Beer and insomnia.

I can't sleep, it's 1:19am and I cannot sleep, oh believe me I tried. I laid in bed from from about 10pm till 10:30 listening to my wife breath her sleepy breaths. As I read/heard from somewhere that you should not lay in bed for hours and hours trying to fall asleep because after awhile you start to associate your bed with insomnia. Anyway, I then went downstairs and was reading some Wheel of Time till about 12:50pm at which point I started yawning so I figured, time for bed right? Wrong, after laying in bed again for twenty minutes and not feeling any of the tiredness that I felt downstairs and realized maybe I needed to get it out of my system..

Saturday night instead of going out I choose to stay in and catch up on my Tivo. Terry (Tivo) really does get annoyed with me when I don't spend enough one on one time with her. Terry had recorded an episode on Modern Marvels which just happened to be about brewing. In order for me to attempt to remember what I saw I'm going to try to give a summary of what I thought was interesting.

Apparently the earliest evidence of beer (barley based beverage) dated from 3500BC in an area that is currently Iran. It was in Egypt however where beer was king, apparently everyone drank it, people were paid with it, the dead were prepared with it and the wealthy were buried with minature breweries to insure that they would always have beer in the afterlife.

As the domestication of grains traveled to Europe beer started to be brewed. The beer first brewed in Europe however differed from more modern beers in that it was based on a combination of barley and something called gruit. As time went on hops replaced the use of gruit in beer as it had the abiltity to stabilize the beer from bacteria (before the only way was to brew beer with really high alcoholic content) and added bitterness to the beer that balanced the sweetness of barley. Hops if you ever wanted to know are actually a flower found on a vining perenial (blooms once a year) plant. Hops became so important that in bavaria in the 16 century a law called the "Reinheitsgebot" (German Purity Law) was inacted whereby the only ingredients that could be used to make beer is malt(barley), hops, and water (Actually yeast was eventually added once it was understood what it did).

To continue on with the evolution of beer the next step in the evolutionary chain of beer was Lager. Lagers were first created when German breweries started storing their beer in cold caves and basements (called lagering). They noticed that over time their beer would get a smoother taste which was caused by the lager yeast which unlike the yeast used in ale worked at cooler than room temperatures (40 degrees fahrenheit). Pilsners are a further improvement on lagers where due to fact that breweries gained an even finer tuned control of the temperatures needed to brew beer. On a side note, though Porter may not be considered a technologically advanced beer it is however one of the only beers that has an American origin. Actually according to Wiki and a number of other websites Porter was not of American origin, it actually came out of England in the 17th century). Regardless of that, it was George Washingtons favorite and if you are so inclined you can even brew his own recipe as he left it in the New York public library.

Take a large siffer full of bran hops to your taste-boil these 3 hours. Then strain our 30 gall[o]n into a cooler put in 3 gall[o]n molasses while the beer is scalding hot or rather draw the molasses into the cooler. Strain the beer on it while boiling hot, let this stand till it is little more than blood warm. Then put in a quart of ye[a]st if the weather is very cold cover it over with a blank[et] let it work in the cask-Leave the bung open till it is almost done working-Bottle it that day week it was brewed.

Something that I remember a tour guide told me in Philadelphia (you know those stupid tour buses that roll around Phila, well maybe you don't) was that George Washington was never hit by a bullet in battle due to the fact that the beer that he brewed was so potent (get it he was swaying drunk in the saddle most of the time).

Back to the topic at hand, during the late 19th century American breweries were making some of the best beers in the world. However between World War I, Prohibition and the grain rations of World War II the number of American breweries went from 2300 in 1880 to 160 in 1933 and by 1983 there were only 60 breweries left. On top of that the watery taste you have come to associate with the large breweries is most likely due to the grain rationings that occured during World War II. The breweries had less barley to brew beer and had to make up for this fact by using corn, rice and sugar which led to a lighter beer, both in color and taste.

The good thing to note though is that in the last twenty years or so the growth of microbreweries is on the rise seen by the fact that there are currently around 1400 registered breweries in the United States.

Ugh why is it that a post that was supposed to help me sleep take hours to compose, and WHY GOD why is this cat licking my arm! Oh right she wants me to pet her and I keep typing, well how rude of me.

The show often interviewed some of the "microbreweries" around the country, of which there were two that are brewing something I'd really like to try.

The first was Dogfish Head Breweries that makes a beer called "Midas Touch" which is based on the residue found in the drinking dishes that dated back 2700 years ago. Apparently archaelogists from Unniversity of Pennsylvania were able to determine the ingredients that this barley based (beer) beverage was made from and then went to the Dogfish Head Breweries and had them brew it. They named it "Midas Touch" because they found these drinking dishes of a king that dated from the same time period and area that the historical King Midas lived.

The other beer that caught my interest was a beer that Samuel Adams Breweries makes and called "Utopias". "Utopias" is the strongest barley based fermented beverage ever produced and reigns in at 27% alcohol by volume. This is impressive because the yeast that digests sugar and produces alcohol (and carbon dioxide) in beer and wine normally dies when the alcohol level reaches 12%. Samuel Adams was able to get around this by creating some sort of "ninja yeast" (Ninja, I kid you not, as much as I would love to take credit for coining the term "ninja yeast" I can't) that does not die when alcohol levels reach the death zone of 12%. That combined with a hyper sugary barley mixture and 3 years of aging in barrels is what gets the level of "Utopias" to 29%. The only bummer of this whole deal is that apparently because of it's alcohol content it is not sold in Ohio.... .

I think I am actually going to go to bed, nothing says bed time like a perculating cat that is farting. Hopefully work won't kill me and I can add links and images to this post.