Our favorites and a brief history

You'll notice as we go through this blog that Jeff and I have our favorite kind of beers.  So naturally, those are the ones we gravitate towards when we're sampling at breweries.  Interestingly enough, we rarely get samplers (though perhaps we should).  As Jeff once told me, "You know what you like, so just get that."  True, but I like a lot of kinds.  He does too, but his favorite is by far the IPA (India Pale Ale), followed probably by the Brown Ale.  Me, I like a good IPA, but I also enjoy Weizens, Pales and lately, Stouts and Porters. 

What is an India Pale Ale, Brown, Weizen, etc.?  Well, over the course of this blog, I plan to educate myself and others about beer styles.  Compared to many, I know a lot about beer.  Compared to the experts...I'm a beer neophyte.  As I am wont to do, I've been reading about beer so that I can talk the talk and not just walk the walk.  I bought Jeff a beer book for Christmas that I've almost finished reading; it's called Tasting Beer: An Insider's Guide to the World's Greatest Drink by Randy Mosher.  It's a LOT of information to swallow, so I plan to revisit it over the course of writing this blog. 

According to Mosher, "Beer is the great family of starch-based alcoholic beverages produeced without distillation."  Years and years ago (well, not ALL that many years ago), beer was the beverage of choice because of poor sanitation causing unsafe drinking water.  It has also been consumed because of its relative nutritional value.  Mosher contends that beer evolved at the same time as civilization because when people were crammed together in cities, societal tensions could be "eased by a social lubricant like beer."  Many ancient cultures even had gods and goddesses of beer (in fact, in ancient Sumeria, the brewers were women and therefore their deity of beer was a goddess, Ninkasi).  The people of the Middle East were particularly fond of beer (with the exception of the Semitic people).  The Greeks and Romans were not big fans, but northern Europeans and inhabitants of the British Isles have been drinking beer from the beginning (and its worth noting, in the Middle Ages in Europe, beer was also brewed by women).  There have been quite a lot of changes to beer and brewing over the years, but it's pretty cool to think that beer has been a part of society for....well, basically forever.

So there you have it.