Beer Musings
#21 Hofbräu Dunkel by Hofbräu München
So, if people didn’t settle down to take up farming, why then did they embark on this entirely new way of living? We have no idea or actually, we have 38 different ideas: they were driven to it by climate change, or by a wish to reside near their dead, or by a even powerful desire to brew and drink beer, which could only be enjoyed by staying in one place.
Just the other day, I was in a Sensory lecture, enjoying robust ales and lagers, when my professor went on to describe his experience of drinking the best beer of all time: a ray of sunshine painted his face and the voices of angels subjected him into a trance state as he sipped a pint of Pilsner Urquell on the streets of Munich.
Inspired by his words and desperately wanting to taste a Pilsner, even if not from Munich, I settled on the one available from my local liquor store. As I enjoyed the tipple, it occured to me that to drink a pilsner is to gulp down the history of the Free Market.
The foreign goods became a source of status for the natives. The adoption of goods, like beer, was a way that they could kind of be on the level with the foreigners.
From the Dutch importation of the technical knowledge, to the British importation of brewery design and equipments, to the English overstepping the indigenous fermented drinks, onto the German’s ferocious thirst for lagers than ales, down to the Spanish empire’s method of zoning and trade, and the capitalist marketing of Anheuser-Busch, the modern mainstream Pilsner is a bittersweet concoction of imperialism, invention, and consumerism.
Many displaced natives became dependent on the rum and the whiskey proffered as bribes or weapons by the colonizers, subtly cementing the idea of addiction to alcohol.
That was kind of the point of the whole colonial enterprise in the days before free trade. It’s a prime reason why European beer styles rounded the globe and still dominate the beer market today.
Some of it was about revenue for the government. A lot of it was about control.
So, what’s the point of all this now? There’s not really any courage at all in attacking history, any more than in offering to fight one’s grandma.
The really courageous is the one who defies tyrannies and superstitions. They don’t care about what has been; they only care for what ought to be. I specifically insist on this abstract independence.
If I’m to discuss what’s wrong, the first thing that’s wrong is the silent modern assumption that “You can’t put the clock back.”
No, you can.
A clock, being a piece of human construction, can be restored by the human finger. Similarly, society — being a piece of human construction, should be allowed to reconstruct upon any plan that has ever existed.
