A few weeks back, my girlfriend gave me this sweet turnaround Valentine's weekend. Beer was the theme, and Saturday involved visiting 2 breweries. The first brewery was Half Acre and they had 3 beers on tap (Daisy Cutter, Ginger Twist, and Gossamer). We ended up buying a sturdy pint glass and a 6 pack of lager not on tap. I also learned that at most breweries you can buy beer by the half gallon; it comes in this bottle called a growler that looks it should belong to some toothless old guy taking swigs in the Appalachians. It's actually not the best deal per ounce but still a sweet concept. A second fact that I learned - in both this and the next brewery - is that most beer enthusiasts have beards. I would say that roughly 40% of the room had some impressive facial hair action.
At the next brewery, called Metropolitan, we got an actual brewery tour while our plastic cups were generously refilled. It's run by a husband-wife team (the husband had a cool biker beard tuft), and I think one of them has a background in Microbiology since the technical aspect of the brewing process was wonderfully detailed. My favorite beer there was Krankshaft; it was unbelievably smooth and made for chugging. There was a question and answer at tour's end, and the guy next to me - the one with a beard - asked about beer pairings. Ever heard of a Sommelier for wine? They have their counterparts in the beer realm, and they're called Cicerones. As I tried out the word 'cicerone', I noticed that nearly 60% of the room had beards.
Is there some connection between beer and beards? I have several hypotheses.
Perhaps the words 'beer' and 'beard' sound so similar, that everyone growing a beard forms a linguistic connection to drinking beer and vice versa. The German word for beer is bier and bart for beard; I'm not sure about the pronunciation, but they could be similar. However, the Spanish word for beer is cerveza and barba for beard, not similar sounding at all. This linguistic hypothesis could still hold if one could prove that there is no connection between beer and beards in Spain as there seems to be in the U.S. One could only be certain if they traveled the world, observing beards and drinking beers.
My second hypothesis was easily defeated. I thought that both beards and beers could be seen as a sign of manliness. But there are so many beard styles that I'm convinced it's not the beard that makes the man; the man makes the beard, and the same goes for beer. Plus, I know lots of girls who like beer just fine.
Hypothesis number 3 deals with the concept of linked genes. Did you ever get that kid in high school, who somehow has a full beard at the age of 14, to buy you beer at the gas station? Every high school has at least one. On one hand there is a social factor; the kid with a beard who buys the beer is also likely to try some of this beer. I believe a biological analysis takes this deeper; this social pressure for the bearded child may be guided by biological constraints. If you have long pieces of hair in great quantities all over you face, then it's likely that more food particles from every meal will remain around your facial region for longer. Bacteria eventually find these food particles and spread mouth plague. A surefire way to prevent this is to douse your hair in large quantities of sterilized liquid, or beer. Thus, the man gifted with facial hair at an early age also has a natural inclination toward drinking beer regularly. Further molecular analysis is needed to confirm this hypothesis.
My last hypothesis deals with sensation. Perhaps drinking beer with a beard is simply more pleasurable. The cool liquid and froth tickles facial hairs and prolongs the aftertaste. Sadly, I will not be able to test this hypothesis for about another decade; I'll probably be over 30 by the time I can grow a decent beard.
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