SGTU: Beer

Beer has a long and prestigious history that dates back to the Egyptians. It is not known when beer was first drunk in Ancient Egypt, but some experts put the discovery at around 345B.C, when the crown of Egypt’s Pharaohs was supreme from the Mountains of the Moon in what is now Ethiopia in the South, and extending West as far as Libya, enclosing what was the first great empire of the known world.

By the fall of Ancient Egypt in 343B.C., when those loyal to the last Pharaoh; Nectanebo II, had formed the now legendary defences around the last remaining breweries on the upper Nile, our foremost historians have assumed that beer had become an integral facet of Egyptian culture.

Beer has maintained an almost astral level of popularity to this day, and you will attain a much more thorough understanding of the finer points of beer at university. Even if you consider yourself to be verging on expert status after completing your A-levels, there are at least three years of intense further learning to be done.

Lager

Lager is the choix de vivre for all of Essex’s proudest sons and millions more nationwide. Chosen because of its light taste and colour, intensely refreshing cutting fizz, and the ability to bring you to your knees inside of ten pints if the stuff’s any good. Ranging from the cheap and watery through to liquid that only just snicks inside the boundaries of being served in shots instead of pints, costs, quality and acuteness of hangover vary wildly from brand to brand, and, particularly in student bars, from watering hole to watering hole. Emphasis on the watering. Long term effects of drinking lager range from the feared beer-belly to a propensity to sing football songs at inappropriate moments. This can depend on age, area of the UK and of course on personality, but even Mummy’s Precious Little Darling has been known to break into seventeen choruses of ‘Olé olé olé’ after a night on the Carling.

Bitter, or Real Ale

Just as before Christina and Britney there was Kylie, Bitter and Ale pre-date Lager by thousands of years. Mostly because no-one was bothered about beer lasting very long when it wasn’t being drunk. You made the beer, and then you drank it. There was none of this loading it into enormous tankers and shipping it across the world, waiting for strange old ladies to kidnap your drivers in their dank and dripping basements. The world was a lot simpler. You made the drink, you drank the drink. It is this manner that prehistoric records tell us history progressed for millennia. Prior to the industrial revolution scientific progress was minimal. Beer was king. The only civilisation to make any kind of scientific progress before Britain in the 1790s was Rome, and only because they had acquired a serious liking for WINE. You grew wheat, your friend grew hops, a few rows of beet provided the sugar and you were away. The wife kept out of it, and thirty centuries passed before she managed to find the homebrew kit in the barn and we were forced to get down to the global equivalent of clearing out the loft and sorting out the grouting in the bathroom.

In the UK, Real Ale has acquired a similar status to that of a third division football club. Devotees are of the die-hard kind, they refuse to be swayed by logic, or taste, or simple facts. Once committed to the institution of Ale, there is no going back, and all non-Ale drinkers must be scoffed and laughed at, although only when in the company of other, pipe-smoking Ale drinkers, and only if the non-Ale drinkers are in small groups.

Ale is darker, richer and heavier than lager, and is more difficult to drink in large quantities. It has a completely different taste to lager, as do its respective drinkers. Price-wise, breweries in Britain have cottoned onto the fact that cheaper beer is better selling beer, and the Wetherspoon’s chain has been quick to take advantage of this. Bitters and Ales are available more cheaply in chain pubs in the UK than ever before, and Ales have been enjoying a renaissance because of this.

The long-term effects of drinking bitter are legion. There is potential for leaning towards lengthy discussion of minority sports such as rings, skittles, pub darts and cricket. Real Ale has been known to lead to uncontrollable beard growth in both sexes. It is with great seriousness that the writer of this guide presents this warning: drink bitter and enjoy it, but shave every day forthwith.