National Beer Day 2023

Today is National Beer Day! Wishing the Fresh Beer community a very big cheers on this special day. To celebrate, we thought what better way than to share some beer facts and sit back and relax with some Fresh Beer😎 🍺

1. Water makes up 90%+ of the ingredients that go into making a beer - surely this counts towards your xlitres of water a day in that case ;).

2. Beer used to be consumed as a substitute for water when it wasn't safe to drink for hygienic reasons - it was considered a necessary part of people’s diets.

3. The first beer ever made dates back to ~5000 BC or further and was closer to porridge than beer as we know it today.

4. Egyptian pyramid builders were paid in beer (as well as 2 loaves of bread and 4 onions a day).

5. Beer was nearly exclusively brewed by women in Britain during the Middle Ages. They would brew beer in big cauldrons, have cats to fend off mice from their grain, broomsticks on their front doors when open to the public, and wore conical black hats hats to identify as brewsters when selling beer in local markets. Sound familiar? Indeed, brewsters in fact shaped the perception of what witches once were!

6. People of the Czech Republic, a very proud beer making nation, consume by far the most beer per person in the world - on average (as of 2021) each person drinks 182 litres per year. Austrian people are in second place, consuming on average 97 litres per person per year. No wonder we use Czech Saaz hops in our lager, Out Of Office!

7. Brewers began using hops in beer around the 9th century - it took the UK a few more hundred years to catch on!

8. There is still some debate about the accepted story for the origin of India Pale Ales/IPAs - legend has it that IPAs were brewed in London to supply the British Empire with beer in the 18th century. The climate and ingredients weren’t suitable to brew with in India; beer needed to be transported from the UK to India - a 6 month journey. Beer typical for the time tasted good prior to leaving on the journey to India, then would arrive and have spoiled for the Brits eagerly awaiting their latest supply. After some deliberation and thought, beer was brewed to be stronger and more heavily hopped. Alcohol is a natural sterilant and hops a natural antiseptic - this meant that IPAs were able to survive the 6 month journey to India and this legendary beer style was born!

9. Beer is in fact not to blame for the development of a ‘beer belly’! Drinking beer can lead you to eat fatty foods more often and of course has calories of its own, and excess calories might mean that you do acquire a ‘beer belly’, but it’s not the root cause. You can consume your beer responsibly without having to worry about your tummy.

10. And finally, cenosillicaphobia is the fear of having an empty beer glass. Does anyone else suffer from this, or just us?

Anything else you can think of? What’s your favourite beer fact? Let us know in the Community Forum or elsewhere on social media.