The World of Beer
I remember washing down Texas brisket with a fresh Celis beer in Austin. I remember cans of PBR out of the cooler, listening with buddies to CCR on the eight-track. I remember Scottish crofters singing mournful Gaelic songs in an ancient pub on the far edge of the Isle of Skye, pausing to sip from their pint of Tennents. And I remember sloshing down Tomales Bay oysters with Anchor Steams in San Francisco while seabirds wheeled and cried. I remember drinking chang beer in mud-walled Tibetan beer huts with fur-clad nomads. I remember Friday night Peronis in a Sienna pizza parlor as Italians began their weekend. And I remember, in the biergartens of Munich, drinking steins of lager served by women with biceps and pectorals that iron men could envy. Beer in giant steins, beer in sweating cans, beer in dusty bottles, beer in pitchers, beer in pints, beer in coy little Dutch glasses, beer in earthen cups. Beer. It’s an elemental word—like “mom” or “home” or “dog”—for an elemental thing, a concoction of fermented grains that seems to be synonymous with conviviality throughout the ages and around the globe. It’s a beverage that speaks as much about the place it’s brewed as it does about the people who share it. Can you visualize an Aussie without a depth charge of Fosters, or an Englishman without his pint? A German without a foaming brew, a Belgian without a glass of Trappist ale? It’s as good a way to get to know a place as any, and beer-lovers can advantageously commingle quaffing with their touring. Britain’s pubs are the living rooms of the nation, a way to experience a neighborhood at ground zero (and savor some of England’s endangered hand-pulled old flat ales in the process). A traveler would be remiss to skip the legendary beer halls of Munich, as much a part of the culture as Goethe and dirndls. There may be 50 startling fresh beers on tap in Amsterdam and Maastricht bars, crowded with lofty Dutchmen and lively Indonesians. Tipping a few Kirin with the Tokyo salary men at one of their after-work bars is one way to bridge a cultural gap. Hale and hearty Aussies in the pubs of Alice Springs are boisterously inclusive and Yankee mates are noisily welcome. And then there are the beer festivals around the globe. Munich, of course, hosts the granddaddy of them all—the Oktoberfest, a bacchanal of beer that transforms the staid Bavarian city into a two-week carnival of bibulous pleasure. The festival, which actually runs from mid-September till the first weekend in October, began in 1810 as a marriage celebration. Today, cries of “ein prosit” (a toast) thunder from the throats of the millions of party-goers jammed into the 10 cavernous tents erected by the German brew houses. In the course of the 16 days, the celebrators will down 10 million pints of beer, along with 600,000 sausages, 750,000 roast chickens, and 65,000 pork knuckles.
Counter-intuitively, the world’s second-largest Oktoberfest is held in the Gaucho Mountains of southern Brazil where the still-intact colonies of 19th-century German immigrants exuberantly cling to their traditions. For two weeks the old German-Brazilian town of Gramado is thronged with Brazilians forsaking samba and the beaches for oompah music and the polka, lubricated with steins of good Brazilian lager. There are, of course, beer festivals and celebrations closer to home. Milwaukee is the epicenter of German America, “the city beer made famous,” and boasts America’s oldest Oktoberfest. Each autumn hundreds of thousands stream to the banks of the Ohio to enjoy the Oktoberfest Zinzinnati, as the large German population pronounced the name of their city. Indeed, beer-drinking seems to have a universal conviviality. Tipping a few with the locals melts the formality of being the odd soul in town and brings out the best in folks. And, of course, you get to taste all of those great beers. As a Czech proverb goes, “A fine beer may be judged by only one sip, but it is better to be thoroughly sure.” Douglas Wissing is a cultural writer who lives in Bloomington, Indiana.
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by Douglas Wissing