Beer Around the World
What Beer Means to Cultures Around the Globe
Let’s say you’re out on the town with friends, and you find yourself sitting in a bar. At any given moment, your table could become a veritable United Nations of beers: Corona from Mexico, Guinness from Ireland, Sapporo from Japan. Beer is brewed all over the world. In this chapter, we’ll take a quick beer tour across the globe. Since we’ve already covered a lot of information on beer in America, we’ll focus on Europe, Asia, South America, the Middle East and Africa.
Europe
While beer was brewed across Europe by the Middle Ages, in the south it was relegated to the poorer classes, while in the northern and eastern parts of the continent it was consumed across the social strata because grapes couldn’t be cultivated for wine there. Beer was mostly home brewed until the Industrial Revolution, when beer became a major industry—and export.
Germany
When most people think of German beers, what comes to mind are the blonde lagers that make up two-thirds of their current beer market; however, ale is actually more deeply ingrained in German tradition. Where lagers have been part of the German history for about five centuries, ales are recorded to have been brewed there for over 3,000 years.
Beer continues to play a huge role in German culture, with Bavarians alone consuming forty gallons of beer per year in an average lifespan. Each year, Munich plays host to six-and-a-half million visitors during the largest beer festival in the world, Oktoberfest.
United Kingdom
The UK is home to darker styles of beer, including brown ales, stouts, and porters, but lighter brews have seen a rise in popularity since the middle of the twentieth century. Beer has been a key player in the development of the UK’s culture and identity, and the UK has made major contributions to the production of beer, including the predecessor to the tap, the beer engine, as well as the creation of India Pale Ale and Guinness.
Netherlands
The Netherlands create the largest proportion of beer in the world, accounting for 50% of beer production. Lagers are king in the Netherlands, which produces a host of pale lagers, including Heineken and Grolsch. During World War II, many of the breweries were destroyed, but by the ‘40s the beer industry was up and running again. When Heineken rose to power in the ‘50s, the corporate brewer swallowed up many of the smaller, independent breweries. However, over the past few decades craft brewing has put smaller-scale brewing back on the map.
Asia
Although there has been documented evidence of beer-like beverages being produced in Chinese villages as far back as 7000 BC, true beer brewing wasn’t brought to Asia until European Edward Dyer established the first brewery in the Indian town of Kasauli back in the 1800s. The first beer produced there, Lion, was the number one beer in India for over a century and is still produced to this day.
In the past few years, Asia has overtaken Europe and the Americas as the biggest consumers of beer in the world. While much of the growth has to do with the growth of the population, beer’s popularity is also the result of growing wealth in Asia, as beer is considered a “good time” drink. As beer grows in popularity, so do imports and microbrews, with bars serving an assortment of beers becoming increasingly popular across the continent.
South America
South America is famous globally for its wines, particularly from Chile and Argentina, but recently South American countries have jumped on the craft beer train and begun crafting their own impressive local brews.
In Colombia, breweries like 3 Cordilleras demonstrate strong American influences in their artisanal beers, whereas German influences are evident at breweries like Argentina’s Otto Tipp. Argentina’s environmentally conscious, bohemian town of El Bolsón has become a leader in the organic food movement, and the hops in the beer produced there is no exception.
Chicha is a traditional South American beer brewed with corn, but like moonshine, chicha is often a home brewed concoction and difficult to export. The tradition of drinking this heavy, flavorful beer carries on predominantly in Peru, where chicha is served in most bars, and it is still considered to have health benefits like lowering blood pressure.
Africa
While traditional honey and ginger beers are brewed all over Africa, including rural areas, South Africa consumes the most beer at an average of more than fifteen gallons per person. Since 2010, the craft beer movement has seen an explosion in South Africa, where microbreweries have been popping up all over the place. One liquor store owner has seen an increase of 500% in the sales of craft beer since 2008, with new microbrews lining his shelves all the time.
Middle East
Some of the oldest evidence of beer in the world comes from the area known today as Iran, where a 6,000 year old tablet is believed to depict people drinking beer out of a bowl using reed straws. A 3,900 year old Sumerian poem is the oldest beer recipe in existence. But for many living in the Middle East, alcohol is illegal—which has made the Middle East a hotbed for non-alcoholic beer. Nearly one-third of all non-alcoholic beer sold globally is consumed in the Middle East.
Whew! So maybe it’s actually beer that makes the world go round. Now that we’ve taken on this global view, we’re moving to the opposite end of the spectrum, by looking at each of the elements that goes into a batch of beer. Hint: there are just four.
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“Beer Around the World: What Beer Means to Cultures Around the Globe” is an excerpt from No Keg Stands Required: An Introduction to Beer, a Snippet by Joy Uyeno. Joy manages the social media outreach of a rapidly growing university as well as writes, photographs, cooks, and communicates with people all over the world from her home just outside of Boston. Click here for the full version of No Keg Stands Required: An Introduction to Beer, which includes fascinating audio and video content that will take your love of lager and other fine brews to a whole new, tasty level.
