Bottom Line: Learn more about beer!
The Full Story:
- Beer is the world’s most widely consumed alcoholic beverage and the third-most popular drink overall (after water and tea). People all over the world just love beer. An average American consumes 23-gallons of it per year.
- Beer is one of the world's oldest prepared beverages, possibly dating back to the early Neolithic or 9500 BC.
- The Ancient Egyptians built the pyramids under the influence. According to Patrick McGovern, an archaeologist from the University of Pennsylvania, workers at Giza received about four liters of beer a day.
- Ancient Babylonians were so serious about brewing beer that if anyone brewed a bad batch, they would drown him in it as a punishment.
- In 1814, almost 400,000 gallons of beer flooded several streets in London after a huge vat ruptured in the parish of St. Giles.
- Old Vikings believed that in their heaven called Valhalla, there is a giant goat whose udders provided unlimited supply of beer.
- American president George Washington had his own brewhouse on the grounds of Mount Vernon.
- Steven Petrosino of New Cumberland, Pennsylvania downed 1-liter of beer or 33-ounces in a chilly 1.3-seconds in 1977, which made him a World Beer Chugging Champion according to the Guinness Book of World Records.
- The world´s strongest beer is Brewmeister´s “Snake Venom.” While regular beer usually have about 5% ABV, this Scottish killer has a stomach-burning 67.5% ABV.
- Beer and marijuana have more in common than you would think. Beer's hops are in the same family of flowering plants as marijuana.
- Beer commercials in the United States aren't really allowed to show people actually drinking the beer. It's an actual law that people can’t actually be shown consuming an alcoholic beverage on television.
- Cenosillicaphobia is the fear of an empty beer glass. Terrifying, indeed.
- At the Wife Carrying World Championships, first prize is the wife's weight in beer.
- Coined in the early 1900s, the word "alcoholiday" means leisure time spent drinking.
- The top five states for beer consumption per capita: 1. North Dakota, 2. New Hampshire, 3. Montana, 4. South Dakota 5. Vermont. See the rest of the Top Ten by clicking HERE.
- Germany is home to a beer pipeline. Taps in Veltsin-Arena are connected by a 5km (that’s about 3-miles) tube of beer.
- Thomas Jefferson wrote parts of the Declaration of Independence in a Philadelphia tavern.
- At the end of Prohibition, FDR said, "What America needs now is a drink."
- Winston Churchill called the concept of Prohibition "an affront to the whole history of mankind."
- George Washington insisted his continental army be permitted a quart of beer as part of their daily rations.
- At spas in Europe, you can literally bathe in beer as a physical and mental therapeutic treatment.
- In the 1990s, the Beer Lovers Party ran candidates in Belarus and Russia.
- Beer helped Joseph Priestly discover oxygen. He noticed gases rising from the big vats of beer at a brewery and asked to do some experiments.
- A Buddhist temple in the Thai countryside was built with over a million recycled beer bottles.
- The moon has a crater named Beer.
- Beer soup was a common breakfast in medieval Europe.
- In the 1986, a beer-drinking goat was elected mayorof Lajitas, Texas.