Controlling Heartburn

If you still harbor illusions money or love makes the world go round, think again. To some, it’s not money or love that makes the world go round; it’s beer. Beer is the comfort drink of macho men, the dependable buddy males run to in times of crisis - when he loses his wife, for example, or can’t find his passport wallet. It’s the perfect companion during barbecues, beach parties, and cold nights spent staring at the sky. In fact, such is beer’s importance to the male psyche that it joins wine, tea, and coffee in that rarest of bandwagon - drinks so crucial to humankind they don’t just put serious dents on leather wallets, literature has actually been published about them.

There are many interesting facts about beer. Go over the list below and see how many of these you already know.

1. Vikings thrive on so much machismo and derring-do they drink from the skulls of their enemies.

2. If there’s an excessive love for beer, there is also an overwhelming fear of doing without. This phobia is called cenosillicaphobia, and it’s the fear of an empty glass.

3. Barley is the magic ingredient of beer. It’s the only grain with the enzymes that can convert starch into fermentable sugars. When barley is steeped during the malting process, it activates the growth of enzymes.

4. Among the Bagondas in Uganda, widows of a dead king are accorded the privilege of drinking the beer used in cleaning his entrails.

5. The Chagga people in Tanganyika also have beer rituals as strange as the Bagondas. They believe that the best way to identify a liar is through beer drinking. When a liar consumes beer mixed with a recently sacrificed goat’s blood, the liar is sure to die.

6. Britain’s Prima magazine conducted a poll to shocking results. Believe it or not, men are more likely to know the price of their brew than the size of their women’s bra.

7. The most expensive beer in the world is called the Tutankhamen, and it’s pricier than most men’s wallets. Prepared according to a recipe discovered by archaeologists in Queen Nefertiti’s Temple of the Sun, the beer costs $52 a bottle and is produced in numbered and very limited editions.

8. Belgium has the highest number of beer brands, amounting to 400.

9. It’s cool to be a brew master - when the name is said in Latin. In Latin, a brew master is called braxator.

10. St. Arnold is the patron saint of brewing. Who knew beer drinkers needed intercession?