Funny Beer Trivia

Many things can be preserved in alcohol.
Dignity is not one of
them.  Anon

• Ten Funny Fascinating Trivia and About Drinking in The USA
• Ten More Drinking and Beer Trivia
• Another Tranche of Funny Beer Trivia

Ten
Funny Fascinating Trivia and About Drinking in The USA

1. Christopher Columbus brought Sherry on his voyage
   to the New World.
2. Abraham Lincoln held a liquor license and
   operated several taverns.
3. The national anthem of United States "The Star Spangled
   Banner," was written to the tune of a drinking song.
4. Bourbon is the official spirit of the United
   States, by act of Congress.
5. Bourbon takes its name from Bourbon County in Kentucky.
6. The first recruiting station of the US Marines
   was a bar.
7. It is estimated that there are 49million bubbles in a
   bottle of champagne.
8. It is illegal to feed alcohol to Moose in Alaska
   and fish in Ohio.
9. Beer, selling in bottles, began in 1850 and in
   cans in 1935.
10. The USA has the highest minimum drinking age in
    the entire world.

Ten More Drinking and Beer Trivia

1. The world's oldest known recipe - is for beer!
2. Distilled spirits such as brandy, gin, rum,
   tequila, contain no carbohydrates, no fats and no cholesterol of any
   kind.
3. The word 'toast,' which means wishing good health
   originated in ancient Rome where a piece of toasted bread was literally
   dropped into wine.
4. Most people think that drinking alcohol raises
   the body temperature. Alcohol actually lowers the body temperature.
5. During the reign of William III, a garden
   fountain was once used as a giant punch bowl. The recipe included 560
   gallons of brandy, 1200 pounds of sugar, 25,000 lemons, 20 gallons of
   lime juice, and five pounds of nutmeg. The bartender rowed around in a
   small boat, filling up guests' punch cups.
6. Methyphobia is fear of alcohol.
7. In England, in days gone by, a whistle was baked
   into the rim or handle of ceramic cups used by pub patrons. When they
   wanted a refill, they used the whistle to get service. So when people
   went drinking, they would "wet their whistle."
8. It's impossible to create a beverage of over 18%
   alcohol by fermentation alone.
9. British men have been found twice as
   likely to know the price of their beer as their partner's bra size. A
   poll reported in Britain's Prima magazine found that 77% of males knew
   how much their beer costs but only 38% knew the correct size of their
   mate's bra.
10. Most vegetable and almost all fruits contain a
    small amount of alcohol in them.

Funny Beer Drinking Story

Beer Consumption Aids Dutch Independence: How the Dutch won their
independence from Spain

The Dutch drank their way to victory and independence from Spain in 1648
through the taxes they paid on beer, according to a report in the Journal of
American Association of Wine Economists Will and Guy can reveal.

Economists Koen Deconinck of the University of Leuven and Johann Swinnen
of Stanford University, USA, wrote that taxes on beer 'played a crucial role
in financing the revolt ... (and) were the single largest revenue source'
for the outnumbered and outgunned Dutch, who were facing 'the mightiest
empire on earth.' [Spain at this specific time].

Since beer was safer to drink than water, cheaper to buy than wine, and
not as easily spoiled as milk, it was the drink of choice for many Dutchmen.

In his book, "Beer in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance," Robert Unger
estimated that by the year 1600 per capita consumption of beer in Holland
ranged from 400 litres to 600 litres (106 gallons-159 gallons).

As the Dutch revolt dragged on for 80 years, taxes on beer were increased
until they became Holland's largest source of income. The levies were
collected through a method "resembling the VAT system in use in many
European countries ... (and it) allowed them to outlast the Spanish,"
Deconinck and Swinnen wrote.

At their peak, they estimated, war costs represented 11 per cent of Dutch
gross domestic product. To put this in perspective, we have discovered that
The Congressional Research Service estimated that at its peak, the Iraq war
represented 1 per cent of U.S. GDP.

Spain, financing its war with Holland largely with taxes on gold and
silver mined at colonies in the New World, spent roughly 6 per cent of its
GDP, Deconinck estimated.

Unable to pay its troops for months at a time and facing almost annual
mutinies, Spain signed the Treaty of Munster in 1648, officially recognizing
the Dutch Republic and ceding the land north of Flanders to the rebels. The
Dutch were also allowed to keep their overseas possessions and their
monopoly over the East Indies trade, which they acquired during the revolt.

The treaty set the boundaries that still divide Belgium from the
Netherlands.
An interesting and remarkable beer drinking story.

Another Tranche of Funny Beer Trivia

• In English pubs, ale is
  ordered by pints and quarts. So in old England, when customers got
  unruly, the bartender would yell at them to:
  Mind their own pints and
  quarts and settle down.  This is where we get the phrase: 'mind your P's and
  Q's'.
• The three most common pub
  names are in the UK are: The Red Lion; The Crown; The Royal Oak. It is a
  sad fact, say Will and Guy, that as pubs are taken over more and more by
  the conglomerates that pub signs are diminishing and pubs are getting
  generic names like 'The Slug and Lettuce' which is a large chain.
• In 1740 Admiral Vernon of the British fleet decided to water down the
  navy's rum. Needless to say, the sailors weren't too pleased and called
  Admiral Vernon, Old Grog, after the stiff wool *grogram coats he wore.
  The term 'grog' soon began to mean the watered down drink itself. When
  you were drunk on this grog, you were 'groggy', a word still in use
  today.* Grogram: A
  coarse, often stiffened fabric made of silk, mohair, wool, or a blend of
  them.
• A beer lover or enthusiast is called a cerevisaphile.
• Collect beer
  mats is called tegestology.
• The oldest brewery in the United States is supposedly Yuengling in
  Pottsville, Pennsylvania - founded in 1829.
• Beer Ads on television started in the 1940s.  One of the
  first cheeky / funny beer ads was Carling's: 'Hey Mabel--Black
  Label'.  The ad ran for 20 years from 1951 at the end of the
  advert the barmaid winked at the audience as she responded to: 'Hey
  Mabel--Black Label'.
• The smallest pub in Britain is claimed
  by three pubs: The Nutshell, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk; The Lakeside Inn,
  Southport, Merseyside; The Smiths Arms, Godmanstone, Dorset.
• In the
  Czech Republic, beer is cheaper than Coca Cola, so we are led to believe.
• In Norse mythology, a warrior who died in battle would go to
  Valhalla and be entitled to drink as much beer as he desired.
• The longest pub name in the UK is
  'The Old Thirteenth Cheshire Astley Volunteer Rifleman Corps Inn',
  Stalybridge, Manchester.
• The
  highest pub in Britain is Tan Hill Inn, North Yorkshire at 1,732 feet
  above sea level.
• There is a disagreement as to which is the oldest
  pub in Britain. It is between these 3:1) Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem, Nottingham
  1189
  2) The Old Ferry Boat , St Ives, Cambridgeshire possibly 10th
  century
  3) Ye Olde Fighting Cocks, St Albans possibly 11th century.
• Here is the pub sign to the Barrel O'Beer pub which can be
  found in the town of Beer in Devon, England. Cheers!
  
• Before the invention of thermometers, the
  brewer tested the *wort by placing his thumb in it. When he could
  reliably place his thumb in the wort without having to remove it because
  of the heat, the wort was cool enough to pitch the yeast. Hence tone
  reason for the expression 'rule of thumb'.*Wort is the liquid extracted from the mashing process during the
  brewing of beer or whisky. Wort contains the sugars that will be
  fermented by the brewing yeast to produce alcohol.

Two Items of Food Beer Trivia

Beer Ravioli: Tasty

Beer loving Mark Zable creates the snack by putting beer inside dough and
dunking it in hot oil for just 20 seconds.

This means that when diners bite into the pretzel-like dough it mixes
with the beer in what is claimed to be a delicious taste sensation. Yummy
declares Will.

Mr Zable said it had taken him three years to concoct the cooking method
and he refused to reveal to us if any secret recipes were involved.

His deep-fried beer will be officially introduced in September 2010; and
the Texas Alcoholic Commission has said people need to be aged 21 to buy it.

Mr Zable originally used Guinness in the ravioli type pasta but has said
he may switch to paler ale. He commented to Will and Guy, 'Nobody has been
able to fry a liquid before. It tastes like you took a bite of hot pretzel
dough and then took a drink of beer.'

We learned that Mr Zable has previously invented dishes including
chocolate-covered strawberry waffle balls and jalapeño corndog shrimps.
Tasty stuff says Guy.

For Desert: Beer Trifle!

McVeigh grabs a clutch of beers from an ice bucket in the kitchen. He
enjoys "weaving extreme beers" into the picnic-style meal, opening with Oude
Geuze Boon, a Belgian Lambic beer produced by spontaneous fermentation - the
closest a beer comes to champagne, according to McVeigh. A liquoricey Great
Divide Oak Aged Yeti Imperial Stout (9.5 per cent) and Sierra Nevada
Southern Hemisphere Harvest Ale (6.7 per cent) follow.

There's even a "beer" eau de vie to match the pudding: a clear,
hop-distilled Bertrand Fleur de Biere (40 per cent), which is poured
reverentially into thimble-sized glasses as Harris kneels to serve the
magnificent trifle from a huge conical glass bowl. The children down
playthings and form a disorderly queue, bowls in outstretched hands. It's a
treasure trove of a dessert that has guests guessing the ingredients:
white-wine vanilla sauce, roasted apricots, red fruit jellies, "beer" and
pink praline sprinkles.

Guy has yet to master these recipes, 'bur ist fun twying! ......'

Footnote:
Please send us your funny beer trivia.