All about beer: A serious, ancient craft, built on science, expertise, and deep love

I breathed a sigh of relief as the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Lebanon took effect. Our soldiers in south Lebanon could now come home to their families. Eventually, residents who live in the North will return home, while those who stayed on to raise avocados, chickens, eggs, milk, and farm produce no longer risk their lives in the fields. It is a good time to write about beer. Proverbs 31 says, in one translation, “Give beer (sheichar) to those who are perishing, wine for those who are in anguish.” I prefer to offer beer to those with maybe just a touch of anguish, who are very much alive, hungry and thirsty, served with a grilled steak well marinated with all the juices sealed inside. So, here is probably more than you want or need to know about beer.

There are two main types of beer – ale and lager. What is the difference? Ale is fermented with top-forming yeast at warm temperatures.

Lager is fermented with bottom-forming yeast at low temperature and is aged for six to eight weeks. Ales are complex and fruity; lagers are smoother and crisper. My own favorite is Guinness, a type of ale known as stout, made from barley, hops, water, and a unique strain of yeast closely protected at the brewery in Dublin. Stout is made with roasted barley. It is a stronger version of ale, with a darker color and richer taste.

Does God like beer?

You bet. It says so in the Bible. Numbers 28: 7-10: “The drink offering is to be a quarter of a hin (just under a liter) of fermented drink (sheichar) with each lamb. Pour out the drink offering to the Lord at the sanctuary… This is a food offering, an aroma pleasing to the Lord.” Many experts have translated sheichar as “beer”; some, as “strong drink.”

Did the ancients make beer?

For sure. Beer was made in Mesopotamia around 5,000 BCE. They used barley and wild yeast. Beer was very important in Egypt, where it was a staple of daily life.

The enslaved Israelites surely learned the art of making beer from their Egyptian captors.

Barley, the main ingredient of beer, is noted in the Bible as one of the most abundant and important crops of ancient Israel. In ancient times, beer was made by creating a bread or cake from malted barley – that is, barley that was germinated by soaking it in water.

It formed a sweetish liquid called wort. In a few days, after yeast was added, the carbohydrates became converted by the yeast to alcohol and carbon dioxide, which produced bubbles that indicated fermentation. It was usually consumed right away because it did not keep well. In some ways, beer was a super food for the ancients. It enabled them to boost the calories in harvested grains – and even provided vitamins, as well as killing germs in water because of the alcoholic content. To this day, Guinness, an Irish beer, claims that its dark stout is healthy for pregnant women.

That might have been true for undernourished Irish moms a century ago; today, most pregnant women avoid alcohol entirely.

How is beer made today?

Pretty much the same way. Wheat or barley is converted into a sugary liquid, wort. The sweet wort is drained off, put into a kettle, and boiled. Hops are added as a source of bitterness, flavor, and aroma. The wort is cooled, yeast is added, and fermentation occurs, over a week or more. It is then fermented using yeast. The yeast settles, leaving the beer clear.

Yeast is a living organism that needs food to survive and grow. Fermentation occurs when the yeast feeds off a range of carbohydrates – starches and sugars – that are in the grain, breaking them down and releasing carbon dioxide, ethanol, flavor, and energy.

Which countries drink the most beer?

Czechs, hands down. About 140 liters a year. That comes to more than a bottle of beer daily for every man, woman, and child.

Makes sense, since the Czechs invented Pilsner. Austrians and Germans are a close second and third. Contrast that with Israelis, 51st in the world, who consume only 17 liters of beer a year, about a bottle a week. As a result, the many Israeli micro-breweries that make craft beer (beer made in a traditional way, in a small brewery) face an uphill struggle.

TO PEER deeper into the art of craft beer, I spoke with a new immigrant, Nathan Eitingon, who made aliyah from the US some months ago. Nathan is a member of our Masorti congregation in Zichron Ya’acov. He works at a leading Israeli craft beer company, Alexander, founded in August 2008 and located in Emek Hefer, near Nahal Alexander.

Tell me what it’s like to make beer.

We don’t have an assembly line, so we are all involved in every aspect of production, from when the grain arrives, to when it is ready to be sent to bottling. While many imagine the work to have a certain romanticism about it, and it certainly does, it is very industrial in nature. A brewery is hot and humid, as well as a chemically toxic working environment, where your feet are surrounded by sprawling hoses and a menagerie of various pumps.

Most of the job is cleaning, maintenance, or preparation of one sort or another. It’s a lot of different, smaller tasks, such as moving yeast from one tank to another, sanitizing tanks between batches, and monitoring the progression of fermentation. For someone like me who enjoys balancing a bunch of different things in their head while being on their feet, it’s a good fit.

Tell me about the long and winding road that led you to make aliyah at this difficult time – and how’s it going for you?

I made aliyah for multiple reasons, but two chiefly. I’ve moved around a lot, having lived in four countries and a dozen cities at age 27.

Everyone in my family was born in different countries. At a basic level, I longed for a home, and I wanted to live with other Jews.

I also struggled outside of Israel, religiously.

I grew up quite secular but became more religious about four years ago. My experience was a common one, between two worlds and two extremes. Difficulty with employment too, especially from a hospitality background.

In Israel, it is indeed much more of a spectrum. I wanted a normal life where I didn’t really need to think about how I would keep kashrut or Shabbat. Where I didn’t feel isolated. Aliyah has in most ways gone much more smoothly than I had anticipated. Everything fell into place very easily within a few months. While I feel the language barrier at times, I do feel very much at home and feel that I fit in – which is, honestly, for the first time in my life.

What led you to work at making craft beer?

In many ways, this has been the natural progression of my career, working around alcohol as a bartender. I started when I was 18, working my first job at a nightclub as a high school student. Since then, I’ve worked in wineries, breweries, pubs, and cocktail bars.

Outside of work, I made my own beer, as well as spirits such as rum, vodka, brandy, whiskey, and, literally, bathtub gin. Through the years, I transitioned from chaotic nightclubs to more relaxed breweries and started to help out the brewers here and there when I had the time.

While I enjoyed bar tending and later frontof-house management, there is a unique joy in making a tangible product yourself. It is a dream of mine to eventually have my own bar where I make what I’m selling.

Israelis drink relatively little beer. Is that changing?

It’s true that Israelis don’t have much of a beer culture, but this is something in which Israel is not alone. The US really is leading the craft beer boom, and outside the US, our somewhat lagging Anglosphere compatriots, the European continent and elsewhere have been quite sclerotic in the craft beer scene. Israel is not doing bad at all considering its size, and I think this reflects Israel’s entrepreneurial nature and willingness to chase after global trends.

AS NATHAN explained to me, beer is a serious, ancient craft, built on science, expertise, and deep love on the part of those who produce it. But beer is also the subject of some great humor. I am an economist, professor, and journalist who, after putting generations of hapless students to sleep in the classroom, deep down yearns to do a stand-up routine.

So, here goes. I call it “A bar walked into a beer!”

A bar walked into a beer

• Beers walk into bars all the time. But when a bar walks into a beer? That’s a bore. Unless the beer is really a bare bear. Now, when a bar walks into a bare bear, it’s a bar-beer bare bear bore. That’s why its label says “Dr. Seuss.”

• Once a bar walked into a beer. The beer said, “Sir! You’re out of order!”

• Believe me, Jews love beer. It’s why they’re called HeBrews. I always have four beers before I do stand=up. I guess that’s why it quickly becomes sit-down…or falldown. Did you know that frogs taste like beer? It’s because of the hops.

• Every day, I say, “Max, you have to stop drinking so much beer.” Good thing my name is Shlomo.

• For some, the glass is half empty. For others, it is half full. For me – who the heck has been drinking my beer?

• I once saw a sign outside a bar. “Buy one beer for the price of two and get the second one for free.” I raced inside before they could renege.

• Once, a neutron walked into a bar and said, “How much for a beer?” The bartender said, “For you – no charge!” That joke only flies at MIT. Even there, it dies.

• The other day, I saw a Roman walk into a bar. He holds up two fingers and says, “Give me five beers!” The bartender said, “Sic, ita sane.”

• The same day, I saw a guy walk into a bar carrying a chunk of asphalt. “A beer for me, and one for the road,” he says.

• A polar bear walks into a bar. The bartender says, “What’ll you have?” The bear says, “I guess I’ll have a ........... beer.” “Hey, why the long pause?” the bartender asks. “I don’t know, I was born with them,” the bear says.

• This one is from Stanford. An infinite number of mathematicians walk into a bar. The first orders a beer. The second, half. The third, a quarter. And so on. The bartender says, “Hey, that’s an infinite amount of beer. You guys need to know your limits!” “We do!” they say, in unison. “It’s…two! Get it?!”

You know, on second thought, my economics research was a whole lot funnier than my stand-up. Not that it was intentional.

The writer heads the Zvi Griliches Research Data Center at S. Neaman Institute, Technion. He blogs at www.timnovate.wordpress.com.