OnTap Magazine

By comparison, the country that drinks the most beer per capita today is the Czech Republic at an average of nearly 189 litres of beer per person each year. The Czech Republic also scores highly on the world happiness index which may or may not be a coincidence. 05 Louis Pasteur is credited as the first person tounderstand the roleof yeast in fermentation, and he developed the process of pasteurisation to prevent the souring of beer and wine long before it was used on milk. That man had his priorities straight. 07 Humans have been brewing and drinking beer for over 13,000 years, and we still haven’t got bored of it. Although previous findings suggested that brewing dated back around 5,000 years, in 2018 Stanford University researchers unearthed evidence that our love of beer is way older when they discovered traces of fermented grains in a cave in Israel. 01 One of the oldest pieces of literature known to mankind is the Hymn to Ninkasi, dating back to the 18th century BC. Written as a poem or song, it is both an early beer recipe and an ode to the Sumerian goddess of beer, Ninkasi. Rumour has it Keith Richards wrote the accompanying music. 02 London was subject to a beer flood in 1814 when a large wooden vat of porter burst at the Horse Shoe Brewery, taking with it several other vats. Up to 1.5 million litres of beer are estimated to have been unleashed on the surrounding neighbourhood tragically resulting in the death of eight people. What a way to go. 09 03 The oldest commercial brewery in South Africa was the Mariendahl brewery, built by Jacob Letterstedt in 1859. A brewery has been operating at the site ever since and is now home to the SAB Newlands plant. 04 The average European in the middle- ages drank between 220 and 250 litres of beer a year. There wasn’t a whole lot to be happy about if you were alive in the Middle Ages, but I’m sure drinking almost a litre of beer every day helped. 08 The first beer to be canned was by the Gottfried Krueger Brewing Company of New Jersey in 1933. Almost 100 years later we are finally catching on to the fact that cans are a vastly superior packaging method to bottles. 06 Beer is easily the most popular alcoholic drink in the world, and the third most popular drink overall next to water and tea. I doubt anyone ever wrote an epic poem about tea or water though. 10 The idea for the Guinness book of records came from Sir Hugh Beaver – managing director of the Guinness brewery. In 1954 he commissioned a book of records to be compiled in order to get clear answers to those late-night pub debates. I’d argue that pub debates are not about correct answers and all we are left with now are idiotic records for the longest fingernails or tallest hat in the world. 12 The oldest continually operating brewery in the world is the Weihenstephan brewery in Bavaria. Originally theWeihenstephan Abbey, monks were granted the right to brew in 1040 and a brewery has existed on that site ever since – eventually becoming a commercial brewery in 1803. The oldest brewery claim is disputed, but what’s a little fib after a few pints… 11 BarackObamawas the first knownUS president to brew beer in the White House. In 2011 Obama purchased a homebrew kit and the White House staff whipped up a Honey Brown Ale using honey harvested from hives on the White House property. I’d suggest that we’d be better off if our Union Buildings were used as a brewery rather than the seat of government. 52 | Winter 2022 | ontapmag.co.za