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
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