“24 hours in a day, 24 beers in a case. Coincidence? I think not,” humorist Henry L. Mencken once wrote. “Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy,” said American statesman Benjamin Franklin.
After all, 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 is the world’s oldest and most widely consumed alcoholic beverage and the third most popular drink overall (after water and tea). It 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. Dark beer is better for you than 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.
