Brewer - Brewology : An Illustrated Dictionary for Beer Lovers

Copyright 2015 by Mark Brewer

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

Cover design by Mark Brewer

Print ISBN: 978-1-63220-659-6

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-63220-889-7

Printed in China

The only thing I love more than drinking a craft beer, is sharing one with my family and friends. Thank you for your love and support.

Mark xo

Foreword

A Toast! To Mark Brewer! Creative Genius, Beer Drinker! And not necessarily in that order!

When Mark asked me to write a foreword to Brewology , I jumped at the chance. Not because of my well-known love of beer, but because of my admiration and love for the author. I consider Mark to be my second son. I have known Mark since he was about 15.

I remember well the day he came by my Connecticut studio with about 20 pounds of cartoon sketches under his arm, and big dreams in his head. I remember I looked through his artwork and sent him home with about a month's worth of art lessons from me as homework. I watched him walk out my studio door with the idea I would never see him again. After all, I had given assignments like this to many aspiring artists who wished to work with me, and the vast majority just quit and never did the work and never got back in touch. I was a pretty tough teacher. After all, cartooning is a pretty tough business.

So imagine my surprise when this kid showed up at my door with a month's worth of drawing lessons done in a week! While still going to school full-time! I knew right then that Mark Brewer was special and that he wanted a career in cartooning and humorous illustration. He had it . The desire. That feeling inside you that turns dreams into reality. That need down deep that makes wanting to draw and write and entertain people your oxygen.

I took Mark on as a student at my studio, giving him art lessons and a small salary in return for him sweeping and cleaning the studio, running errands, and, if there was time left in the day, possibly helping on backgrounds and erasing one of the many projects we had goingfrom my Mudpie and Tiny Dinos children's books, to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, to Disney, to Muppet Babies. Within two weeks, Mark was working on the Disney stuff right alongside me and my veteran staff artists!

I never in my life had seen, and still have not seen after all these years, a more driven, hard-working, creative force of nature than Mark Brewer! Mark has endless talentthat is for surebut when you combine that talent with his drive and never quit attitude and a pure love of cartooning, you have the perfect recipe for success!

Mark and I went on to work on many wonderful projects together through those early years of his career, and, yes, we shared a good many beers. We both also play guitar and sing and write country music, so there have been many a beer sung about as well!

I truly have loved reading this new book of Marks that you hold in one hand, with your brew of choice in a frosty mug in the other! So, while we all hoist a cold one, let me make a toast! To Mark Brewer! Cartoonist, illustrator, country singer, and master of brewology! Long may you rock!

Oh, and Mark? The bar tab is on you this time.

Guy Gilchrist

A BRIEF HISTORY OF BEER
(A true gift from the gods)

Beer is one of the oldest beverages known to man... and woman! In fact, women were the first brewers, since one of their primary responsibilities involved cooking. Years ago beer was considered a food as well as a drink. Beer provided many of the calories needed for ones daily diet. Dating back all the way to the fifth millennium BC, beer was recorded by the Ancient Egyptian scribes, who also created an extra hieroglyph specifically for brewer. Historians tell us that beer was used as a method to compensate laborers who were building the pyramids. And would you believe that if an Egyptian man offered a woman a sip of his brew and she accepted, they were betrothed? Try that move on a woman today, and youre lucky to get out of the situation with only a few bruises. My question is how did these marriages fare in the years to follow, after the women graduated from sips to gulps to eventually handing him back an empty mug?

It has been said that Noah requested beer on his ark, and around 4300 BC the Babylonians recorded nearly twenty different types of beer recipes on clay tablets. Back then, water was not always clean and most certainly not as filtered as it is now. Some of it contained bacteria and parasites, which caused people to get sick. Many even died from drinking water. But you wouldnt die if you drank beer! Since the beer brewing process requires the water to be boiled, beer was a pure drink. It was powerful enough to be used for medicinal purposes, proper enough to be presented as a gift to the Egyptian Pharaohs, and great enough to be sacrificed to the gods. Early civilizations believed the altering effects that beer had on them were supernatural. Intoxication was purely divine, and the drink as a whole was considered a gift from the gods. Many of us still believe this today!

Egyptians produced beer by fermenting bread or grain, and added dates to improve the taste. It was cloudy and completely unfiltered. Because there were no natural preservatives used in the process, beer had a short shelf life. While celebrating together, early cultures often drank beer from a communal bowl using reed straws to avoid ingesting the grain hulls and other sediment in the brew.

With the rise of Christianity and the cultivation of barley came a more mature brewing process. Christian monks played an important role in the production of beer as they used their knowledge of agriculture and science to refine the brewing process. Not only did they brew beer for trading purposes, but monks also provided beer to visiting travelers and offered their breweries for shelter. Consequently, there are a number of Christian saints who are patrons of brewing, including Saint Augustine of Hippo, Saint Luke the Evangelist, and Saint Nicholas, among others.

Prior to brewers using hops to preserve beer, bark or leaves were used. Gruit, which is a combination of herbs and spices, was used sometime after bark and leaves to flavor and preserve beer. Although some forms of gruit still exist today, it was never an equal match for the preservative that hops is. The first recorded use of hops was in 1079 in Germany. By the thirteenth century, hops began to be more commonly used than gruit to flavor and preserve beer. Soon after, hops would become the most widespread ingredient used as a preservative. In 1516, German brewers from Bavaria enacted the Reinheitsgebot purity law, which stated that only water, malted barley, and hops (this was before yeast was understood) were permitted to be used in the brewing process. This law not only assured local beer drinkers and consumers all around the world that German beers were of the highest quality; it also gave Germany a reputation for a brewing craftsmanship that exists to this day. The world-famous Oktoberfest fair, held in Munich each September since 1810, still allows only beer that has been brewed under the Reinheitsgebot standard to be served.