For many hotels and restaurants, the sales of beverages take 25-30% of the overall sales numbers. Unfortunately, these figures make many hotel and restaurant managers neglect their beverage program.
Water and tea are the two most popular drinks on earth. Do you know what comes third? If you say coffee, you’re wrong. It’s beer, according to The Oxford Companion to Beer.
Beer is by far the most popular alcoholic drink in the world. Nearly 50 billion gallons of beer were consumed worldwide in 2016. Most of these beers were drunk in China, the United States, Brazil, Mexico, Russia, Germany, the United Kingdom, Vietnam, and Spain.
Filipinos also drink a lot of beer. In fact, the Philippines ranked near the middle of the pack overall among the 58 nations included in the “World Beer Index 2021.” As per index, Filipinos spend a normal $485.40 each year on lager.
“Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy,” American statesman Benjamin Franklin said. Although not referring to beer at all, British playwright George Bernard Shaw wrote: “When we drink, we get drunk. When we get drunk, we fall asleep. When we fall asleep, we commit no sin. When we commit no sin, we go to heaven. So, let’s all get drunk and go to heaven!”
“In heaven there is no beer, that’s why we drink it here,” so goes the line of a song that was originally composed as a movie score for the film 1956’s Die Fischerin vom Bodensee. “When we’re gone from here, all our friends will be drinking all our beer!”
Beer – which comes from the Old English word beor – is as old as human history. Wikipedia reports: “Beer is one of the oldest human-produced drinks. The written history of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia records the use of beer, and the drink has spread throughout the world; a 3,900-year-old Sumerian poem honoring Ninkasi, the patron goddess of brewing, contains the oldest surviving beer-recipe, describing the production of beer from barley bread, and in China, residue on pottery dating from around 5,000 years ago shows that beer was brewed using barley and other grains.”
In modern times, beer is produced by the brewing and fermentation of starches, mainly derived from cereal grains – the most common of which is malted barley, although wheat, corn and rice are also widely used.
Nutritionists claim beer contains vitamins B and B2 (as well as B6, which is needed to make hemoglobin, the red coloring in blood) and essential minerals like calcium, potassium, and phosphorus.
Many Filipinos don’t know that there are three main beer types: lager, ale and hybrid. However, beer can be categorized by these two main types: lagers and ales, according to Manfred Wagner, a senior lecturer at EHL Hospitality Business School in Switzerland.
“The two points of differentiation between these major beer classifications is the type of yeast and fermentation process,” Wagner explained. “Ales are fermented with top-fermenting yeast at warm temperatures, and lagers are fermented with bottom-fermenting yeast at cold temperatures. Some beers can be classified as hybrids, containing both lager beers and ale characteristics.”
Lager beers can be pale, amber, or dark. Among the three, pale lager is the most widely consumed and commercially available style of beer. The term "lager" comes from the German word for “storage.” as the beer was stored before drinking, traditionally in the same cool caves in which it was fermented.
Fascinating facts about beer abound. In 2001, some Belgian elementary schools started serving low-alcohol beer to schoolchildren (yes, you read it right!) at lunch as a healthier alternative to soda. Years earlier, in 1963, the Dutch beer Heineken developed beer bottles that could double as glass bricks to build houses. The goal was to eliminate waste and provide a cheap building material for low-income areas.
In Amsterdam, the government gives alcoholic people incentives after cleaning the streets. For a whole day of work, the government gives them five cans of beer, cigarettes, and 11 Euros. The government does so because it believes that even an alcoholic person can be productive and help the country in little ways.
Germany is noted for its Oktoberfest, an annual festival in Munich. It is held over a two-week period and ends on the first Sunday in October. In the United States, the National Beer Day is celebrated annually on the 7th of April. This event commemorates the signing of the Cullen-Harrison Act, which allowed the distribution and sale of beer in 1933.
Which should you drink: dark beer or light beer? A recent study published in the Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture has found that dark beer has higher iron content compared to lighter beers. Dark beer also contains more flavonoids which are natural oxidants that help to protect the body from disease.
A beer a day may help keep Alzheimer’s disease and other dementia at bay, researchers say. A 2005 study tracking the health of 11,000 older women showed that moderate drinkers (those who consumed about one drink a day) lowered their risk of mental decline by as much as 20 percent, compared to non-drinkers. In addition, older women who downed a drink a day scored as about 18 months “younger,” on average, on tests of mental skills than the non-drinkers.
Drinking beer also reduces the risk for diabetes. A 2011 Harvard study of about 38,000 middle-aged men found that when those who only drank occasionally raised their alcohol intake to one to two beers or other drinks daily, their risk of developing type 2 diabetes dropped by 25 percent. The researchers found no benefit to quaffing more than two drinks. The researchers found that alcohol increases insulin sensitivity, thus helping protect against diabetes.
Of course, there are also bad sides of drinking beer. For one, there’s such a thing as “beer belly.” In a German study, Gerard Klose said “dangers begin to emerge in men measuring more than 94 centimeters around the middle and become ‘really risky’ at a girth of 102 centimeters.”
It’s no secret that high levels of fat accumulated on the body is unhealthy and can cause serious illness over time. An article in the London Times reports that fat that collects around the internal organs to form the typically male beer belly will also find its way into the bloodstream and in turn, raise your cholesterol levels. This leads to heart and vascular disease and strokes.
Again, as in all things, moderation is the key here. A 12-ounce of beer (one bottle) is equal to one drink. One drink per day for women, two for men, is considered a safe and beneficial amount. Excessive drinking will produce negative health effects.
“Beer,” commented Thomas Jefferson, “if drank in moderation, softens the temper, cheers the spirit, and promotes health.”