By Austin Cooper
Did you know that beer can solve all of your problems? That’s right, foamy delicious beer is a great remedy for nearly any problem. Hungry? Beer is food! Have an ugly significant other? Beer makes them attractive! Smelly armpits? Mask it with beer breath! Failing math? Bribe your teacher with beer! Crooked teeth? Beer!
Indeed, beer plays a significant role in our lives and shapes us, just like it helped shape society. Oh yes, the ancient Mesopotamians knew well the value of beer and even used it as a form of payment. According to Bohumil Volesky, an author and professor of chemical engineering at McGill University, the Romans preferred wine and stored it in lead containers, which may have given the beer-drinking Barbarians an advantage in their battles.
In our personal lives, it can greatly affect our mood, health, and karate skills, even where we wake up and how low our standards can drop at a bar. Yet, despite the great importance and impact beer has on our lives, we often marginalize its value or demean ourselves by drinking inferior brews.
There are many styles of beer that can be employed to improve your life, ranging from the light and hoppy India Pale Ales to the mysterious, murky depths of Irish stouts, and everything in between. Despite the endless range of flavor profiles available, an overwhelming favorite tends to be a combination of water and urine. Many American light beers are particularly bad, gaining popularity only because they are cheap. However, you get what you pay for. Other options at the grocery store may leave students – especially economic-minded students – feeling forlorn and lost. Assuming the poor soul can find the exact beer he desires, paying upwards of $2 a beer can cut deep into a student’s budget and is not feasible. Fortunately, a solution exists whereby great beer can be had at reasonable prices. If you want it done right, you have to do it yourself.
Brewing one’s own beer is both rewarding and economical. Assuming that equipment and bottles are readily available, quality beer can be made at the price of 30 to 70 cents per bottle. More importantly, the brewer can decide exactly how it tastes. With you as the brewmaster, your beer can be any combination of hoppy, sweet, malty and foamy, and can be as light as straw or as dark as motor oil. The recently-repealed German Beer Purity Law declared that only hops, barley and water could be used in making beer. In 1487, when it was enacted, they did not yet know about yeast. As brewmaster, you can choose any ingredients you like: chocolate, vanilla, garlic, more beer, anything! A recipe listed in “The Complete Joy of Homebrewing” actually lists an old recipe for a cock ale, which calls for a whole rooster to be added to the beer.
Brewing your own beer will enable you to do anything your heart desires, so long as it is drinking a beer. So, for the sake of good taste, economics and your own well-being, go brew yourself a cold one.
