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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (Dec. 3, 1982)
THE FIRST ANNUAL AMPERS NOTABLE LOR THREE REASONS: It's con cerned only with after-class, leisure hour, party down and hang-it-out style. No dress codes allowed. We won't bore you with too many brand names you can't find in your local stores anyway. The Amper sand staff re ceived no graft, no bribes, no tokens front anybody. Vfter all our work. Not so much as a non-gourmet kernel of popcorn. Vie must be doing something wrong. Beer Is a flatty-Splendored Thing BY MORLEY JONES )ou can talk about vour t hateauneuf Ju hi|V and you tan talk about your Caymus Vineyards Napa Valley (.X-it de Perdrix. You can talk about your Glendronach single malt Scotch whiskey and you can talk about your Amaretto di Sarono on the rocks with a splash of hcav\ cream You can blabber on and on forever about your l'equlla Sunrise and your elegantK perfect JJ tt> 1 martini, and you can prattle till vou're blue in the face about vour damned fanc\ schmanc> European soda water at 79 cents a pint. But when all that vacketv yak sites down and vou discover that you're thirsty, mff/v thirsty, brush tire on a hot da\ thirsty chances are pretty good that you'll reach tor a good old fashioned beer. t he 1 s is the largest producer of beer and related beverages (.like ale, stout, etc about which, more later) in the world, and one of the largest consumers of the stuff. Each and every one of us, .statistically at least, dunks .iIxhii -2.gallons of tx-er and such a rear and if you personally drink somewhat levs than that, don't- worry, because the guy next to you probably more than makes up your share (By way of comparison, American per capita consumption of hard booze is only about two gallons a year, arid .wine consumption is slightly levs than that -though it's increasingly rapidly.) Beer has-been around for. a long time Since before there was. whiskey. Since before there was chocolate milk Since before plain-'bid water was even safe to drink Beer was probably the first alcoholic beverage known to humankind It 'was made as early as 5000 R C in Mesopotamia. You lemember Mesopotamia the fertile Crescent, most productive agricultural land in the ancient world. Well, most of what they grew in Mesopotamia w as grain, and almost half of all that grain was used for making beer Sumerian rvorkers were paid in beer Hammurabi took it so seriously that he wrote special rules into his Code condemning jreople who sold watered-down brew. t he Egyptians liked the idea of beer, and passed- it along eventually to the Greeks, who were nice enough to tell the Romans about it The Romans introduced it to what are now Germany and Great Britain, and look what tbry'iv done yyith it The light, medium bitter style of beer that most of us are used to today was probably born 800 years ago or so in Czechoslovakia, at the Pilsner Urquell brewery in the town of Pilsen. (The firm is still in business today , and Piisnei I’rqueU is available in the 1 S. ) VChat is beer, anvway?. you might well ask — besides being just that frothy stuff that tastes so good? Well, beer is sort of like xvine, except that it s made from grain instead of grapes. It starts out with a mixture of kinds'of grain, usually heavy On the barley The grain is allowed to “malt"—- which means that the grain grows sprouts and the starches it contains become converted, through natural processes, to sugar (which is necessary for fermentation). The grain is then “cooked" with water, and the result ing liquid, called won," is drained off into a brewing vessel. Here, flavorings are added; the principle flavoring agent, the one that makes beer taste like beer, is hops, which are blossoms of a vine related to the mulberry bush. The flavored mixture is cooked a bit longer, then the flavoring substances are removed, the mixture is cooled, and brewer’s yeast is added. Now fermentation begins. (To make beer, a yeast is used which sinks to the bottom of the fermenting vat and works from there; ale is made w ith a kind of yeast which floats on the top of the liquid. (And, as long as we're at it, it might as svell be mentioned that stout is ale made with roasted malt, and porter is stout fermented to a higher degree of alcohol.) When the fermentation is finished, the beer is filtered, aged for a short time, and then bottled or canned or loaded into barrels — mostly aluminum these days. This is where the controversy usually starts. Does beer taste better from a barrel than it does from a bottle or can? Do cans give beer a "tinny" taste? In answering these questions, it is gtxxl to remember, first of all, that beer didn't always come in cans and bottles. In fact, when the radical notion of bottling freer was first proposed earlier in this century, H.L. Mencken snorted something to the effect that putting beer in a bottle was like putting a kiss in the icebox. He was a curious man, Mencken. ~JJSJ > ■A . -LNu-'
