Oktoberfest!

Friends, Germans, lovers of beer, Oktoberfest is in full swing. Begun to celebrate a royal marriage in 1810, this Munich festival has evolved into one of the world's largest parties. It started last Saturday, September 22, and continues till the first Sunday in October.

Of course, every time the Lord Mayor of Munich commences the Oktoberfest, we think of beer. No wonder: more than 6 million people revel, fueled by more than 14 million pints (almost 7 million liters). We can't go to Munich today, but we can drink in knowledge of that ancient concoction.

Mesopotamia's Best

Beer drinking dates back at least 8,000 years, to ancient Mesopotamia. Made from a simple recipe of fermented barley in water, ancient beer wasn't just popular--it was a dietary staple. Some scholars have even suggested that beer predates bread.

Before long, trade routes spread the thirst for beer as far as China and Egypt. From Egypt, the brewing knowledge flowed west to Greece and Rome. But the Romans preferred wine to beer, and beer drinking soon became relegated to northern "barbarians" who couldn't grow good grapes.

Good Christian Beer

During the Dark Ages, knowledge of brewing was largely lost to the common people of Europe. But, as with so many other things, Christian monks preserved the knowledge in writing and practice. In fact, they began to perfect the beer recipe, adding hops, of all things, to the mix. The flower clusters of a perennial vine, hops added bitterness to the sweetness of malted barley and helped keep the good monks' beer fresh.

Before long, monastic breweries were brewing some of the finest beer ever made. By 1516, beer was back on tap across Europe, and authorities moved to regulate it. Not consumption--production. The world's oldest known law governing food production, the Reinheitsgebot, or German Purity Law of 1516, kept brewers honest:

"The only ingredients used for the brewing of beer must be barley, hops, and water. Whosoever knowingly disregards or transgresses upon this ordinance shall be punished."

Malt It

When you get down to it, a good beer needs only four ingredients: barley, hops, water, and yeast. (In 1516, no one knew about yeast; it was just there.) Some beers add spices or fruits, while others, particularly American mass-market brews, use replacements for barley, such as corn or rice. Some use wheat instead, particularly in Bavaria and Belgium. But the big four are responsible for beer's classic flavor.

The basic recipe is simple, too--and includes fun-to-say words like "wort" and "trub." You start with malted barley. As grapes are to wine, so malted barley is to beer. To malt your barley grains, you soak them in water to induce germination. That way, enzymes in the grains convert complex starches into sugar, making them tasty food for yeast.

Then, days later, you halt germination by drying the grains in a kiln. The temperature in your kiln can have a big effect on your malt--and, eventually, on the character of your beer. Lightly kilned grains make for the clear pale gold of a lager. Dark roasted grains make for the rich deep black of a stout.

Mash It

Once you've malted your barley, you can add it to a kettle of hot water to make a thick, hot mixture called a mash. After a few hours, during a process called lautering, you strain the mash to separate the solid barley from the barleyish liquid. The strained liquid, called a "wort," is what you need.

You bring the wort to a boil and add your hops. Then you let it cool and seed it with yeast to begin fermentation--to slowly change the sugars in the wort into alcohol.

Different kinds of yeast make different kinds of beer. Ale yeast leads to full-bodied, strong-flavored beer. Lager yeast imparts crisper, drier flavor. It also works more slowly and at lower temperatures, so brewers traditionally used it in late fall to make beer that could be preserved till spring. In fact, "lager" comes from the German lagern, meaning "to store."

God Is Good

Before brewers knew what yeast was, many simply called the telltale signs of fermentation "God-Is-Good." Today we know the single-celled fungus's brewing secret.

During respiration, your body consumes oxygen and makes carbon dioxide and water as by-products. Yeast can do that, too. But it can also function without the oxygen needed for respiration. It just switches to fermentation, which consumes sugar and makes alcohol as a by-product instead of water.

Over the course of a week or a few months of yeast basically eating sugar and peeing alcohol, sediments settle to the bottom of your brew. Unless you like chunky-style beer, you must remove this "trub" in a process known as racking. But after that, and a bit of conditioning, you have a modern batch of beer, on tap since 6000 BC.

Next Week: Appreciating Grape Art

Friends, we don't discriminate. If you, like the Romans, think beer is for barbarians, and want to learn about fine wine instead, just wait for our wine issue next week.