Kulur 3

For this assignment I read the Spiegel online article "Beer, Brewskies and Liquid Bread". At first I thought that "liquid bread" was just a figure of speech refering to the commonality of beer, comparing it to bread, something that can be served at every meal. I learned by the end of the article that I was looking into it in a completely wrong way, as common as beer may be in Germany. It turns out that there are certain kinds of beer that actually have many of the same ingredients that bread has. Ingredients vary depending on what kind of beer you are making, and also depends on where it is being brewed. Nearly every region of German has a specific type of beer that is native to that part of the country. Some types of beers, like Helles, or Lager Hell, is prodominatly served in the southern Bavaria, but is so popular that it is exported all over the world, therefore you can find it almost anywhere. There are other beers however, such as Berliner Weisse, which is almost exclusively served around Berlin (hense the name, who would have thought!) which is supposed to be embarrassing to drink due to the sweet nature of the drink, low alcohol content, and the fact that it is often served with a straw doesn't help its case. I feel like it would be a great adventure going all over Germany and to taste beers from all of the different regions. There are so many different breweries and types of beer in Germany (a third of the breweries on the European Union are in Germany) that I imagine it is easy to find something you have never heard of before that is actually quite good. It has me wondering, if America had the same laws regarding beer as Germany, would we brew local quality like the Germans, or would giant corporations like Budweiser try to take over and put their vending machines everywhere? I suppose it would be a mixture of the "Wal-mart effect" and the pride in quality that many Germans feel regarding their own local breweries.