10 Startling Facts You Didn’t Know About Beer
1. Little over 1000 years ago, at the turn of the first millenium, monastries began brewing their own [tag]beer[/tag] as the monks wanted a drink that was hearty and nourishing to supplement their meagre meals. [tag]Beer drinking[/tag] in the monastries soon became a very popular pastime, each monk was permitted to drink 5 litres per day.
2. Also during the middle ages, if a beer batch did not turn out as desired, witches were often blamed, hunted down and burnt at the stake. the last know incident of a ‘beer witch’ burning is believed to have taken place in 1591.
3. The Romans deemed wine to be ‘[tag]The drink of the gods[/tag]’. -beer was only brewed in regions of the roman empire where [tag]wine[/tag] was not readily available. Beer was thought to be a disgusting potion fit only for barbarians.
4. The largest [tag]beer festival[/tag] in the world is the [tag]Oktoberfest[/tag]- a two-week festival held each year in Munich, Germany. the festival takes place during late September and early October. Approximately 6 million people attend each year.
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5. The [tag]Czechs[/tag] are the biggest [tag]beer drinkers[/tag] of the world consuming approximately 157 litres of beer per person, per year, beating the Irish runners-up by a staggering 20 litres per head.
6. The [tag]strongest beer in the world[/tag] is brewed by USA brewery [tag]Samuel Adams[/tag]. Utopias is the name and it has a wicked 25.0% alcohol by volume.
7. The current beer drinking world record is held by [tag]Steven Petrosino[/tag], who drank 1 liter of beer in 1.3 seconds in June 1977. This was an amazing 56% improvement over the previous world record record set by Peter Dowdeswell from England (2.3 seconds for 1 litre). Guinness dropped beer drinking and alcohol consumption records from the world record book in 1991.
8. [tag]Budweiser[/tag] is the best selling beer in the world and has been since 1957. It is distributed in more than 70 countries and almost 1 in every 5 beers sold in the US is a Bud.
9. [tag]Ron Werner[/tag] of the USA was awarded a certificate in 2002 for his collection of 11,644 different beer bottles which he had collected for the previous 20 years. 7,128 bottles remained unopened. His collection consisted of 1704 brands.
10. The largest [tag]beer can[/tag] in the world is a reproduction of a can of [tag]Guinness[/tag] made by [tag]O’Brien Aluminum [/tag]in 1999. The giant can measured 14 feet 9 inches high, 5 feet 10 inches wide, and weighed 661.39 pounds. It could hold 7,625 pints of beer.