Wednesday, May 19, 2021

The Hamburglar


We've been loudly alerted by a conservative gentleman on Fox News that Joe Biden is coming after our hamburgers, specifically the patriotic July 4th hamburgers we were really looking forward to. He's going to knock them right off our grill in the name of combating climate change, and Kamala's going to spit in our potato salad. Worse, they're going to make us drink plant-based beer.

I was more than a little disturbed because I had no idea there was meat in beer. In fact I'm a bit of a purist about beer. I don't even want fruit in it. Water, hops, and barley should cover the matter. This in fact is the whole point behind the famous Reinheitsgebot, the law named after that digestive condition that follows the ingestion of German beer, and follows it very closely.

I don't blame the beer. I credit it. I traveled to Germany when I was nineteen and the entire time I was there I had a rollicking case of Reinheitsgebot but it didn't bother me at all. Sure, it resembled Dire Rear in many respects, but there was no feeling of illness involved--it was more of an intestinal enthusiasm. My gut bacteria were totally thrilled with German beer and their zeal tended to become evident quickly. This was not a problem at all unless you couldn't make it to the toilet on time, but if you could, it was kind of fun. German toilets, at least in 1972, had a presentation dais upon which you could deposit and admire your output before whooshing it into the sewer. German people do not have to bother with the stupid little tissue in the stool sample kit and that is one big advantage to being elderly in Germany, along with the beer, which is magnificent. Why they ever went to war we'll never know.

Presumably German beer is great because it is water, barley, and hops only, thanks to the Bavarian Reinheitsgebot regulations that were instituted five hundred years ago to prevent people from introducing impurities into beer such as wheat or rice or Black Death. The Germans keep their meat utterly as a side dish to the beer and usually in the form of pig. If you look up meat-based beer, however, you naturally find bacon beer, because the modern merchant class can't be prevented from putting bacon or pumpkin spice in things, even though both are much better in their original containers (bacon and pumpkin pie). Meat can be and has been fermented, but we do not call it beer. We call it sausage, and it is less refreshing than you'd think, on a hot day.

If there is meat beer anywhere, it's probably in the Arctic, where they might have to brew beer out of caribou, because it's either that or tundra, and fermented tundra is bland. The only other exception that I know of is of course standard Budweiser, which is made out of Clydesdale urine, but you wouldn't want to drink it.

Now it is true that some brewers add animal-centric items to their beer to aid in the filtration process, such as your fish bladders, your decaying animal hides, boiled bones, sinew, and the hooves of animals specially bred for the purpose ("draft horses"). Most of these protein bits are sticky in nature and any random crap that you don't want in your beer will glom onto them and sink harmlessly away. They are not primarily meant to flavor the beer and are not considered ingredients in most countries, any more than your poop is considered one of your ingredients, even though it kind of is.

So based on my research, I would say that the distraught conservative gentleman was correct about Biden making us drink plant-based beer, and it is also true that he's coming after our hamburgers. But Trump would too. He loves hamburgers.

20 comments:

  1. Murr, you almost had me doing one of those cinematic spit-takes while sipping my coffee and reading that first paragraph! Well, I'm not a big beer person but now I WANT to be and a German beer drinker at that. Enjoyed those photos of your second half as well, and I just caught that bird on top of that top beer bottle, haha!

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  2. think that every post from here on in should contain at least one picture of Studley, whether he is mentioned in said post or not. He puts such an idiotic smile on my face.

    One of our chickadees likes to take a drink from our hummingbird feeder, as one of the little yellow centers is missing, so he can just stick his beak in there and drink. You can see he loves the stuff, 'cause he does "flippy-wing" while he's drinking it. He once came with a chickadee entourage, but they couldn't seem to grasp the idea that you had to go to one specific portal to drink.

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    1. I wonder if it makes him drunk? I wouldn't have thought of them as nectar-drinkers.

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  3. I know you're always interested in digestion, and wanted to make sure you didn't miss this.

    https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/05/evolution-butts/618915/

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    1. I believe that Ms. Wu's suggestion that we "gaze deep into its marvelous, multifunctional anus" is a phrase destined for immortality!

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  4. There is a recipe from American colonial times for chicken beer. As I recall from reading it, you boil the chicken and use the broth. I have yet to see any of the NW's fine microbreweries take up THAT challenge.

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  5. I always thought that Budweiser was "bar whiz." Thank you for the correction!

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    1. I'm not sure that was a correction. I think you had it right.

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  6. I suspect German beer was manufactured to help the German digestion system cope with their hearty potato based diet. As if, or in case, the mountains of sauerkraut didn't have the same effect.

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    1. Hmm. I WAS eating a lot of German food while in Germany. I SUPPOSE it might have had an effect.

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  7. When I toured Germany with a theatre company, certain venues would be described as 'beer and sausages' where at least one member of the Northern audience would be wearing lederhosen. I watched in horror as the barman poured my first weissbier and made sure all the sediment in the bottle was mixed thoroughly until it was cloudy. No ill effects.

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  8. Whatever the Mexicans put in Corona, I like it. Otherwise, not a Beer Fan. *Gasp* Who knew, of all the things that could be come after, ReTrumplicans Dog Whistle would be Hamburger and Beer? *Snort*

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