Agrandir

Agrandir

From the barren sands of the Gobi desert to the bustling pubs lined up along Madrid's Gran Via Avenue and the lukewarm Caribbean beaches, suds quench the thirst of laborers and doctors alike, philanthropists and even tyrants as the sovereign drink that subsides people from every nook and cranny in the whole wide world.

It doesn't matter how varied the tastes of those who have made it their drink of choice through the years really are. Beer brings delight; no matter whether it's light or dark, whether it's mild or strong, without booze or with a kick in it. It always makes people claim there's nothing better than a schooner of icy beer. This is likely the most shared opinion since the very dawn of the Christian Era when beer-brewing was widespread all over northern Europe.

There's no doubt this universal drink always caught on since way back in its remotest origins, probably during the reign of pharaohs in ancient Egypt.

Researchers refer to scrolls inked in the year 1800 BC, featuring the details for making a certain kind of drink out of barley fermentation sped up by wild yeast. According to some estimates, barley was first grown circa the year 10,000 BC in some Middle East regions.

The amount of barley and wild yeast described in the Egyptian scrolls, were to be mixed with water in a container that was then buried for a period of time. Maybe the growing of that grain somehow forced primitive populations to quit their nomad-like existence and settle down to take care of their farmlands all year long and yield good crops.

Hops are added in the 7th century The big difference in beer-brewing was made in the 7th century AD with the addition of hops, common name of an Euro-Asian plant of rough stems, heart-shaped leaves and small flowers. When ripe, hops produces pineapple-like dry fruits covered by powder-thin yellow pollen that give beer its peculiar aroma and sour touch.

Like other drinks made out of cereals, beer is the resulting nice-tasting juice of a fermentation process that invariably combines water, hops and barley –the latter is sometimes replaced by corn, rice or sugar. The outcome of the brewing process is a highly nutritious mass. Beer yeast is well known for its high concentration of vitamins, especially those from the B complex.

Masterful beer-makers confess the process of brewing this kind of beverage starts out with the selection of the barley or the combination of several cereals to be used. Beer can be made our of wheat, corn or rice in a proportion of up to one third of the total volume, and the addition in part of toasted barley. These broths, called white beer or weizenbier, are light in flavor and a tad more acid. American beer-makers began using cereals other than barley between 1860 and 1870. The reason couldn't be any simpler. Corn, rice and wheat are more abundant and therefore cheaper than barley, so that pushes costs down.

The selected grains are ground and hot water is poured in until a sweetened infusion –called wort by the Germans- is made. Then, hops are added for the flavor and more sugar is spooned if the alcohol level is to be augmented. The resulting must is then added to the yeast.

Beer Science Beer-making has seen contributions by such illustrious men as French chemist Louis Pasteur, whose studies on fermentation during his tenure as dean of the Science School at Lille helped to improve the brewing process through the broth-boiling technique and its conservation now known as pasteurization.

Another groundbreaking technological advance in beer-making came to pass in 1860 when artificial refrigeration was achieved. This wiped out fears of brewing beer in the summer when the air is filled with fermenting bacteria that turn everything to waste. Thus, Bavarians' ancient method of stashing beer in iced caves up in the Alps feel by the wayside.

Even though beer varies in flavor, color and mildness –some innovative changes can also be introduced in the making process- the kind of yeast used in that particular process is the name of the game. If yeast stays in the surface of the fermentation broth, then you've got an ale-style beer. If yeast otherwise ferments in the bottom of the boiler, that's a lager kind of beer. Lager is a German word meaning warehouse.

Perhaps Cuba was one of the last corners of the world where the magic of brewing came to. According to dusty books from the Spanish colonial rule, beer-making started in late 1888 in a crafty and limited way in an old-timed ice factory located in today's Cerro neighborhood in Havana, the nation's capital. Workers there brewed a light lager dubbed Tropical that immediately caught on among Cubans and boosted beer-making with such emblematic brands as Polar, Cristal and Hatuey, let alone a new breed of suds formed by the likes of Tinima, Mayabe and Bucanero.

A particular kind of beer known as chincha is brewed in Peru. More recently, a pub in Mexico City now serves fruit-flavor and even hot spicy beer. However, these experimental variants make no dent in the popularity of Corona, a light lager that has elbowed its way up as the top foreign brand in the U.S. market. Corona has inherited a longstanding tradition that dates back to 1890 when Mexico's first-ever brewery was opened in Monterrey, at the time making some 5,000 bottles a day. A similar and somewhat larger factory began churning out suds four years later in Orizaba. In all, Mexican-brewed brands are strongly influenced by European beers, especially by those lagers made in Vienna and Germany.

Statistics have it that the world's leading beer brewers are the U.S., Germany, Russia, the U.K., China, Japan and Mexico.