But while beer’s popularity waned in the Middle East, it was gaining ground in northern Europe. People there somehow figured out brewing (perhaps via another soggy-bread epiphany) by at least 800 B.C., based on beer residues in a Celtic amphora found in modern Bavaria. Dornbusch says the Romans were the first to invent the modern brewing process—involving malting and mashing—based on the ruins of a 179 A.D. brewery discovered in a Roman settlement near what is now Regensburg, Germany.

Link | Image: US National Archives

True to form, Bud drinkers are sensible, grounded and practical. They are the polar opposite of daydreamers and don’t easily get carried away. These beer drinkers also don’t like authority—can anyone say union?—and are emotionally steady people who live in the here and now. However, what may be a bit surprising is that people who prefer Bud can also be very spontaneous and tend not to do much advance planning.

Budweiser drinkers are 42% more likely to drive a truck than the average person, 68% more likely to choose a credit card with flexible payment terms and 42% more likely to use breath-freshening strips every day.

Link via The Presurfer | Photo: U.S. General Services Administration

Is that an elegant wine glass or a manly beer stein? Actually, it’s both! Behold the Winestein, a double-walled beer mug with an internal cavity shaped just like an elegant wine stem.

You’ve only got a few more days till the end of Oktoberfest … but if you think about it, every day can be just like Oktoberfest if you have this puppy! From the Neatorama Shop: Link

10. Using Cabbage in Place of Seaweed

Says a former maître d’ at an expensive Chinese restaurant known for its celebrity clientele: "The owner figured his customers knew nothing about Chinese food (he was right) and was a genius at saving money. A specialty supplier used to provide edible seaweed for the popular seaweed appetizer, but when that got too expensive the boss began experimenting.

"The ’seaweed’ on the menu ended up becoming thin strips of cabbage leaf, deep-fried, and then rolled in equal amounts of salt and sugar. It’s possible even cardboard would taste good if prepared like that, but the dish remained a bestseller."

7. Topping Pitchers of Beer with Seltzer Water

Don’t think the fiddling is restricted to top-shelf liquors, either. "In sports bars that sell pitchers of beers, the thing to do is to top the pitchers off with seltzer after the table has ordered like the third one," a source says. "The drunker the guys, the more seltzer they get." [...]

4. Serving Rotten Meat

A steakhouse employee in New York says that sometimes not all the meat is as fresh as it should be. "It’s an old trick to keep the steak that’s past its prime and wait until somebody orders it well done or medium-well," the insider says. "The more you cook the meat, the more you disguise its flavor. When I’m eating out I never order anything higher than medium rare, because I know how the kitchen gets rid of bad meat."

Link

Care to share your own food service experience?

The amount of alcohol consumed appears to be important – too little and there is no effect, too much and the beneficial effects are lost, studies on animals suggest.

Experts believe the right dose of alcohol, however, stops the cascade of swelling, inflammation and further destruction of brain cells, known as secondary brain injury.

The latest work, based on more than 38,000 moderate-to-severe head trauma patients, is the largest yet to look at the effects of alcohol on brain injury survival.

This led to an intriguing proposal of giving alcohol to those who just suffered brain injury – call it “booze therapy,” if you will: Link

“You wouldn’t even need to wash the beer off, it’s a fabric that dries immediately,” he told SPIEGEL ONLINE. The shorts look remarkably like the real thing, with elaborately embroidered deer heads, a front bib and traditional side stitching. They retail at €79, a fraction of the cost of the leather alternative.Alpine traditionalists who last year complained about the growing trend towards cheap lederhosen imported from Asia may cry heresy at the sight of Kolb’s lederhosen. After all, they’re manufactured in China and don’t contain a scrap of leather.

But Kolb insists he is helping to introduce Alpine traditions to younger generations, and is even exporting the region’s folk culture to a global audience.

Link -via Metafilter

Many studies have tried to link health benefits to moderate alcohol consumption.  Loss of bone density is a problem in women as they age, but beer has come to the rescue!

The study included surveys of women at various stages in life and found that those who regularly drank beer had higher bone density.

Fraternities across the country will surely try to promote kegs of beer as being good for you!

Scientists at the University of Extremadura in Caceres, Spain, conducted a study involving 1,697 healthy women, 811 of whom were postmenopausal while a further 176 were going through the menopause.

Participants were required to complete questionnaires, providing information on their smoking habits, as well as their levels of alcohol, caffeine and nutrient consumption.

The women also agreed to undergo ultrasound scans so that the density of their bones could be assessed.

The researchers found that participants who reported drinking beer on a regular basis tended to have greater bone density than those who did not drink beer or who tended to consume wine.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by OddNumber.

The Arkeg combines two necessities of life: beer and arcade games. For a mere $4,000, you can have a chilled 5-gallon keg, a 24-inch screen, and a console loaded with 104 classic video games. It also comes with a slide-out keyboard and two USB ports.

Now if only some clever inventor could combine it with the automatic pancake-making machine.

Link via DVICE

Drinking lager does not yield the same benefits, experts from University of Wisconsin told a conference in the US.

Guinness were told to stop using the slogan decades ago – and the firm still makes no health claims for the drink.

The Wisconsin team tested the health-giving properties of stout against lager by giving it to dogs who had narrowed arteries similar to those in heart disease.

They found that those given the Guinness had reduced clotting activity in their blood, but not those given lager.

Link (Image: spleeney [Flickr])

Previously on Neatorama: Stories Behind 7 Famous Beer Logos

The next time you open a bottle of beer, don't just chug the brew - take a look at the logo on the label. Ever wonder who St. Pauli Girl actually is? Or why there's the mysterious number "33" on Rolling Rock beer bottles? Read on. Neatorama takes a look at the Stories Behind 7 Famous Beer Logos:

St. Pauli Girl: Probably Not Just a Waitress

Photo: safoocat [Flickr]

What's not to like about the St. Pauli Girl? She's blonde, big bosomed, and brings us big frothy mugs of beer! But what most people don't realize is that she's not exactly just a waitress. Yep, St. Pauli is the famous red light district of Hamburg, Germany.

In 1977, St. Pauli Girl Beer started to choose a spokesmodel to represent the beer brand and appear on the popular St. Pauli Girl poster. In 1999, they started using Playboy magazine playmates as the girl (the 2008 St. Pauli Girl is Irina Voronina). Here's the gallery of St. Pauli Girls from 1977 to 2007: Link

Pabst Blue Ribbon

This one's pretty straightforward. PBR was originally named Best Select, then Pabst Select and finally Pabst Blue Ribbon, named because the practice of tying blue ribbons around the beer bottleneck from 1882 until 1916.

Pabst advertisement from 1911 (Source)

Rolling Rock 33

The mysterious '33' has been on the label of Rolling Rock since the Latrobe Brewing Company brewed its first batch in 1939, but what does it actually stand for? Theories about the origin of the cryptic '33', some undoubtedly hatched in bar arguments, range from the year 1933 (the year Prohibition was repealed), how many steps it took to walk from the brewmaster's office to the brewing floor, the number of the racing horse on the label, and even the highest level of Freemasonry (33rd degree).

According to James Tito, the former CEO of Latrobe Brewing, the number '33' may actually be an accident. When the founders of the company came up with the slogan

Rolling Rock - From the glass lined tanks of Old Latrobe, we tender this premium beer for your enjoyment as a tribute to your good taste. It comes from the mountain springs to you.

someone wrote '33' at the end to indicate the number of words, but the bottle printer mistakenly incorporated it into the label graphic. They decided to keep the 33 instead of having to scrap and replace the bottles. Even though the slogan had been changed several times in the history of Rolling Rock, the company had made sure to use the same number of words. (Source - see argument against this reasoning within)

(Image: Gravy Bread)

Heineken: the Friendly 'e'

The logo of Heineken is rather simple: it consists of the five-pointed red star and the word "Heineken" in green, but there's something remarkable about it: Alfred Henry (Freddy) Heineken, the grandson of the founder of the company, Gerard Heineken, helped develop the company's own typeface (common today, but rare back then). He insisted that the 'e' in the logo should look friendlier. Indeed, the three letters 'e' in the logo are slightly tilted backwards to make it seem that they are smiling.

Guinness: Harp of Brian Boru

Arthur Guinness brewed his first stout in 1759, it took Guinness over 100 years later to select its logo - the harp of Brian Boru - a gaelic harp in Ireland's heraldic emblem and a symbol of Irish unity, not to mention the Euro coin. By the way, Ireland is the only country in the world with a musical instrument as a national emblem.

Brian Boru was the king of Ireland that ruled from 1002 to 1014 and protected and/or freed - depending on who you ask - the Irish people from the Vikings. The harp named after him, however, was actually much, much older. According to Celtic myth, the gaelic harp was owned by the Dagda, a king/god/father-figure, that can summon the seasons.

There's actually a real instrument named the harp of Brian Boru. It's one of three surviving medieval harps dating from the 14th or 15th century and is on display at Trinity College Dublin.

By the way, if you are named O'Brien or O'Brian, then you're a descendant of King Brian Boru - so a toast (Guinness, of course) is in order!

Stella Artois: the Horn

Stella Artois was launched as a Christmas beer in 1926 - its name is a combination of the latin word for "star" and Sebastian Artois, a brewmaster in the Den Hoorn Brewery (founded 1366) in Louvain, Belgium.

The logo of Stella Artois beer reflects the beer's origin - Den Hoorn is Dutch for "The Horn," and the now-defunct brewery lives on as the horn prominently displayed on the top of the label of every bottle of Stella Artois beer. The fancy frame around the name is also in the style of Flemish architecture in the city.

Bass Red Triangle

(L) Bass & Co's Pale Ale, the very first trademark registered in the UK (1876) at the Intellectual Property Office; (R) current logo

Bass Pale Ale's Red Triangle logo may be simple, but it's pretty darned special: it's the very first trademark registered in Britain. When trademark registration law took effect on January 1, 1876, a Bass employee was sent to wait overnight outside the registrar's office in order to be the first in line to register a trademark the next morning. Bass & Co. Brewery got the first two trademarks, the first being the Bass Red Triangle for their pale ale and the second the Bass Red Diamond for their strong ale.

Bass is also the most frequently featured beer in fine arts. Bottles of Bass beer can be seen in Manet's 1882 painting Bar at the Folies-Bergère.

Bar in den Folies-Bergère by Edouard Manet (1882)

Bonus: Old Milwaukee's Swedish Bikini Team

Okay, so this isn't exactly about beer logos - but brewers often advertise their beers in outrageous manners, and there's nothing quite as outrageous as the notorious Old Milwaukee's Swedish Bikini Team:

[YouTube Link]

Ironically, there's nothing Swedish about the Swedish Bikini Team - the women were all played by American actresses wearing platinum blonde wigs!

______

Obviously we haven't talked about many other beer logos. So if your favorite beer isn't listed here, why not tell us all about it in the comment section?

______

If you like the article above, take a look at the rest of Neatorama's Logo series:

- Evolution of Tech Logos
- Evolution of Car Logos
- Stories Behind 10 Famous Food Logos
- Stories Behind Hollywood Studio Logos

Scott Cote, 22, remained in jail Monday afternoon after he allegedly broke into a man’s Cleftstone Road home and woke him up around 4 a.m. Monday, police wrote in a report about the incident. The homeowner, after waking up to find Cote in his bedroom, convinced Cote to leave by giving him a nonalcoholic beer, police indicated.

“[The resident] gave suspect a [nonalcoholic] beer to bribe him to leave the residence,” the police report said.

Bill Trotter of the Bangor Daily News has the story: Link

North Korea is world-renowned for its crippling poverty, saber rattling and wanton firing of missiles left, right and center. It is also known for its strict TV practices where all televisions are made to tune only to state run stations and programs. As a staunchly communist nation commercialism is very rare or non-existent. So you could imagine that it was a bit of surprise for both North Korean viewers and for many groups who keep an eye on what is happening in that country to see a rare site sight…an advert for beer!

I would love to have a translation of what the advert claims as the advert itself is just trippy and I suppose that the claims regarding the beers “stress reducing” abilities are too.

Men at St Stephen’s church in Barbourne, Worcester, will be handed bottles of beer by children during the service. A prayer will be said for the fathers before the gifts are distributed.

The Ven Roger Morris, archdeacon of Worcester, who will be leading the service at St Stephen’s today, said that it was a practical way of sending a message to fathers.

“I don’t see any other time that we can stop and remember fathers, and this is a gesture saying ‘Here’s something that will bless you,’” he said.

“Posies of flowers are given to mums on Mothering Sunday and we wanted to give a laddish, blokeish gift to the men. A bottle of beer hits the mark. The whole of life is to be celebrated in church.”

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by dradell.

American Can Co. began experimenting with canned beer in 1931, as it anticipated the end of Prohibition. Krueger’s Special Beer was the first commercially packaged beer in a can. The very first canned beer was sold in Richmond, Virginia in 1935. Early on, manufacturers were mostly concerned with creating a beer can that could hold up to the heat and pressure of the pasteurization process without bursting or later leaking on the store shelves. Style and branding were considered, but were not a top priority in the beginning. Pabst was the first major brewer to offer beer in a can.

Link

(Photo: Rustycans, who has a great many more collections of, well, rusty beer cans!)

Half a glass of wine a day may add five years to your life, a new study suggests. Drink beer, and you’ll live only 2 1/2 years longer.

Dutch researchers followed 1,373 men for more than four decades, noting their eating and drinking habits. Men who had about 20 grams of alcohol daily — equivalent to a half a glass of wine — had 2 1/2 years added to their life expectancy at age 50, compared with men who didn’t drink at all, according to the research published today in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health. Men who consumed only wine had twice as much added longevity.

Link via Alphecca

Your assignment: in the comments, devise rules for a Neatorama-themed drinking game.

Image via flickr user rpeschetz

In the Fall of 1814, a tidal wave of beer washed down the streets of London after the world’s biggest beer barrel ruptured. Apart from the brewer’s shattered ego, the wave of beer killed 9 (one due to alcohol poisoning) and left several buildings collapsed:

This peculiar history begins with a party at the Meux’s Brewery where a grand dinner had been organized to celebrate the construction of a giant vat capable of holding 3555 barrels – 610,000 litres – of beer. Being 22 feet tall and having a diameter of 60 feet the vat was in fact so large that the dinner was celebrated within the vat itself which held a staggering 200 guests, the goal being to outdo a competitor who constructed a vat in which he managed to fit 100 guests.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Maestor.

You’re six days into a 2 month expedition, and if you were lucky enough to not be on a dry ship, it’s de facto dry by now anyway. You’re eying the ethanol stores, the crew is eying each other, and all hell will break loose if y’all don’t get some sweet water soon. This is no time for artistry.

This is not, as a rule, a terribly good beer (though, with a good brewmaster on board, it can be). This is a beer to pass the time. I can guarantee that if you are careful, it will be at least as good as the cheapest commercial alternative.

A complete list of ingredients and instructions are included. Your results may vary. Link -via Terra Sigillata

If you like beer, but hate wimpy soaps, check this out: Beer Soap by etsy sellers Jamin and Zaidat. Sadly, the soap doesn’t actually smell like beer …

No longer can the eau de booze only be achieved by the partying set. The Beer Soap Company has turned an Etsy page into a one-stop shopping experience for those who prefer their bar soap to be made of a favorite brew. Of course, a little shea butter and sunflower oil make the soap slightly more palatable, but the opportunity still remains to literally say you doused yourself in a booze bath.

Link – via urlesque

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by thatguy455.

In the early 90s, Old Milwaukee decided to compete with the imports by inventing the Old Milwaukee Swedish Bikini Team. The ad features a bunch of guys out fishing and being manly men and they think that it just can’t get any better. And then, of course, the Swedish Bikini Team shows up wearing spandex, cans and six-packs of Old Milwaukee parachute in, and the camera pans in on lots of jiggling boobs.

The ad triggered a sexual harassment suit by five members of the Stroh Brewery who said that the ads perpetuated an environment of verbal and physical abuse that had been going on since the mid 80s anyway. You can tell it really scared the company – shortly thereafter, the “bikini team” was featured in Playboy For your viewing pleasure…

Miller “Beachin’ Times”

In 1989, Miller ruffled more than a few feathers with a 16-page pamphlet distributed in 55 college newspapers across the country. Called “Beachin’ Times,” it instructed college students on how to get drunk and pick up babes. One such gem includes a piece on “Lite Beer Pro Beach Volleyball” which asked readers to “Name something you can dink, bump, and poke. Hint – it’s not a babe.” You can tell it was 1989 because the pamphlet is liberally peppered with “babe” references – another section was called “Four Sure-Fire Ways to Scam Babes.” I don’t know about you guys, but I’m totally hearing Jeff Spicoli in my head. Even college students were offended – groups of students at two universities organized protests and threatened to boycott Miller, which was enough to scare the company into an apology. They sent letters with the headline “We Blew It” to all 55 student newspapers the pamphlet had appeared in. It didn’t impress some people, though – the University of Iowa’s Daily Iowan ran an opinion column that compared the apology to after-the-fact birth control – “It might make you feel better, but it doesn’t do a damn bit of good.”

Grain Belt “Girl in the Barley”

Looks pretty tame, right? But when this ad was first published, complaints rolled in by the barrel-ful. The look on the girl in the barley’s face was apparently much too suggestive for the liking of the general public, because the Minneapolis Brewing Company received so many letters that they recalled the posters as so not to offend any more potential customers. Photo from Land of Amber Waters by Doug Hoverson.

Rolling Rock “Beer Ape”

This is actually not a controversial ad, but Rolling Rock wanted you to think it was. I watched the You Tube video and wondered what people found so offensive about it – girls in bikinis? Because there’s much more scantily-clad women on Rock of Love every week (trust me, as an avid viewer, I know). But that was all just part of the scam. A little more digging revealed that Rolling Rock actually released “Beer Ape” as a viral Internet campaign. They put up billboards and other ads, apologizing to anyone who was “offended” by the campaign… the campaign that never actually aired anywhere except YouTube. Of course, this resulted in people flocking to YouTube to see what this offensive commercial was all about. Kind of genius… kind of underhanded and sneaky. Check it out for yourself:

Budweiser Fish Controversy

Photo from World News’ 25 Most Controversial Ads

Miller Lite “Catfight”

If you’re of a certain age, you probably remember Miller Lite’s “Catfight” ad. It ran in 2002 and showed two women getting in an out-and-out down-and-dirty catfight over whether Miller Lite tasted great or was less filling… you know the schtick. They end up tearing off each other’s clothes, wrestling into a public fountain and eventually tear it up in a pool of cement. At the end of the ad, we see that the whole thing was really just the fantasy of two guys sitting at a bar.

Miller contends that they were mocking the stereotypical male mentality, but that didn’t really hold water with the hundreds of people who called or wrote to complain. Miller made it a point of pointing out that the majority of people who complained were women over the age of 40 who had children… I find the fact that they pointed this out more offensive than the actual commercial, personally. Here it is in all its racy glory:

Link via Slashfood

By popular request, here are the neatolicious fun facts for ... beer:

1. Beer is old stuff: Recipe found in 4,000-year-old Sumerian tablet

The first references to beer dates to as early as 6,000 BC. The very first recipe for beer is found on a 4,000-year-old Sumerian tablet containing the Hymn to Ninkasi, a prayer to the goddess of brewing. It tells how to brew beer from barley:

The filtering vat, which makes
a pleasant sound,
You place appropriately on [top of]
a large collector vat.
Ninkasi, the filtering vat,
which makes a pleasant sound,
You place appropriately on [top of]
a large collector vat.

If you're curious as to how the world's oldest beer tastes like, the Anchor Brewing Company produced a limited edition beer (under the Ninkasi label) based on the recipe.

2. Beer is not mentioned in the bible

Wine was mentioned - many times, but not beer. Instead, the Bible mentioned "strong drink," which some translated as fermented beverage made from grain (i.e. beer). (Source)

3. The Mayflower landed at Plymouth Rock Because It Ran Out of Beer
The Mayflower was supposed to sail to the mouth of the Hudson River, near present-day New York City - but the Pilgrims decided to head to Plymouth Bay because they were low on beer.

Colonists William Bradford and Edward Winslow wrote this first-hand account: "We could not now take time for further search or consideration, our victuals being much spent, especially our beer ..."

Why did the ship carry beer? It's because unlike water, beer don't go bad on long ocean voyages - but lest you think the shipmates were all plastered all the time, the type of beer they carried was "ship's beer," which wasn't very alcoholic. (Source: The Straight Dope by Cecil Adams - though consider this rebuttal by Bob Skilnik, author of Beer & Food: An American History)

4. World's Strongest Beer: Sam Adams Utopias MMII

The strongest beer in the world was the Sam Adams Utopias MMII, a limited-run (only 3,000 bottles were made) production by Boston Beer Co. It weighs in at 24 percent alcohol by volume in a mini, old-school, copper-brewing kettles. If you want to get one, be prepared to shell out at least $100.

For flavors, aroma and stability. Hop is the flower of the hop vine (a cousin of the hemp, actually).

Early beers didn't use hops - instead, they were flavored with wild rosemary, coriander, ginger, anise seed, juniper berries and even wood bark.

Hop was used as flavorings as early as 400 BC by captive Jews in Babylon, but historians think that the real reason it was used as additive was for its antiseptic properties. By adding hops, brewers didn't have to have high alcohol content to prevent spoilage. This meant less grains and therefore more profit. (Source)

6. Beer in a Bag

Photo: indy2kro [Flickr] - not sure if this is the original photographer

Quick - how many different ways of transporting beer can you think of? Bottles, glass, cans and kegs? You've missed one: in China, you can buy beer in a plastic bag!

7. St. Arnold: Patron Saint of Brewing

In the 11th century, Arnold of Soissons, a bishop in the Benedictine St. Medard's Abbey in Soissons, France, began to brew beer.

He encouraged the locals to drink beer instead of water for its health benefits (beer was healthier than water mainly because it was boiled and thus sterilized from pathogens). No wonder they made him a saint!

8. How do you say Beer in Zulu?

Utshwala.

This website will help: here's how to say Beer in 78 Languages. Or if you want to order a beer in 50 languages.

9. "Beer is living proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy" That's what Benjamin Franklin said, anyhow.

That was fun - but we barely scratched the potential with beer. Got any trivia about beer? Add them to the comment! And what should we do for "C" (no cats, mmmkay?)

Are you tired of recycling without any real pay off? Perhaps you just need a new method of recycling. The Tin Can Robot kit can turn any old 12 ounce beverage can into an awesomely adorable robot. I don’t know about you, but as soon as I’m done with my 6 pack of Dr. Peppers, I’ll soon have a new collection of best friends.

Link

300ml equals 150cal, according to the mug.

Link

How much would you pay for an exceptional brew? $10 a six-pack? $20 a six-pack? How about $5 an ounce?

That’s the minimum going rate for Boston Beer’s Samuel Adams Utopias, which retails starting at $120 per 24-ounce bottle.

The country’s most expensive beer is also the strongest. The 2007 edition of the vintage-dated biennial release clocks in at 27 percent alcohol by volume, more than five times the proof of the average American golden lager.

The Utopias container, a ceramic bottle molded to resemble a brew kettle, is a collectible in and of itself. The copper-colored liquid inside hasn’t a bubble of carbonation. The first sensations are a viscous mouth feel and a sweet sherrylike flavor with nuances of toffee and maple. There are notes of vanilla and plum and a hint of charred wood. A long, lingering alcohol burn, more reminiscent of a cognac or brandy than a beer, is followed by a sweet burned-caramel aftertaste.

Via: Sun-Sentinel