National Beer Day is observed annually on April 7th. Celebrate with a pint of pale ale, lager, stout, wheat beer or pale ale.
One of the world’s oldest prepared beverages, beer possibly dates back to 9500 BC when cereal was first farmed. It is recorded in the written history of ancient Iraq and ancient Egypt.
Beer is the world’s most widely consumed alcoholic beverage. Following water and tea, it is the third most popular drink overall.
On April 7, 1933, President Franklin Roosevelt took the first step toward ending Prohibition and signed a law that allowed people to brew and sell beer, in the United States, as long as it remained below 4.0% alcohol by volume (ABV). Beer drinkers celebrated and were happy to be able to purchase beer again for the first time in thirteen years.
- The most expensive state to buy a beer may be Tennessee.
- The most popular state to grab is a beer is Nevada.
- Egypt was likely the first civilization to tax beer. Queen Cleopatra imposed a tax on beer in order, she claimed, to discourage public drunkenness, though it is widely believed that the tax was actually used to raise money to fund war with Rome.
- Beer is the most popular alcoholic beverage in the United States. According to a 2016 Gallup poll, 43% of Americans who drink alcohol say they prefer beer (32% say wine and 20% say liquor).
- German beers are often labeled “Gebraut nach dem Bayerischen Reinheitsgebot von 1516” which translates roughly to “brewed according to the Bavarian Purity Law of 1516.”
- To help pay for the Civil War, Congress imposed an excise tax on beer. The Revenue Act of 1862, signed into law by President Lincoln.
- In 1991, President George H.W. Bush signed a bill which raised taxes on luxuries -that same bill nearly doubled the tax on beer.
- The oldest operating brewing company in the U.S. is D.G. Yuengling & Son, owned by Forbes billionaire Richard Yuengling, Jr. Yuengling (“Ying-ling” and not “Yoong-ling” or “Yang-ling”), based in Pottsville, Pennsylvania, is one of the country’s five largest beer companies with an estimated $550 million in annual revenue in 2015.
- According to Infogroup, with 1.54 beer-related businesses per capita, Bend, Oregon is the most favorable U.S. city for beer lovers.
- Recent data from the Brewers Association shows that craft beer accounts for 22% of the U.S. beer market.
- Cenosillicaphobia is the fear of an empty beer glass.
- The study of beer and beer-making is called zythology, derived from the Greek words “zythos” (beer) and “logos” (study).
- Women were the first professional brewers and were called brewsters.
- Brewing beer was such a serious task in ancient Babylon that if a person brewed a bad batch, he was drowned.
- With an alcohol content of 67.5 percent compared to the regular 5 percent, the strongest beer in the world is called Snake Venom.
- A brewmaster in Oregon discovered a way to brew beer using yeast collected from his own beard.
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