Speaker 1: Hey, folks, this is Chuck and welcome to this week's
Speaker 1: s Y s K Selects edition, How Beer Works. Uh
Speaker 1: not a long intro for this one. It's how Beer Works.
Speaker 1: So that was my pick. Why not rerun this one? Right? Enjoy?
Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff you should know from house stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast Bottoms Up, etcetera.
Speaker 1: Take off your shirt? Is that what beer equates to
Speaker 1: in your book? Take off your shirt? Uh? Well, I
Speaker 1: take off my shirt when I drink too much beer. You,
Speaker 1: Lucy neal Belt, take off the shirt. Close the blinds.
Speaker 1: Neighbors don't want to see that, I want to point out, No,
Speaker 1: they don't, uh that? Um. Guest producer Maddy today just
Speaker 1: a little seren dip. He is brewing his fur batch
Speaker 1: of beer right now. And he was like, man, it's
Speaker 1: not like just preparing food, he said, is this? You know?
Speaker 1: It's like serious chemistry going on, because I think he's
Speaker 1: he's shooting for the stars here. He's not starting out
Speaker 1: with an easy brew. I think. No. You know, as
Speaker 1: you know Maddie, he's not one to just dive into
Speaker 1: something lightly. He goes full bore. Yeah, so you should
Speaker 1: see how how he got into the zeitgeist something I
Speaker 1: think he's thinks bring a porter? Is that right, Matt Stout?
Speaker 1: But stouts and porters, as we I learned, have been
Speaker 1: very much mixed throughout the years. I believe porters and
Speaker 1: they were named after river porters because that's what they
Speaker 1: like to drink in London, the River Porters, Allen River Reporters,
Speaker 1: dark darker beers. Yeah, yeah, although the kind of take
Speaker 1: what they can get. Yeah, that is one fact about
Speaker 1: a thousand that you're about to hear. So also, I
Speaker 1: want to mention aumis in my friends. Stewart is in
Speaker 1: a band called Superhuman Happiness and one of his bandmates
Speaker 1: is making his first beer right now. It's his first
Speaker 1: and they're calling it Superhuman Happiness. Nice where they out
Speaker 1: in New York, out of Brooklyn support, of course they are. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so Stewart has promised to save a six pack. Great,
Speaker 1: I'm pretty psyched about it. Is there music good? Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: they're really good. He's he's very good. He's in UM.
Speaker 1: He's one of the founding members of Anti Ballis. Have
Speaker 1: you heard of them? No? Do you know that UM
Speaker 1: show faila No, the Failer that was on Broadway. It's
Speaker 1: a musical about Fayla Coutie, the Nigerian afro beat, the
Speaker 1: one that you went to. Yes, yeah, a new about it. Okay,
Speaker 1: that guy he arranged that he's good man. Okay, he
Speaker 1: when we saw him with um uh not buying princip
Speaker 1: Billy the other guy. Yeah, you hate Bonnie principally, I
Speaker 1: don't hate him. What's the other guy? The other guy?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Sam Beam, Yeah, he played with him. Cool
Speaker 1: when they came through last those guys too. So do
Speaker 1: you want to talk about beer ever? Yeah? Seriously, we
Speaker 1: got a lot to cover. We shouldn't have wasted that
Speaker 1: minute of your lives. Sorry everyone. So, um, what Stewart
Speaker 1: and Matt are engaged in isn't millennia long tradition of
Speaker 1: brewing beer? Yeah, c o a first, really quickly, you
Speaker 1: must be twenty one to drink alcohol. Oh yeah, and
Speaker 1: don't don't really take off your shirt and drink responsibly.
Speaker 1: So we're certainly not encouraging anyone to go out and
Speaker 1: uh that's underage to get the delicious, delicious beer and
Speaker 1: drink it all right, So as old ass. Since people
Speaker 1: could walk around, it seems like they wanted to start
Speaker 1: brewing beer. Well it's as old as civilization, is what
Speaker 1: they think. So not you know, some they could walk around.
Speaker 1: But since they discovered that moldy bread did funny things. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they think that it's possible that it was um
Speaker 1: an accident at some piece of bread got wet and
Speaker 1: um inadvertently fermented. Like all the everything was there just right,
Speaker 1: and I guess back then they didn't waste anything, so
Speaker 1: they probably were like, let me drink this nasty thing
Speaker 1: or everything was new and they're like, what does this
Speaker 1: taste like? Well, this dude, to me, they had tried
Speaker 1: um magic mushrooms before and we're like, I will eat
Speaker 1: anything now. You never know what you're going. They were
Speaker 1: still figuring things out. They're in the figuring things out phase. Um.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's possible it was a piece of bread.
Speaker 1: It could have just been a piece of grain or something.
Speaker 1: Because there's a school of thought that we have bread
Speaker 1: as because we have beer. Yeah. I love that theory.
Speaker 1: Because they figured out that you could bake bread and
Speaker 1: easily mash make a mash out of bread and water
Speaker 1: um to produce beer, and that this was all very
Speaker 1: portable and anybody could kind of keep some bread in
Speaker 1: their homes, so it's possible we have we have bread
Speaker 1: because of beer. I love that theory. Um. But the
Speaker 1: point is is that, yeah, bread, beer is as old
Speaker 1: as civilization because one of the first grains. One of
Speaker 1: the first things we did was domesticate grain, and you
Speaker 1: need grain to make year and we figured it out
Speaker 1: pretty quickly. But the oldest record of brewing is I
Speaker 1: think six thousand years old and sumer Yeah, ancient Sumerians
Speaker 1: have a seal um that was had a hymn on it,
Speaker 1: the hymn to Ninkasi, the goddess of brewing and him.
Speaker 1: Not only was it him, but it was him about
Speaker 1: making beer. It was a recipe for beer. And it
Speaker 1: wasn't like use one chord of but it was it
Speaker 1: was very broad. Um the recipe. Have you read it?
Speaker 1: There's I think dog fish Head Brewery remade it using
Speaker 1: that recipe. Yeah, I've got one of theirs. They remade
Speaker 1: this ancient Chinese thing too. Um. I don't think it's
Speaker 1: the same thing. No, it's very much. It's more in
Speaker 1: the tradition of wine or brandy than beer. Um. But yeah,
Speaker 1: this this one, this hymn to Nankazi is definitely beer
Speaker 1: for sure. Um, and that just kind of kicked everything off,
Speaker 1: just right out of the gate. Yeah, the earliest reports
Speaker 1: where the beer would make you feel exhilarated, wonderful and blissful,
Speaker 1: and so people are like, how do I get my
Speaker 1: hands on this stuff? Yeah, and they figured out very
Speaker 1: quickly how you got your hands on this stuff? Choke.
Speaker 1: Because beer came about at a period of transition to
Speaker 1: um a grarian societies from nomadic hunter gatherer societies to
Speaker 1: graian societies. And there is another school of thought that
Speaker 1: not only do we have um bread beer to thank
Speaker 1: for bread, but civilization itself. That civilization, that beer attracted
Speaker 1: nomadic groups to civilization because that's who had the beer, right,
Speaker 1: That's how you got the beer. You domesticated grain and
Speaker 1: you made it. Yeah, and this hut over here, they're
Speaker 1: really good at making beer. So let's live near them.
Speaker 1: And then in circle that hut, and then that circle
Speaker 1: grows and all of a sudden, everyone's just sitting around
Speaker 1: getting drunk exactly. And then somebody's guests are plus grain,
Speaker 1: so they're in charge, and um, people end up doing
Speaker 1: work and religious groups start up. But that's this is
Speaker 1: kind of Um, immortalized in the epic of Gilgamesh inky Do,
Speaker 1: the wild man who represents the hunter gatherer tribes the nomads.
Speaker 1: Um is given beer because it is the custom of
Speaker 1: the city, yeah, the civilized people. And he drinks like
Speaker 1: eight glasses of it, and while he's drunk, he washes
Speaker 1: himself and became a human being just like that. So
Speaker 1: he moves from the wild into civilization via beer fastward
Speaker 1: a little bit to Babylonia or Babylon. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: gotta get out of Babylon, man. Yeah, they had They
Speaker 1: had twenty different types of beer, and I believe they
Speaker 1: even invented the can that turns blue when it's cold.
Speaker 1: I'm not mistaken. It was priceless. Is that Babylon? I
Speaker 1: think it was. Okay. Um, there's also a question I
Speaker 1: could not find a definitive answer for. But supposedly the
Speaker 1: Babylonians took brewing so seriously that if you made a
Speaker 1: bad batch or tried to sell a bad batch, your
Speaker 1: punishment was to be drowned in it. Yeah. I wonder
Speaker 1: if that's true. I found it all over the place,
Speaker 1: but it was everybody. Nobody had a good definitive source.
Speaker 1: Sell I present it as a rumor. Early beer Josh
Speaker 1: was unfiltered, cloudy had chunks of junk in it and residue,
Speaker 1: so they would actually drink it through a straw sort
Speaker 1: of as a filter. Um, so they wouldn't get the
Speaker 1: stuff in their mouth. It was really bitter. Um. Hammerabi
Speaker 1: very important lawmaker back in the day. Yeah, why do
Speaker 1: we just talk about him in the eye for an eye?
Speaker 1: Code don't remember it was? Was it Noah's Ark? Maybe
Speaker 1: I don't remember, but yeah, he was the guy who
Speaker 1: came up with the eye for an eye, was like
Speaker 1: one of the earliest set of laws. And a beer
Speaker 1: for a priest, well, it turns out actually five beers
Speaker 1: for a priest. Well five leaders. Yeah, that's right a day. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was his beer, rah, And that was one of
Speaker 1: the first laws that established Um, a normal worker got
Speaker 1: two leaders, civil servants three, and then administrators and the
Speaker 1: high priest five leaders a day. Now, that is what
Speaker 1: I call a social contract. That's that's worth sticking around for. Um.
Speaker 1: So yeah, Hammurabi's wasted. Um, then we're gonna fast forward
Speaker 1: a little more. The Egyptians keep it going. Um. They
Speaker 1: had their own hieroglyph. They did for brewer. And then
Speaker 1: everything comes very very close to being disrupted, disrupted forever
Speaker 1: um with the arrival of the Greece of the Romans,
Speaker 1: because they drove alvos and listen to NPR, and all
Speaker 1: they cared about was wine. To to the Romans especially uh,
Speaker 1: beer was barbarian drink, Like you only drank beer in
Speaker 1: the most the remotest outposts of the Roman Empire. U
Speaker 1: to make it wine to a certain degree, don't you think? Sure? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean wine is very big around Greece, but so
Speaker 1: is Greek beer. No, but I'm talking about period all
Speaker 1: over the world. Like you know, you generally think of
Speaker 1: wine as being high society. And the construction worker kicks
Speaker 1: back with the corpse light. Can't we all just drink both? Yes,
Speaker 1: maybe even mixed together. No, Okay, that's um. But yes,
Speaker 1: I agree with that that point of view. I think
Speaker 1: it does kind of carry on to day and I
Speaker 1: guess that's where it finds its roots. Yea, the snobby
Speaker 1: Greeks interesting in romans Um. Luckily there was a remote
Speaker 1: outpost of the Roman Empire that was like, I don't
Speaker 1: care what you say, man, we're making beer. We're going
Speaker 1: to dedicate our society making beer, of course. And today
Speaker 1: we call those people the Germans. Yes, God bless them
Speaker 1: and their efforts. Back then they were called Twotons. Yeah
Speaker 1: and uh. Tacitus wrote about the ancient Germans and said,
Speaker 1: to drink the Teutons have a horrible brew for a minute,
Speaker 1: from barley or wheat, a brew which has only a
Speaker 1: very far removed similarity to wine. The only thing that
Speaker 1: had in common was that you drink it and it
Speaker 1: messes you up. Yeah, you know, yeah. Aside from that,
Speaker 1: it was couldn't be any more different, right, And the
Speaker 1: Germans have been making uh beer since at least eight
Speaker 1: hundred b C. That's the earliest record we have of
Speaker 1: beer drinking in Germany. UM. And I don't know if
Speaker 1: it it probably spread from the Tutons to the rest
Speaker 1: of northern Europe um. But you see beer pop up
Speaker 1: in very ancient um Northern European texts like the Finnish
Speaker 1: saga the calla Walla, Yeah, CALLI walla. There there are
Speaker 1: four hundred verses dedicated to beer, two verses dedicated to
Speaker 1: the creation of the earth. That's that's that's a society
Speaker 1: that takes it to beer. Seriously. Yeah, and the Nordic Uh,
Speaker 1: I kind of thought it was called the Nordic epic eda.
Speaker 1: Wine was for the gods, beer was for mortals, and
Speaker 1: mead for the inhabitants of the realm of the dead.
Speaker 1: You ever had mead? Uh? No, I never have. It's
Speaker 1: like honey based right for minute honey. Yeah, it's like
Speaker 1: honey water for minute honeywater. It's doesn't sound like good.
Speaker 1: I had some hippie in uh in Virginia, give me
Speaker 1: some mead one time that he had made. You took
Speaker 1: mead from a hippie, stayed with him one night. It
Speaker 1: was one of those deals. Yeah, going through town. Okay,
Speaker 1: Now you just a friend hooked us up for a
Speaker 1: place to stay. Did you have a bindle? Now he did, though,
Speaker 1: and he even had a house. He had homemade mead.
Speaker 1: It was gross, was it? It wasn't very good. I
Speaker 1: didn't care for it. I'm sure it's an acquired taste. Um.
Speaker 1: So yeah, mead kind of falls off here, right yeah, um,
Speaker 1: except for hippies in Virginia exactly. Uh. Wine kind of
Speaker 1: stuck into the Mediterranean, but beer just continued to spread
Speaker 1: and take hold. Yeah, like barley, I mean of course
Speaker 1: wine spread itself as well, and we have it in
Speaker 1: France and californ on you and everything. But but around
Speaker 1: this time it was fairly localized to the Mediterranean area. UM.
Speaker 1: And as as we enter the medieval age, UM, the
Speaker 1: Dark Ages first and then medieval times, UM, the monks,
Speaker 1: Christian monks got really really good at brewing UM. And
Speaker 1: the reason they took it up is because this was
Speaker 1: a place of like science and agriculture and abbey was
Speaker 1: and UM could also support their abbey exactly, which is
Speaker 1: now what Trappist monks are. If you if you drink
Speaker 1: Traffis Dale and it says brewed by Trappis monks. This
Speaker 1: is a tradition that's well over a thousand years old.
Speaker 1: It's pretty cool monks supporting themselves by doing something for
Speaker 1: the community. And some of them threw beer. Another tradition,
Speaker 1: which is rampant sexism, took place when women, uh were
Speaker 1: the ones that brewed beer in the medieval times. And
Speaker 1: not only that, but they said we want only hot
Speaker 1: women brewing our beer. Well, it was so important that
Speaker 1: only beautiful women could brew beer. But can you believe
Speaker 1: that way back then they were like no, no, no,
Speaker 1: I don't want know ugly chicks making my beer. I
Speaker 1: can you believe that's yeah, the earliest form of sexism
Speaker 1: I can think of. I'll bet it goes back further
Speaker 1: than that. Well, but there's a feminist twist it later on. Well,
Speaker 1: because I got really good at making it. Yeah, people
Speaker 1: who were women who were um, you know, well known,
Speaker 1: like as if you were a medieval wife, Um, one
Speaker 1: of the things you did was brew right, um. And
Speaker 1: if you were good at it, eventually your family may
Speaker 1: come to bear the name Brewer or brewce Stir. That's
Speaker 1: where your name comes from, exactly. It means that you
Speaker 1: haven't a female ancestor who landed your family a surname
Speaker 1: through her brewing skills. That is feminism, asked me. It
Speaker 1: might have been the st poly girl herself. Maybe, So
Speaker 1: do you think she's a feminist icon? I don't think so.
Speaker 1: So where are we took? We are in the fifteenth
Speaker 1: century and something pretty cool happened in uh Germany. Um.
Speaker 1: And to me this is the fact of the show.
Speaker 1: Just because I did not know this. The Rheine heitzkbault
Speaker 1: A fifteen sixteen was a beer purity law basically said
Speaker 1: you can only make beer out of four things. Water,
Speaker 1: malted barley, malted wheat, and hops. So that is wrong,
Speaker 1: that's not right. It's three things. I don't know where
Speaker 1: this source got the fourth the four ingredients, but there's water, barley,
Speaker 1: and hops are the only three things you can put
Speaker 1: in beer. Okay, wheat wasn't included, Okay, regardless, that's still
Speaker 1: the fact of the show. The Rheine Heights boat is
Speaker 1: the oldest non religious legal standard of food production and
Speaker 1: the oldest consumer protection law on the planet was beer
Speaker 1: because beer. It's fifteen sixteen. That is crazy, and it's
Speaker 1: still around. It is, it's still enforced today, Like, don't
Speaker 1: try to make a beer in Bavaria using anything but
Speaker 1: at those three ingredients. You make beer in Bavaria with
Speaker 1: corn and rice, you got a one way ticket on
Speaker 1: the bullet train out of town, right, or you'll get
Speaker 1: caned publicly. That's right. Um. And there are a couple
Speaker 1: of reasons why this law was passed. One, people used
Speaker 1: to put crazy, crazy stuff in beer, like um, hallucinogenic
Speaker 1: roots or poisonous roots that could make you do crazy
Speaker 1: stuff like hemlock and things like that. Um, So it
Speaker 1: was for it was a purity law. It was also
Speaker 1: to control prices. If you read the purity law, it's
Speaker 1: like you can't sell a beer for more than this.
Speaker 1: And then thirdly, also is to make sure that um
Speaker 1: important grains like wheat got diverted to important things like food.
Speaker 1: They didn't want people going crazy like using wheat, which
Speaker 1: is why you why that wheat was wrong. It's barley water.
Speaker 1: But wheat beer obviously came along in rye beer later on. Right,
Speaker 1: So let's go to America, Man, Usa, Virginia again. Yeah,
Speaker 1: beer's been around in the US since before the US
Speaker 1: was around. Maybe it was that hippie. Maybe he was
Speaker 1: a descendant of the original brewers a beer in the US.
Speaker 1: Maybe so in fifties seven. By this time, colonists already
Speaker 1: making beer flagrantly ignoring the Ryan Heights Kabbat by using corn.
Speaker 1: They realized very quickly that this makes a terrible beer
Speaker 1: and uh. In sixteen o nine, the first ads appear
Speaker 1: in London newspapers asking for brewers to move to the
Speaker 1: Virginia colony. They needs some beer over there in the
Speaker 1: New World, and uh. In sixwelve, the first brewery set
Speaker 1: up in New Amsterdam by Adrian Block and Hans Christian
Speaker 1: Anderson now Hans Christensen and uh. I thought this was
Speaker 1: interesting too, same place where the first well, it says
Speaker 1: the first non native American, but I guess it's the
Speaker 1: first American because America wasn't there yet. This is new answer.
Speaker 1: That was Dutch colony. So it's the first the first
Speaker 1: non native American born in North America that wasn't who
Speaker 1: wasn't like of an indigenous group, which was gen vision
Speaker 1: vision e viny And he became a brewery. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: was born in the first brewery. Crazy, Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: he kind of had to become a brewer under those circumstances,
Speaker 1: didn't he Well in America just had to become a
Speaker 1: nation of beer lovers because of this, I think, yeah,
Speaker 1: And boy did we love it so like researching this
Speaker 1: and other researchers I've done, America used to be a
Speaker 1: ten times more in an awesome place. I can't remember
Speaker 1: what what episode it was. It may have been prohibition
Speaker 1: where we were talking about like if you look at
Speaker 1: lists of things served at like colonial funerals or weddings
Speaker 1: or whatever, it'd be like five five kigs of rome,
Speaker 1: and it's fifty kigs of beer and all that, but
Speaker 1: there's only like sixty people there. And then the fact
Speaker 1: that the word cocktail referred to a drink that you
Speaker 1: drink in the morning, and that the old whiskey old
Speaker 1: fashion was the original cocktail. Um. Yeah, we used to
Speaker 1: drink a lot more in this country. So like in
Speaker 1: eighteen what is it, seventy three, Yes, we we hit
Speaker 1: our peak number of breweries four thousand, one d and
Speaker 1: thirty one breweries supplying uh population of just fifty million people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: our peak back then, of course. Yeah, because now there's
Speaker 1: a renaissance, there is craft brewing, and now there are
Speaker 1: more breweries than since the eighteen hundreds. That's awesome. Um.
Speaker 1: I did a little research on craft brewing and in
Speaker 1: the in the nineteen seventies, there were only forty consolidated
Speaker 1: breweries in the US, and experts thought that that number
Speaker 1: would fall to as little as five And it was
Speaker 1: all this homogenous light lagger that Americans grew to love.
Speaker 1: In World War Two, Yeah, because prohibition hit and there's
Speaker 1: like a beer evolutionary bottleneck. You couldn't survive unless you
Speaker 1: were one of the big big ones, right, and you
Speaker 1: had to do you had to make other things, including
Speaker 1: non alcoholic beer. But so you come out and there's
Speaker 1: just a few breweries operating, right, and um. Then World
Speaker 1: War Two hits and that caused the other reason that
Speaker 1: beer became homogeneous in the United States. Men went off
Speaker 1: the war, women became the market for brewers for beer,
Speaker 1: and they um preferred a lighter style beer. So in
Speaker 1: America almost for decades after World War Two, the only
Speaker 1: beer you can find pretty much was that um American
Speaker 1: style pills near Logger. Yeah, it was like this through
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies. Uh, and then nineteen eighty I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy six, the first craft brewery, the new I'll
Speaker 1: Be i'll be On Brewery in Sonoma, California, open and
Speaker 1: they were like, we want to start making some good
Speaker 1: old beer again, like some ales and some ambers and
Speaker 1: some stouts. Uh. They were only open about six years,
Speaker 1: but they inspired hundreds of others to take it up,
Speaker 1: and that's generally looked back as the New Renaissance started
Speaker 1: in seventy six. So in nineteen eighty there were eight
Speaker 1: craft breweries, in nineteen ninety four there were five hundred
Speaker 1: and thirty seven, and in two thousand and ten there
Speaker 1: were sixteen hundred's beautiful, and I think over nineteen hundred
Speaker 1: in two thousand eleven, so they went from literally almost
Speaker 1: being extinct like twenty something years ago or thirty years ago,
Speaker 1: to like booming, big time booming. But that's still half
Speaker 1: of that eighteen seventies number nineteen hundred, So yeah, you're right, half,
Speaker 1: but that's the highest level since that time. But consider that.
Speaker 1: Think about how much beers in this country right now.
Speaker 1: You've got nineteen hundred breweries get yet plus supplying three
Speaker 1: hundred million people. Back then we had forty one hundred
Speaker 1: breweries supplying fifty million. Yeah. Crazy, well, and let's not
Speaker 1: kid ourselves. I think the craft brewers are supplying about
Speaker 1: four by volume and about six percent by by dollars.
Speaker 1: And the three, you know, Miller, Anheuser, Bush, and Course
Speaker 1: are the three big daddies. I prefer to fool myself
Speaker 1: in this circumstance. But you are right. I mean, there's
Speaker 1: a renaissance going on. Um, so let's talk about what
Speaker 1: these people are doing during this renaissance. You want to
Speaker 1: talk about how beer is made? Yeah, and I've never
Speaker 1: done it, surprisingly, I never have either, but I'm going
Speaker 1: to oh yeah, yeah, we'll bring me somewhere. This has
Speaker 1: inspired me. I just need to collect friends who brew
Speaker 1: their own beer so I don't have to do it
Speaker 1: any exactly. Uh. Barley, water, hops, and east are the
Speaker 1: basic four ingredients and the UM I like how you
Speaker 1: put this The whole idea just to extract sugars from
Speaker 1: the grains. Usually barley yeast eats it up and it
Speaker 1: poops out alcohol and CEO two and that's beer. It's
Speaker 1: that simple. And you've just described two steps. There's two
Speaker 1: big categories of this process. There's brewing and then there's fermenting.
Speaker 1: And the brewing part is pretty simple. It's taking um
Speaker 1: malted barley or malted grain, which is like dried and
Speaker 1: cracked and um heated so that the sugars start to
Speaker 1: come out a little more. Um. I guess caramelized is
Speaker 1: another way to put it. And then you take that
Speaker 1: and you steep it in a basically a T and
Speaker 1: the t that you've just made is called worked and
Speaker 1: that's called mashing. Right, Yeah, so mashing, yes, taking them
Speaker 1: taking the malted grain and steeping it, that's mashing's right.
Speaker 1: But it produces a sticky, um sweet substance pre beer
Speaker 1: as it were called word imagined wort in Germany. Probably
Speaker 1: uh and you uh, you take that word and your
Speaker 1: brewing process is done. When you put it in a
Speaker 1: tank with yeast. You've just started the fermentation process. Yes,
Speaker 1: and that's where things get groovy. Uh that you boil
Speaker 1: the vert for about an hour. You add the hops
Speaker 1: and depending on what kind of beer you're gonna make,
Speaker 1: is uh really going to depend on what kind of
Speaker 1: hops or how how much hops? Yeah, we haven't started
Speaker 1: fermenting yet. I jumped the gun. You have to add
Speaker 1: the hops with to the worked Oh, oh, yeah, we
Speaker 1: did jump the gun. But Budweiser, let's say, has about
Speaker 1: eight to twin I b U s, which are international
Speaker 1: bitterness units. That's how you measure hops. Are you like
Speaker 1: happy beer? I am a big I p A and
Speaker 1: pale ale? Yeah, I'd like beer that's so happy it
Speaker 1: makes me sneeze. Well that's pretty happy. Um. A thirty
Speaker 1: uh stout has about thirty to fifty I b U s,
Speaker 1: and a double I p A or an I p
Speaker 1: A could have up to a hundred dog fish head
Speaker 1: D and twenty minute has a hundred and twenty IBus. Well,
Speaker 1: I like the sixty and the ninety. The one twenty
Speaker 1: is actually kind of hard to find a lot of
Speaker 1: times because they don't make a ton of it. Um.
Speaker 1: But interestingly, pale ale. You know where Indian palel comes from,
Speaker 1: the I p a India, Well it does. Uh. British
Speaker 1: soldiers were stationed over there, and when they started setting
Speaker 1: up trade with India back in the day, were colonizing it.
Speaker 1: It's just one, that's one way to put it. And
Speaker 1: they were like, boy, were really thirsty and we kind
Speaker 1: of miss our old beer back in England. So they
Speaker 1: would send over their pale ales and they wouldn't um
Speaker 1: really make the voyage very well, the sea voyage. It
Speaker 1: would show up flat and kind of gnarly. So they
Speaker 1: added a lot more hops because hot sex is a preservative.
Speaker 1: Thus India pale ale. Nice. Yeah, nice, that's the story
Speaker 1: I got. I'm gonna be really embarrassed, No, I think
Speaker 1: if it's not by that one, that's what's the kind
Speaker 1: of story here in a bar? Yeah you know yeah,
Speaker 1: um yeah, that's the story you see in a bar
Speaker 1: gets you free beer. We should try that. Um. So
Speaker 1: you've got you've got the worked that's boiled. Um, it's
Speaker 1: all sugary and um, you add east to it and
Speaker 1: put in a tank and now it's fermenting and like
Speaker 1: like we said, the yeast just eats all the sugars
Speaker 1: and produces carbon dioxide and alcohol as waste products. And
Speaker 1: depending on the kind of beer you make, um, well
Speaker 1: it really depends on the kind of yeast you use.
Speaker 1: Um you're either going to be waiting around for a
Speaker 1: few weeks to a couple of months. So um, if
Speaker 1: you were making um something called a an ale, you're
Speaker 1: going to be doing all this. You're gonna ferment um
Speaker 1: using tough fermenting yeast at room temperature, and then after
Speaker 1: a few weeks your beer is gonna be ready to drink.
Speaker 1: If you are making a logger which in Germany, which
Speaker 1: in German is a verb meaning to store, Um, you're
Speaker 1: going to it's gonna take a few months, um, and
Speaker 1: you're going to store this stuff. You're gonna let it
Speaker 1: ferment um at near freezing temperatures and it's gonna ferment
Speaker 1: at the bottom the yeast is Yeah, they would put
Speaker 1: it in caves. It's called lager ing. Yeah. It was
Speaker 1: the stort and cave cold caves because for those hundreds
Speaker 1: and hundreds and hundreds of years that they were making beer.
Speaker 1: They kept they kept being like, this beer is messed up,
Speaker 1: and it happens to be summertime. What's wrong with this beer? Oh,
Speaker 1: it's it's all the summertime. And then finally somebody figured out,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, we're making the best beer in the
Speaker 1: winter time. And they didn't quite know why, but they
Speaker 1: figured out a process to replicate it. But of course
Speaker 1: now we understand that UM, the wild yeast and bacteria
Speaker 1: in the area that was prevalent in the summers of Germany,
Speaker 1: UM was messing up the fermentation process, souring the beer.
Speaker 1: It's the stuff using yeasts that survived in winter months
Speaker 1: in the cold. UM produces really clean, crisp, very awesome beer.
Speaker 1: Taste of the Rockies. Yeah, exactly. That's now called the Lagger.
Speaker 1: That's right. We actually forgot something too. And I know
Speaker 1: there's homebrewers right now going you can't forget carbonation. Uh,
Speaker 1: skipping back a bit after you. After you do have
Speaker 1: the bottle beer, it's not carbonated yet, very flat, so
Speaker 1: you need to carbonate it. And I imagine the big
Speaker 1: breweries UM forced carbonate like sodas do and uh, if
Speaker 1: you're a traditionalist though, and I wonder about craft breweries
Speaker 1: that I need to know more about this if they
Speaker 1: do that or not. Well, I think it usually I'll say,
Speaker 1: like bottle conditioned. So bottle condition means it just waits
Speaker 1: and you wait it out for the yeast to do
Speaker 1: its thing naturally. And that's where you're gonna get your
Speaker 1: your phone and your good bubbly goodness because it produces
Speaker 1: carbon dioxide. Is a waste product, takes a while. Waste product.
Speaker 1: You say, waste product, I say bubbly goodness. Okay, Um,
Speaker 1: So you want to talk about gravity? Uh? Yeah, gravity
Speaker 1: is um. Gravity is how much alcohol is in your beer.
Speaker 1: And the brewers measure the gravity before and after the
Speaker 1: fermentation process, and they calculate the difference uh in the
Speaker 1: out of alcohol by volume and represented by a percentage.
Speaker 1: So like the higher the percentage, the higher the gravity
Speaker 1: of the beer. Yeah. And you know nowadays with the
Speaker 1: craft beers, you're gonna get all kinds of percentages, like
Speaker 1: you know, six to nine to right, that's a pretty
Speaker 1: heavy duty beer. Oh definitely. What is like get your
Speaker 1: average Budweiser? What is that? Five? Five? Is it? There's
Speaker 1: a law in Georgia for a while that was you
Speaker 1: couldn't sell beer over five point five. Do you remember
Speaker 1: when they repealed that law that beautiful time in the nineties.
Speaker 1: Do you remember that? Actually? That was Wow. They had
Speaker 1: a lot to do with crapper reis in Georgia too, Definitely.
Speaker 1: UM say the stuff about the lambic so, I thought
Speaker 1: that was really interesting, okay, um. So lambics are um
Speaker 1: a type of spontaneously fermented brew. I've had it. I
Speaker 1: didn't know this though, the same problem that the um
Speaker 1: old Germans had um with you know, local stuff getting
Speaker 1: in there the UM. I guess the French when they're
Speaker 1: producing this, these Lambics or the Belgians um French, and
Speaker 1: they're they're basically just leaving their stuff out to be
Speaker 1: exposed to wild yeast that grows in the area. It's
Speaker 1: crazy spontaneous fermentation. And I've had, Like I said, I'd
Speaker 1: tried lambic in the past, and I didn't know what
Speaker 1: made it so special that that was it. I don't
Speaker 1: care for it a whole lot. It's kind of has
Speaker 1: a sour aftertaste, its fruity sort of cider almost. Yeah,
Speaker 1: not enough hops. Oh, no, I like, what's your favorite beer? Actually?
Speaker 1: I mean to asking that. So I'm a pretty big
Speaker 1: fan of um anything New Amsterdam puts out. Yeah, they're great,
Speaker 1: um fat tires point of the all time best. Yeah,
Speaker 1: our friends that we have friends fans at Brooklyn Brewery.
Speaker 1: Yeah and New AMSTU. Remember they sent us like a
Speaker 1: bunch of beer. They were the first ones they did.
Speaker 1: Thanks again, guys. Um, Yeah, we have fans at Brooklyn Brewery.
Speaker 1: They sent beach towels and other swag they did. Uh.
Speaker 1: We had a fan who sent us some Shiner Bach once,
Speaker 1: but I don't think he was related to them in
Speaker 1: any way. He was just from Texas. Yeah, that's a
Speaker 1: Texas beer, right, Um, my all time favorite. It's just
Speaker 1: it's never been toppled. Like I've had plenty of beer.
Speaker 1: I'm like, this is really good, like innocent gun. Have
Speaker 1: you ever had that? Oh my god, it's like ambrosia.
Speaker 1: It's the most amazing thing ever. But you you can't
Speaker 1: just drink like one after the other if you're in
Speaker 1: such a mood. It's just it's just a lot. It's
Speaker 1: very rich. But my so my favorite beer, that's just
Speaker 1: no one's ever topped all day is Sierra Nevada pale Ale.
Speaker 1: I'm right there with you. It's just the best beer.
Speaker 1: I think that's anyone anyone's ever made. It's delicious and nutritious,
Speaker 1: it's refreshing. Yeah, I want to go to their brewery. Um.
Speaker 1: I like the dog Fish had stuff. Um, but I'm
Speaker 1: I'm in to try. And you know, we have these
Speaker 1: stores here in Atlanta now and Indicator where I live with,
Speaker 1: you know, all the myriad craft beers, and I'll try
Speaker 1: any kind of any kind of pale ale or I
Speaker 1: p a. Have you been to Ale? Yeah? I have,
Speaker 1: that's yeah. And they have the growlers there, which is
Speaker 1: always kind of fun. Yeah. You just get something on tappen,
Speaker 1: drink it out of a jug like an old pirate.
Speaker 1: And I also have to say our local boys at
Speaker 1: Sweetwater are killing it too. Like there's like as far
Speaker 1: as pale ales go, Sierra Nevadas and the four twenty
Speaker 1: very very close four twenties good. I will always go
Speaker 1: for that if it's um, if they don't have the
Speaker 1: seer on them. And I remember my first beer very distinctly,
Speaker 1: do you Yeah, Because I, as everyone listens to the
Speaker 1: show NOWS, I was a very good, good Baptist boy
Speaker 1: growing up, So I didn't um, I didn't drink or
Speaker 1: anything like that until I was older. And I remember
Speaker 1: the first time I tasted beer. I had only had
Speaker 1: soda as far as a carbonated beverage, and that's the
Speaker 1: only thing I could like expect, And I just remember thinking,
Speaker 1: this is so weird tasting. It's like it's fizzy like
Speaker 1: a soda, but it wouldn't taste anything like a soda.
Speaker 1: And I'm like, oh, how do people drink this stuff?
Speaker 1: And then like thirty seconds later, you're trying it again, like, oh,
Speaker 1: why can't I stop? I want to stop? Yeah? Um,
Speaker 1: first beer, huh, I don't remember mine? Remember there was
Speaker 1: a long gone. I think you're probably younger than I was.
Speaker 1: I don't remember. I mean my dad drank like old
Speaker 1: Milwaukee tall boys, and I'm sure like I tried like
Speaker 1: a sip of his when I was a kid. Or see,
Speaker 1: we didn't have beer in the house, so that it
Speaker 1: was just winn't around. Um alright, so where are we chuckers?
Speaker 1: We could talk about some of the older beers in existence. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so there's like actual old beer. It's like over a
Speaker 1: hundred years old. Like that that particular bottle of beer
Speaker 1: was manufactured like a hundred seventy eight years ago. And
Speaker 1: there's two shipwrecks that had beer on them that ironically
Speaker 1: are competing for the oldest beer in the world. Um,
Speaker 1: and they both went down in. I know, it's maddening. Um.
Speaker 1: There's one in the Baltic Sea. There was a shipment
Speaker 1: of beer and champagne from Copenhagen to St. Petersburg that
Speaker 1: went down in. And then there's a shipwreck in the
Speaker 1: English Channel UM in eighteen and a guy in named
Speaker 1: Um Keith Thomas. He was a microbiologist, I believe. Um.
Speaker 1: He got his hands on some of the bottles of
Speaker 1: this beer that is still around and Um tried it
Speaker 1: and was like he vomited, and he's like, maybe I
Speaker 1: can figure out some other way to do this. So
Speaker 1: he got the yeast from this beer, and UM got
Speaker 1: a colony going of the living yeast, same same yeast.
Speaker 1: It's not like a descendant of it, like this is
Speaker 1: the yeast. And Um he got it going again and
Speaker 1: found like an old porter recipe and now he makes
Speaker 1: flag Porter, which in and of itself is one of
Speaker 1: the better beers around. Oh I also want to say,
Speaker 1: I like just about anything Sam Smith does too. I
Speaker 1: don't know that Sam Smith like oatmeal, stout and winter welcome. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Sammy Smith. Sorry, sure they're Uh they had the Shakespeare
Speaker 1: stout yea when that Sammy Smith, that's rogue. Yeah, that's rogue.
Speaker 1: But I've had that. Guy Ale is awesome. Man, I'm
Speaker 1: getting thirsty. Uh. Dogfish Head has revived a recipe that
Speaker 1: they claim is the and that's what we're talking about earlier.
Speaker 1: Is he the guy from dog fish had claims it's
Speaker 1: the oldest known ferminted recipe in the history of man.
Speaker 1: And uh it was from a Neolithic burial site in China,
Speaker 1: and it is called they brew it now. It's called
Speaker 1: Chateau uh jiaho uh j i h h j i
Speaker 1: a h u from seven thousand b C. And they
Speaker 1: decoded it, uh molecularly from Clay Potts founded a Neolithic
Speaker 1: burial site and have brewed this stuff. And um, they're
Speaker 1: also the ones they get a little crazy. You know,
Speaker 1: they did the Midas touch brew that was supposedly King
Speaker 1: Midas's um recipe or from his tomb. And we have
Speaker 1: people right in But I love what they're doing over
Speaker 1: there at dog Fish Head. They also did the one
Speaker 1: based on the hymn to Nick Cancy the what the hymn?
Speaker 1: Didn't cantye that to marry in one right? Um? So
Speaker 1: there's also some brewers that have been around for a while,
Speaker 1: like Stella Artois. If you look on the label, you'll
Speaker 1: see that, um, it has some mention of thirteen sixty six. Man,
Speaker 1: that's when it was. That's when they started brewing that supposedly.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I like a nice summertime beer for me, agreed. Um.
Speaker 1: August Steiner was um began in probably the oldest beer
Speaker 1: in the world as far as like brewing. The recipe
Speaker 1: um is uh winehan Staffen. Did I get it? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Vahan v han Stefan. Oh nice. So those are brewed
Speaker 1: by Ben Benedictine monks. That beer has been brewed since
Speaker 1: the seven hundreds. But the weinhan Staffen Uh the guys
Speaker 1: brewing that also operate the oldest um continuously functioning brewery
Speaker 1: in the world, which opened its doors in ten party
Speaker 1: and it's been going ever since. That's awesome. It's about
Speaker 1: to celebrate its thousandth anniversary. That's so cool. Um, what
Speaker 1: else a man named Arthur Guinness and seventeen fifty six
Speaker 1: did a very smart thing by signing a nine thousand
Speaker 1: year lease on a building in Dublin and they have
Speaker 1: been making the old delicious Guinness beer there since then.
Speaker 1: And I enjoyed at our south By Southwest event at
Speaker 1: Fedoe Irish Pub. I enjoyed myself some Guinness at that
Speaker 1: a bit love me some Guinness. It's Gonnas sponsoring you, now, No,
Speaker 1: none of these people are. But why are you wearing
Speaker 1: that leather eight bulb jack with Guinness patches all over it?
Speaker 1: The Schlitz story I thought was kind of interesting. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I searched the story up because I had remembered hearing
Speaker 1: it you back, and I was like, we gotta mention now.
Speaker 1: So what was the deal? They were making good beer
Speaker 1: for a long time, We're one of the top three,
Speaker 1: and then they changed their recipe in the late seventies
Speaker 1: and just screwed it all up. They wanted to be
Speaker 1: number one and they were, they were number two. Wanted
Speaker 1: to be number one, so they decided that they were
Speaker 1: going to um just change it, and they changed it
Speaker 1: in a really lazy, cost efficient way. Instead of malt,
Speaker 1: they used corn, syrup, high fruit toast corn syrup. Such
Speaker 1: a bad idea. And then they didn't filter it as
Speaker 1: much either, So you had this really weird tasting chunky
Speaker 1: style beer. And this is in the seventies. What by
Speaker 1: Schlitz's market share was one It went from the number
Speaker 1: two selling beer in America to within just a couple
Speaker 1: of years, one percent of the market. I think more
Speaker 1: than one person lost their job on that that move.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, they may have like killed those people. Um.
Speaker 1: So they discontinued the brand altogether at one point, didn't they. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it went under and then Strows, which I also remember
Speaker 1: from my childhood, Um was, uh, what said, well, you
Speaker 1: know what we're gonna buy you guys. So they bought
Speaker 1: Schlitz and then, um, they just bought the label. They're like,
Speaker 1: we don't want that. Keep your keep all this leftover
Speaker 1: chunky beer. Um, but they bought the label and apparently
Speaker 1: rolled out the classic sixties formula, which I have not tried.
Speaker 1: I have not either. We do want to shout out
Speaker 1: to Yengling as well. Um. In nine David Yengling opened
Speaker 1: a brewery in Pennsylvania in Potts Bell and it is
Speaker 1: still open today. The oldest operating brewery in the United States,
Speaker 1: still in the Yngling family, And uh, they're black and
Speaker 1: tan is very delicious to me, and it's a very
Speaker 1: popular beer. People seek it out. I think one of
Speaker 1: the reasons why is because it's tradition and it's delicious,
Speaker 1: and it has cute puppies in their labels and marketing materials. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I want to ask Budweiser, if you are the
Speaker 1: makers of Budweiser and you're listening, bring back the bullet
Speaker 1: bottles and you'll thank me later. Do you know who
Speaker 1: makes um Budweiser? Anheuser Bush? Right? Uh? You know who
Speaker 1: owns Anheuser Busch um in BEV. They're a European company, really,
Speaker 1: as something as American as Budweiser is owned by the Europeans. Now, well,
Speaker 1: and Heisa isn't exactly American, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I hadn't thought about that, neither as Bush.
Speaker 1: But yeah, the bullet bottles, do you remember those? They
Speaker 1: were short, little stubby No, those are the barrels that
Speaker 1: these were bullets. They were short and kind of went
Speaker 1: up and then just graduated up and they were guarantee
Speaker 1: you people would buy those the classic Budweiser Fallus bottle,
Speaker 1: Well Miller High Life came back with their old school bottle.
Speaker 1: I haven't said, oh, yes, yes, I know exactly what
Speaker 1: you're talking. Remember the old bullets. Yeah, they were cute
Speaker 1: and uh, I think if Budweiser brought those back, people
Speaker 1: would really jump on that because if you know, everyone
Speaker 1: likes that old school stuff, you can look like you're
Speaker 1: in the seventies again or eighties seventies. Yeah, you can
Speaker 1: send your thanks by check to Chuck Annheuser Busch money
Speaker 1: starts rolling, or just a case of the bullets. So, um,
Speaker 1: this is kind of unusual. We don't usually throw out
Speaker 1: cool random facts at the end, but there's some cool ones.
Speaker 1: You go ahead, Okay, I'm going to start with the
Speaker 1: London Brewery of eighteen fourteen. Yeah, so there was a
Speaker 1: hundred thousand gallon tank fermenting tank of ale uh in
Speaker 1: London at a brewery and it exploded and when it
Speaker 1: did it killed eight people and destroyed a pub nearby.
Speaker 1: It actually killed nine people. The ninth guy died the
Speaker 1: next day. Because when these hundred thousand gallons of ale
Speaker 1: flooded the streets, people started drinking it. One guy drank
Speaker 1: so much that he died of alcohol poisoning. Wow, isn't
Speaker 1: that crazy, Josh. According to statistics, the Czech Republic leads
Speaker 1: the world and beer consumption per capita. I have been there,
Speaker 1: and I can tell you they love their beer. It's
Speaker 1: cheaper than their water. I have been there too, and
Speaker 1: it is delicious. Over a hundred and fifty six liters
Speaker 1: per year per person. That's for everyone that they don't
Speaker 1: just say like twenty one year old, uh, you know citizens.
Speaker 1: So that is four and thirty nine beers a year.
Speaker 1: Twelve ounces, right, they're probably sixteen ounces over there, or
Speaker 1: are they twelve? I don't know. I don't know how
Speaker 1: they broke that downs. So that is eighteen cases of
Speaker 1: beer per person, about a case and a half five
Speaker 1: s a leader a half leader. I think it's like
Speaker 1: a tall boy can a big can. Well. I think
Speaker 1: most of Europe it's like that, because I remember being
Speaker 1: in London for the first time in thinking, man, you
Speaker 1: guys have his tall boys and they're like, what's a
Speaker 1: tall boy? Oh wait that was Australian that was neither
Speaker 1: actually pretty close Matt's and they're laughing at my hackneed
Speaker 1: attempts uh best symbol. Yeah, the red triangle famous. It
Speaker 1: was registered as a trademark in eighteen seventy six. It's
Speaker 1: the world's oldest trademark. Pretty cool. And the beer Stein.
Speaker 1: You have been to Germany, Yeah, the beer gardens there,
Speaker 1: it's exactly what you think you're gonna get. You're to
Speaker 1: get a four and a half foot tall German woman
Speaker 1: with four arms as big as your waist, carrying like
Speaker 1: five of those big, huge mugs of beer in each hand.
Speaker 1: And it was exactly what you want if you're going
Speaker 1: over to your beer grou And I was like, Wow,
Speaker 1: I'm so glad it's like this. And my buddy Brett
Speaker 1: and I actually had a very fun night in Germany
Speaker 1: drinking with this ah old fat German dude that didn't
Speaker 1: speak any English and I spoke a little bit of German,
Speaker 1: but we all love the Beatles, and we drank with
Speaker 1: this dude for like three hours, singing Beatles songs in
Speaker 1: both English and German. And Carl and I have a
Speaker 1: picture with this guy still. It was one of my
Speaker 1: great great memories of traveling abroad. Well tell him where
Speaker 1: the beer stein came from? Oh, the beer stein comes
Speaker 1: from the bubonic plague. They're like, we need to put
Speaker 1: lids on these things so we don't get any disease
Speaker 1: in there. Until they came up with the beer stein. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and what was it to the pottery? Was they were
Speaker 1: there were advancements in ceramics, right. I think the money
Speaker 1: fact is the bubonic plague created beer steins, so that's it.
Speaker 1: But I didn't get steins in Germany. You know, it
Speaker 1: was just a big mug. It's like is you know,
Speaker 1: it looks like a half gallon of beer. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure how much it is, but it was good doomkalee stuff.
Speaker 1: Nice man, Matt, do we get anything wrong? He said,
Speaker 1: We're pretty good. That's good enough. I'm sure that there's
Speaker 1: some homebrewers that will take us to task. But we
Speaker 1: did our best. Man. We want to hear about it. Um,
Speaker 1: do you have anything else right now? I'm done? Okay,
Speaker 1: So that's it for beer. You can type beer into
Speaker 1: the search bar at how stuff works dot com. Remember,
Speaker 1: as Chuck said at the beginning, don't go out and
Speaker 1: drink beer if you're not twenty one. UM in the
Speaker 1: United States and drink responsibly. Yes, don't be a goin.
Speaker 1: Don't ever drink and dry it. It's just dumb, agreed
Speaker 1: chuck a little older and you realize that the commercials
Speaker 1: are all right, that's just a stupid thing to do.
Speaker 1: Um and uh so that's it for beer right now? Um,
Speaker 1: I said, search for how stuff works dot com. I
Speaker 1: think so it's time for listening. That's right, Josh. And
Speaker 1: you know the other reason why you get a little
Speaker 1: older and you say drink responsibly is because you do
Speaker 1: a lot of stupid stuff. If you don't, oh man,
Speaker 1: and you will be the butt of many many jokes.
Speaker 1: Even if no one gets hurt, you will. You will
Speaker 1: act a fool and end up with like toothpaste up
Speaker 1: your nose because you've passed out at a party. If
Speaker 1: that's what happens in your world when you drink too much,
Speaker 1: you know, you've seen a pass out at a party,
Speaker 1: and people like draw stuff on your face and take
Speaker 1: pictures of you and put it all over the internet.
Speaker 1: Plus you feel crutty the next morning. Yeah, exactly, see
Speaker 1: our hangovers podcast for that. All right, um, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: call this a pretty cool interesting email from an attorney
Speaker 1: about doing guys. I just got done listening to your
Speaker 1: podcast on duels. I thought you might like to know
Speaker 1: that I and I am sure many of your fans
Speaker 1: enjoyed the podcast with a twinge of sad This because
Speaker 1: alas I cannot duel. Why you ask, I am an attorney,
Speaker 1: and one of the states in which I am licensed
Speaker 1: is Kentucky. And when an attorney in Kentucky is sworn in,
Speaker 1: he or she swears an oath. And when I was
Speaker 1: sworn in the Commonwealth of Kentucky, it contained this additional tidbit.
Speaker 1: In order to practice in the Commonwealth, I had to
Speaker 1: swear that I would not participate in any duels. She
Speaker 1: still has to say. This isn't that crazy, It's pretty cool.
Speaker 1: What's more, as I listened to the podcast, I realized
Speaker 1: that I had been preparing to duel my whole life.
Speaker 1: During college, I worked as a serving wench at Medieval Times,
Speaker 1: watching jousts each night and twice on Saturday's. My senior
Speaker 1: year of college, in order to fulfill my pe requirement,
Speaker 1: I took fencing, which was actually really interesting and more
Speaker 1: athletic than I expected. So sadly, no matter how much
Speaker 1: experience we may have, neither I nor my fellow members
Speaker 1: of the Kentucky bar come stuff. You should know. Fans
Speaker 1: can use the information we clean you from your podcast. Uh.
Speaker 1: There was talk in the last few years of uh years,
Speaker 1: of removing that particular clause from the oath, but as
Speaker 1: far as I know, newly minted Kentucky attorneys are still
Speaker 1: required to abstain from dueling nuts. It just seems logical.
Speaker 1: I think we should add that to just about anything,
Speaker 1: like when you go get your driver's license you have
Speaker 1: to check a box that says I won't do or
Speaker 1: in your marriage vowels. Yeah, there's there's just a lot
Speaker 1: of places where we could insert that. And that is
Speaker 1: from Rebecca right in Sincentucky, Ohio. Really that's what she signed.
Speaker 1: It is No, she signed it Cincinnati, but I like
Speaker 1: to say Sanantucky. Uh. Well, let's see. Oh, if you're
Speaker 1: a homebrewer, we want to hear from you. Um. And
Speaker 1: by hear from you, we mean it's into some of
Speaker 1: your weares. Chuck said that, not me, um, but he's right. So, uh,
Speaker 1: we want to hear from you via Twitter at s
Speaker 1: y ESK podcast. We wanted to hear from you on
Speaker 1: Facebook at facebook dot com, slash of you Should Know,
Speaker 1: and We want to get emails from you, and you
Speaker 1: can send those Two Stuff podcast at Discovery dot com.
Speaker 1: For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
Speaker 1: how Stuff Works dot com.